Linking Labour Studies and Unions: Past Lessons and Future Visions

Abstract

Over the past century unions and post-secondary educational institutions have enjoyed an uneasy relationship. At times unions have courted universities and at other times college and university labour studies programmes have courted unions. Currently there are only a handful of labour studies programmes in Canada, and the support they receive from the labour movement is tepid at best. Why should this be? This paper surveys the history of this relationship from the arrival in Canada of the Workers’ Educational Association in 1918 to the present and offers a blueprint for future cooperation that would provide a variety of learning opportunities for trade unionists.