P. Japanese Camp and Mill/ Imagination Market Parking

Category: Sites from the 'Labour, Work and Working People' booklet

Formed in 1920, this socialist organization joined the ranks of a flourishing Japanese-Canadian union movement. By joining the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada in 1927, it became the first union of Asian workers granted an affiliation to a national labour centre. Although this union endorsed labour principles, the racism of the white majority kept it isolated within the Japanese community. One of the early tenets of craft unions was Asiatic exclusion. Claiming that non-white and immigrant workers weakened labour's goals by accepting lower wages, lower standards of living and less satisfactory working conditions, labour excluded them from union lists. During an economic depression in 1907, anti-Asiatic riots destroyed homes and businesses in nearby Chinatown and Japantown.