We are excited to share the newest contribution to the Graphic History Project: An ‘Entirely Different’ Kind of Labour Union: The Service, Office, and Retail Workers’ Union of Canada. Growing out of the many movements that emerged in the 1960s and 70s, SORWUC was a socialist-feminist union based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, that sought to organize workers the broader labour movement had been unable or unwilling to organize, particularly (although not limited to) women working in offices, banks, and restaurants.
Julia Smith, the newest member of the Graphic History Collective, led the research and writing for this comic with support from Robin Folvik and Sean Carleton. Julia is a PhD student in the Frost Centre for Canadian Studies & Indigenous Studies at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario with research interests that include labour and working-class history, political economy, and women’s and gender studies. She is currently studying the history of Canadian bank workers’ struggles to unionize.
We are ever-grateful for the talented work of Ethan Heitner, who joined us as illustrator for this project. Ethan Heitner is a cartoonist and member of the editorial collective of World War 3 Illustrated, the radical comics magazine. Ethan’s first contribution to the Graphic History Project was Stick and Stay, They’re Bound to Pay: The Flint Strike in Comics, edited by Paul Buhle. More of his work can be seen on his blog, freedomfunnies.com.
You are welcome to print and share this comic, but not for commercial purposes: GHC_SORWUC