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 Americanorganized CBC workers and much of the television industry in Canada.2 Where a company owned both TV and radio properties, radio employees were sometimes included in the certifications, but these cases were rare. A more common scenario was NABET's attempt in 1955 to organize workers at CKOY-AM in Ottawa. The dispute devolved into a 58-day strike, after which a contract was reached, but the relationship faltered, and the union was decertified a year later.3
