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DESPITE ITS LONG HISTORY OF ORGANIZATION by specific trade, the construction sector in Canada is a contested site among unions seeking to represent workers. The Christian Labour Association of Canada (clac) has attempted to disrupt traditional jurisdictions in the sector in Ontario and western Canada for over a decade. clac, founded in 1952 by Dutch immigrants with strong links to European Christian labour, has been a relatively small player in Canada's labour movement and relatively neglected by labour researchers. However, three developments have brought clac more attention over the last decade. First, the union has rapidly expanded its membership and now claims to represent 60,000 workers. Second, the controversial tactics used to achieve this growth - specifically, employer accommodationist strategies that undermine other unions - have resulted in clac's expulsion from central labour bodies. Third, after largely dismissing Christian labour as inconsequential and particular, labour studies scholarship has begun to push the boundaries of a secular, materialist labour studies with interpretations that integrate religion into understandings of labour mobilization.
This article explores the recent strategic trajectory of clac and seeks to contribute to the understanding of such an extreme form of accommodationist unionism. clac is often characterized as an accommodationist, or "company," union - an opportunistic, pariah organization that allows employers who would otherwise face a "real" union (i.e., traditional, militant) a convenient union-avoidance alternative. clac's presence must not, however, be reduced to a functionalist accommodationism. Over the last decade clac has demonstrated an expansionist strategy with a specific geographical logic, concentrating in regions and jurisdictions that are manageable within the union's organizational capacities. Further, its geographical strategy is supported by a populism that is coherent with its strategic objectives. Here, we build on previous work that looks at the intersections between labour and populism from both the left and the right.1
Right-wing accommodationist unions that integrate populism into their strategic program pose a theoretical challenge to labour geography and to labour studies more broadly. Admittedly, it is difficult to ascribe agency to workers when accommodationist unions are so closely aligned with capitalist strategic objectives. In fact, such unions often dissolve labour-employer conflict to the point where it is difficult to identify how the power being exercised by workers is any different from that of...