Patrick Lenihan: From Irish Rebel to Founder of Canadian Public Sector Unionism.

edited by Gil LEVINE, St. John's, Newfoundland: Canadian Committee on Labour History, 1998, 203 p., ISBN 1-894000-00-5.

At a time when the Canadian labour movement seems intent on splitting into quarrelling jurisdictional factions, it is ironic to read of a man who spent a large part

of his life trying to unite workers into a cohesive labour movement representing the interests of workers in both the public and private sectors. But that's what Patrick Lenihan and others were successful in doing and editor Gil Levine has allowed Lenihan to tell this story in his own words.

The current internecine warfare between the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the rest of the affiliates of the Canadian Labour Congress stands in sharp contrast to the battles Lenihan and his contemporaries fought to establish public sector unionism as an integral part of a united house of labour.

Lofty goals of forming a national public sector union and uniting the two major factions within the Canadian labour movement must have seemed daunting just after the Second World war. But the time was right. Public sector workers were ready to embrace unionism and public sector employers were all too willing to sit down and negotiate with their unions. Civic employees were mobilized and energized by activists like Lenihan who were able to win substantial gains at the bargaining tables and in grievance settlements.

While civic employees' unions often have a long individual histories and many were members of the Trades and Labour Congress (TLC), it was not until the 1950s that they made their presence felt. Before then, in Lenihan's words, "the civic employee unions within the TLC were always regarded by the industrial unions as second-class citizens." Activists such as Lenihan realized that civic employees were isolated in their unions with no common organizational bond to further their interests. They set out to correct that by trying to forge a national union for public employees.

In 1952 they convinced the TLC officers to issue a charter for a National Federation of Public Employees as a first step to forming a national union and in 1953 the 12,000 member organization was given the right to charter locals. In 1954 the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) was formed. NUPE formally affiliated to the TLC in 1955 with 23,000 members and a large unorganized public sector waiting to be mobilized.