Year: 2019
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Born in Wales in 1995, Kate Jacobson’s left-wing parents moved frequently during her childhood. The grand-daughter of Jews who fled Berlin in 1939, Jacobson identifies with a left-wing Jewish heritage. As early as age 14 when she organized a picket line to force her MLA to explain why her classrooms in Airdrie had 40 students or more, she became a life-long militant who protests local and international exploitation of workers and the environment. For example, she was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and resisting arrest for joining an occupation of Kinder Morgan’s offices to protest its building of an expanded oil and gas pipeline from Alberta to Vancouver. Her early employments were in non-unionized service jobs, and she describes their exploitative character. Eventually, she found employment in AUPE as an internal organizer, that is an employee of the union who assists members to mobilize collectively to fight unjust employers. She lives in Calgary.
Because of her interest in coal mining and labour radicalism, Jacobson, a history buff, has researched and published an article on the heroic efforts of coal miners in Drumheller to organize a One Big Union affiliate against their ultra-exploitative employers after World War One and the violent response that the employers and the state launched against them.
Keywords: Canadian Tire; Drumheller miners; Internal organizer in a union; Non-union work; One Big Union; Trade unions viewed from a leftist perspective.
Transcript: Download (PDF)
See also: Alberta Union of Provincial Employees; Coal Mining in Alberta; Great Labour Revolt, 1919, Occupational Health and Safety in Alberta; Women and Work in Alberta