Our mission is to unite Jewish workers and allies across Canada’s labour movement by fostering inclusion, combatting antisemitism, and championing engagement and solidarity.

Guiding Principles

  • The CJLC is guided by Jewish members of the labour movement from across Canada. Our priorities and activities are shaped by the voices, experiences, and needs of Jewish workers.

  • The CJLC uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism to help recognize and respond to contemporary antisemitism. We are committed to ensuring that the experiences and concerns of Jewish workers are understood, acknowledged, and addressed within the labour movement.

  • Jewish workers deserve workplaces and union spaces free from harassment, discrimination, and exclusion. The CJLC supports members working to identify and address antisemitism in their unions and works in partnership with labour and community allies to promote safe, respectful, and inclusive environments.

  • The CJLC supports Canadian Jewish union members in exercising their right to fully participate in union life. Jewish workers deserve the same protections and solidarity afforded to all equity-deserving groups, and concerns about antisemitism should be treated with fairness, dignity, and urgency.

  • The CJLC helps Jewish union members understand union processes and ensures their voices are heard and respected. We also work to strengthen understanding, cooperation, and solidarity between the Jewish labour community and the broader labour movement.

  • The CJLC supports Jewish workers in ways that complement — not replace — unions’ responsibilities to represent and protect their members, including collective bargaining, education, and grievance processes.

  • The CJLC is committed to serving Jewish workers in a non-partisan and politically neutral manner. We value collaboration and support from diverse partners across Canada who share our commitment to equity, fairness, and respect.

Our History

Established in 1935-1936, the Jewish Labour Committee (JLC) of Canada was a prominent, socialist-leaning organization formed to combat Nazism, fascism, and antisemitism. Representing Jewish trade unionists, it fought for human rights, aided Holocaust refugees, and spearheaded anti-discrimination legislation in Canadian workplaces and housing during the 1940s and 50s.

The JLC was a front-runner in the push for anti-discrimination legislation in Ontario. Kalmen Kaplansky, a Polish-born Jew and the JLC executive director for combating racial discrimination in the labour movement, was instrumental in the formation of the Joint Labour Committees to Combat Racial Discrimination in Toronto, Windsor, Montreal, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Those committees held annual conferences which promoted tolerance among unionized workers.

By 1959, the JLC had a large network of rights associations. It enjoyed such success by 1960, that Frank Scott, co-founder of the NDP party, remarked that he knew “of no single body in the whole of Canada doing as much continuous and consistent work for civil liberties.” [Clément 2008]

JLC activists pushed the Quebec government to pass a bill of rights. In Halifax, in 1961, they helped create an indigenous organization to develop, with them, a program of social action related to such problems as the fight for fair compensation for the impoverished black residents of Africville, who were being forcibly relocated by the municipal government. The Africville campaign and the JLC’s work in organizing Aboriginal people (particularly in Ontario) were grounded in its desire to help empower minorities to fight discrimination and defend their interests.

Over the course of the 70’s and beyond, as Human Rights organizations strengthened and Parliament passed the Canadian Human Rights Act (1977), the work of the JLC was actualized, succeeding in ensuring widespread implementation within the Canadian labour movement of the human rights principles for which it fought.

The current CJLC was established in September 2024 in response to concern among Canada’s Jewish union members regarding a dangerous rise of antisemitism within the Canadian union movement and honours the principles and successes of its predecessor organization.