In the history of labour relations in Canadian broadcasting, private radio stands out as a sector that has almost completely resisted unionization. Through the middle decades of the twentieth century, trade unions that attempted to gain a foothold in commercial radio found a formidable opponent in radio owners, a notoriously scrappy class of entrepreneurs known for their legendary battles with federal regulators and powerful American competitors in the quest to establish a Canadian-owned, for-profit alternative to the CBC.1
It was not a complete shutout for labour. Early radio in Canada was a fragile system of small operators and experimenters in the new technology, but with the advent of the CBC in the mid-1930s, followed by television a decade or so later, the field was beginning to mature. In 1952, the…
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British Columbia History (Digital) - 1 Issue, 56.4 Winter 2023