Series consists of files of the Organization Department documenting the department's principal activities, functions, and concerns, such as affiliated national and international unions and their organizational issues, such as organizing campaigns, certification, jurisdictional questions, negotiations, strikes and lockouts, appeals for support, mergers, and affiliation with the CLC; jurisdictional disputes and raids involving affiliated unions, and the CLC's efforts to resolve these disputes; raids involving non-affiliated unions; directly chartered local unions, and their transfer to affiliated national and international unions; organizing campaigns led by the CLC or by affiliated unions, and related topics such as organizing conferences and analysis of the organizing potential in various regions and industries; the CLC's major campaign of the 1960s and 1970s to organize white-collar office and technical workers, and the new union established as part of this campaign (the Association of Commercial and Technical Employees); strikes, including the 1959 strike of Newfoundland loggers represented by the International Woodworkers of America; other labour federations, including the Confédération des syndicats nationaux / Confederation of National Trade Unions, and its organizational rivalry with the CLC; federal and provincial labour relations boards and legislation; CLC industry councils of unions, such as the National Council of Broadcast Unions; meetings of organizing staff and of regional directors; the activities and reports of the department's representatives, directors, and other staff; the autonomy of Canadian branches of international unions; independent unions and company unions; the Ditchley Foundation's Anglo-American-Canadian Trade Union Conferences; "The Examiner: Voice of Labour in Newfoundland"; inter-office correspondence; staff meetings and seminars; personnel and general administrative matters; and other topics.
The files contain correspondence, memoranda, reports, minutes, proceedings, briefs, submissions, charters, constitutions, membership and dues records, certification and conciliation records, negotiations papers, records of votes, lists of officers, collective agreements, decisions, determinations, financial records, organizing and strike literature, publicity material, print matter, financial records, notes, and other material. Included are files created by the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) Organization Department prior to the 1956 merger, including files on the CCL Public Service Workers Organizing Committee, the Department Store Organizing Committee, the General Organizing Committee, the National Organization of Civic, Utility and Electric Workers, and other CCL affiliates. Most other records pre-dating the 1956 merger pertain to directly chartered local unions originally affiliated to the CCL or the Trades and Labor Congress of Canada.
Microfilm reels H-17 to H-22, H-34 to H-39, H-79 to H-81, H-97 to H-102, H-105 to H-128, H-141 to H-142, H-209 to H-218, H-238, H-296 to H-311, H-330 to H-335, H-344 to H-352, H-362, H-397 to H-398, H-440 to H-455, H-457 to H-464, H-493 to H-494, H-497, H-525, H-533 to H-536, H-576 to H-578, H-580 to H-582, H-588 to H-595, H-610 to H-611, H-643, H-653 to H-656, H-665 to H-671, H-727 to H-731, H-758 to H-759, H-777, H-788 to H-816, H-822, H-876 to H-879, H-894 to H-900, H-902 to H-905, H-908, H-914 to H-916.
The Organization Department files concerning provincial federations of labour and municipal labour councils (for which the department became responsible in 1977) are described in the Federations and Councils Files series.
