Sufrin, Eileen, 1913-1999 : Born in Montreal, Eileen Tallman Sufrin was raised in Toronto. An office worker in the 1930s, she became active in the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and worked with its youth movement and Trade Union Committee. In 1940, Charles Millard, Ontario representative of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and Canadian Director of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (later the United Steelworkers of America), hired Tallman as a white-collar organizer. In the capacity of General Secretary-Treasurer of the Office and Professional Workers Organizing Committee, Tallman played a prominent role in an organizing drive among Canadian bank workers, 1941-1942, and in the unsuccessful recognition strike by workers at the Banque Canadienne Nationale in Montreal in 1942.
Tallman's first success in organizing white-collar workers came in 1943, when the John Inglis Company in Toronto recognized the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) as the representative of its office workers. She subsequently represented the USWA in Vancouver, 1943-1947. For the next five years, 1948-1952, Tallman headed the campaign to organize the workers at T. Eaton Company. In 1951, after a hard-fought campaign, strongly supported by the Canadian labour movement, the pro-union forces at Eaton's Toronto operations narrowly lost a certification vote. In 1982, Eileen Tallman Sufrin published "The Eaton Drive", her own account of these events.
Tallman subsequently directed the Office Workers Department of the USWA, 1953-1956, and in 1957 embarked on a year's leave to study the Italian trade-union movement. From 1959 to 1964 Tallman, who married Bert Sufrin in 1960, acted as Industrial Relations Administrator for the Saskatchewan Government Finance Office. After a short stint as editor of the "Canadian Packinghouse Worker", Sufrin did research in Ottawa for the federal Department of Labour, 1967-1972, where she was also active in the Public Service Alliance of Canada. Retiring in 1972 to White Rock, B.C., Sufrin was active in the local New Democratic Party. In 1979 she received the Governor-General's Award commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Persons Case. Eileen Sufrin died at White Rock in 1999.
