Cheap Wage Labour: Race and Gender in the Fisheries of British Columbia

Terry A. Crowley is a professor of history at the University of Guelph,
and the author of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality.

The current academic holy trinity of race, class, and gender is
fittingly arrayed in this history of B.C. fisheries workers. When
B.C.’s canneries began during the 1870s, Native women and men were
often employed as cheap wage labour, but many were subsequently
displaced by Chinese and Japanese workers, who also were willing to work
for meagre returns. As mechanization of operations continuously eroded
the number employed, workers turned to unions, notably the United
Fishermen and Allied Workers. While conditions improved and wages
increased, the number of employees dwindled. Race was gradually removed
as a wage category, but gender categories attached to work positions
were not dropped until after a strike in 1973.

This study skilfully traces the changing role of men and women
(including Native, Chinese, and Japanese) fishers and shore workers, and
employees and employers in the evolution of the B.C. canning industry.
While patriarchy is seen as integral to capitalism, though pre-existent
to it, the theoretical fabric of Karl Marx’s grossly outdated labour
theory of value in which the book is couched is excessive and
unnecessary. Labour was devalued when canning began, and it remains so
today as the industry continues to seek profits in global markets.