The sleeping car porters were active members in the formation of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) and in other areas of organized labour and political activism. The porters had to fight against white unions that would deny them membership in the new organization. Opposition to participation by the porters came from unions that wanted only unions representing white Canadians to be members of the new organization. The opponents to the Black porters were generally supportive of Canada’s racist policies that favoured white people, and they were against the porters’ opposition to these government policies. 

But the porters eventually won the support of some of the leading trade unions in Toronto and wider Canada. This was part of the efforts by the unionized porters to find allies to support them in their political and civic battles for citizenship rights for all non-white peoples. Eventually, the organizers relented and allowed representatives of a Black union to participate. At the CLC founding convention in 1956, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) moved a number of resolutions asking organized labour to join in the fight against Canada’s racist immigration policies.