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Learning from Labour | 

Intermediate ETFO Resource

 | www.etfo.ca

Human Rights as Workers Rights

Lesson Plan

Curriculum Expectation(s) and Big Ideas and Concepts

Unit

Grade

Teacher(s) Timeline:

Human Rights as Workers Rights

Grade 7 and 8

45 minute lesson

Lesson Description

Students will study the relationship between human rights and workers’ rights by analyzing the events of the 1872 Toronto 
Printers Strike, as well as by comparing our contemporary standards of human rights to the rights of working people in the 19th 
century.

Curriculum Expectations(s)

Big Ideas and Concepts

History

Assess the impact of some key social, economic and political 
factors, including social, economic and/or political inequality, in 
Canada during different eras.

Describe various significant events, developments and people in 
Canada during the era under study and explain their impact.

Big Ideas

All human beings enjoy certain fundamental rights.

All workers have certain rights that are protected by  human rights 
legislation.

Workers in the past did not have the same rights that we have 
today. These rights were earned through protest and struggle. The 
events of the Toronto Printers Strike of 1872 provide an example of 
this struggle. (Historical Perspective)

Framing Questions

What are some of the fundamental rights that all human beings 
share? 

How do human rights and workers’ rights intersect?

How did the actions undertaken by the workers in the past help to 
secure better working conditions for present day workers?

Reading

Accommodations/Modifications

Bradburn, J. Printers Demand a Nine Hour Day. Toronto In Time. 
http://citiesintime.ca/toronto/story/printers-dem/

You Tube video: Heritage Moment: The 1872 Toronto Printers 
Strike. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGEng8BFX5g

Simplified version of the United Nations Declaration of 
Human Rights from the Youth for Human Rights. http://www.
youthforhumanrights.org/what-are-human-rights/universal-
declaration-of-human-rights/articles-1-15.html

ETFO Educating For Global Citizenship e-resource. http://www.
etfo.ca/Resources/ForTeachers/Documents/Educating%20for%20
Global%20Citizenship%20-%20An%20ETFO%20Curriculum%20
Development%20%20Inquiry%20Initiative.pdf

Allow students of various abilities to work on completion of the 
Know/What to know/Want to Learn (KWL) chart in pairs or in 
small groups rather than individually. 

Permit some students to complete their response to the individual 
practice question using point form notes rather than prose. 

See ETFO Special Education Handbook to address additional areas 
of need.

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