Item AAAB4001 - Ellen Barber interview : [Diamond, 1979]

CALL NUMBER: T3607:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Ellen Barber : early union organization in the laundries, 1914-1918 : [tape 1] RECORDED: Port Moody (B.C.), 1979-08 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Barber was one of the first women active in the Vancouver Trades and Labour Congress (an affiliate of the Trades and Labour Congress). She was involved in organising laundry and communication workers during the First World War period. In this interview, she describes union organisation during World War One; working conditions in the laundries; bargaining procedures; organising the unions; the laundry strike and its defeat; the formation of the Minimum Wage Board; the telephone workers strike. TRACK 2: Attitudes to women within the unions; working in the war industry in WWII; post-war layoffs of women workers; piecework; CCF involvement in the unions; her family's roots, and her decision to become a unionist; women's suffrage and its effects on working women; Oriental workers and parallel attitudes to women; the Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers' International Union in the 1940s; the streetcar strike of 1918.;

CALL NUMBER: T3607:0002 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Ellen Barber : early union organization in the laundries, 1914-1918 : [tape 2] RECORDED: Port Moody (B.C.), 1979-08 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Depression use of female labour; the impact of the Russian Revolution on the labour movement; shipyard conditions; accidents in the laundries; women's organisations in the 1930s. [TRACK 2: blank.];