Despite the increased earning potential of many Canadians after the war, the labour movement continued to face serious challenges. Within the public service, for example, increased technology cast a shadow over job security for workers in much the same way that it had threatened craft workers in the late nineteenth century. Machines were once again replacing workers, or "devaluing" their jobs.
While recognizing the positive aspects of mechanization in reducing the employer's cost," the union charges that "mechanization and automation can create a decline in the number of employees, changes in skills, transfers from service locations, as well as an increase in night work, or work with inconvenient hours."

The union statement argues that "given its social and psychological impact, higher productivity, alone, is not enough to justify the introduction of large-scale mechanization."

Excerpt from: May-June issue of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers as quoted in Technological Change and the Workforce, Robert M. Laxer, ed. (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1978).

Reading from Technological Change: 
A Workshop for Trade Unionists - 
Instruction Manual, Canadian Labour 
Congress Educational Services, 1985 How did the word processor change the workplace?


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