"Their only power was moral": The Injured Workers' Movement in Toronto, 1970–1985

In the 1960s, injured workers experienced the pain and suffering associated with their injuries privately, within the confines of their own homes. They protested to the Workmen's Compensation Board (WCB) when they were unsuccessful in getting their claims accepted, when the amount of their awards was less than they believed was justified, or when their pensions for permanent disability were cut or terminated. In the overwhelming majority of instances, however, these were individual acts of resistance. The evolution of individual resistance into collective protest had as its critical nucleus Toronto's post-World-War-II immigrant Italian community. A racialized and highly gendered social movement, the Injured Workers' Movement grew in strength in the late 1970s and early 1980s in response to attempts by the WCB, the Progressive Conservative government, and employers to eliminate lifetime pensions for permanently disabled workers. By so doing, the WCB was taking a fundamental step towards turning workmen's compensation in Ontario into a social assistance, rather than a work-based, social insurance programme. In this historical moment the IWM proved successful, if only temporarily, in restraining the gathering social, economic, and political forces of neo-liberalism.