Page Five

B.C. LUMBER WORKER
By “High Rigger” |

Lookin! Around

“Hi” Hunts Missing Loggers re
... Mocks Stuart’s Double-Talk

| 4 Hittle later the bear got up all
| alone,

| They had reached a compromise.
The grizzly had got his dinner.

Audi oebadigaibesieacenh
Bey ee some jae TD con | (Um waiting for a chance t0 tell
hich would-be a pleasure to|/?#‘ 22 ‘0 R. V. myself.)
me, My hairy chested play. 5
mates were in town over the holi-

Poor Aduice

“THE toad beneath the harrow knows :
Exactly where each tooth point goes;

The butterfly upon the road i

Preaches contentment to the toad.”

day and ganged up on me. They
even started agitating around the
editorial rooms, about what was
a high-rigger supposed to do any-
way.

Seems a high-rigger, not even
an ex, has any cause to go high-
brow or formal. Nuts to that
stuff, says they, dish it right off
the arm. Give it to us straight
like we're used to, without the,
fancy fixin’s. Why wear false
whiskers ana walk on stilts?

.
I waved my cane and beat my
ums at them about what every

- logger should know, but didn’t
get anywhere. They didn't give
a tinker’s cuss whether I had
gone to night school once or
twice. They wanted the dirt in
basic English.

BEFORE Managing Editor

George Mitchell kicked us out
of his office he told me, “You
write as they please, but keep it
as clean as you can. Who cares if
you have got a dual personality?

‘eep your literary self at home
until these apes get back to camp,
or they'll lock you up in the pub-
lic library.”

I said I might do a lot better
if they’d buy me the beer I can’t
buy with my compensation
cheque, but he wouldn’t listen.
Such a busy man is George. He
moves all the time on jet propul-
sion. He’s-a-mile away before
you hear his blast,

Now I’m down to panhandling
for gossip on the skidroad, and if
those blasted so and so’s don't
Keep me posted of the doings
back in camp, I'll be writing bed-
time stories about Paul Bunyan,
for the Ladies Home Journal.

THESE NEGOTIATIONS

I CRASHED a couple of sessions

_ *of the bargaining conference
just to hear what they might be
doing for loggers. They were do-
ing plenty on the bosses’ side of
the table that I didn’t like, It
Was all nice and cozy in the
Board Room of the Hotel Van-
couver. Nice thick carpet for. R.
V. Stuart’s caulk boots, for he
tries to'make like a logger.

It was all nice and cozy till the
boys started talking about higher
wages and lower board rates. When
Tom MacKenzie would run out of
wind, the rest of them would join in
the chorus. They had every argu-
ment in the book, but R. V. Stuart

THE LOGGERS’ LOCAL

LAST Sunday, I got shaved and

went to the semi-annual meet-
ing of Local 1-71. I was looking
for some excitement, like the old
days, and sure enough, Tom Mac-
Kenzie was laying it on the line
about what had to be done with
the bosses, and the board rates.

I met some pals too, all the
way from Camp Woss and Sand-
spit. They had a nice point. It
wasn’t good enough, they said,
to ask for lower rates for board;
it should be lower rates for both
board and lodging, or maybe R.
V. Stuart would pull the same
trick he did last year when Ernie
Dalskog got lost in the cemetery
with his pants down and every-
thing.

Ernie never negotiated for
board last year, so they raised
the rates pronto. This time R. V.
might be smooth enough to set
an easier board rate and boost a
lodging rate, if not watched
closely. So be it, says Tom.

ABSENT LOGGERS

"THEY sure had a lot of import-

ant business for this meeting,
but somehow my mind got won-
dering about all the loggers that
should of been there and weren't.
Heaven knows ‘the Local only
meets twice a year, when the log-
gers are in town, and it wouldn’t
kill anybody to give an afternoon
to the loggers’ business when the
beer parlors are closed anyway.

A lot of those who promised to
come and didn't show up must have
caught indolent fever. Some guys I
know have a daily prayer: Give us
this day our day in bed.

I met one of them on my way
to the meeting. Said he had to
take the folks to a picnic at
White Rock. He’d been helling
around for several days, but was
too damn domesticated all at once
to attend the union meeting.

Next time I see him, I’m going
to tell him that he wouldn’t have
been making enough to sport a
car and drive the folks to White
Rock, if it hadn’t been for the
union.

What's more, if everyone made a
habit of forgetting the union the way
he's doing, we'll all be taking picnic
lunches on the steps of the Unem-
ployment Insurance Commission Of-
fiee, or bumming one at the soup
kitchen,

Funny thing, Some fellows like a

| __ would wipe the tears from bis eyes,| steady fob with good bay cua ‘ctl

and tell them sadly about the | work Ithe bell to bold the job, ut
: teretched poverty of his poor wnfor-| they wont lift a finger or Shere oat
: tunate clients, the operators — all) half hour to work with the rest of

gone broke paying wages.
I was so touched that I had to
run out for a box of Kleenex.

COMPROMISE — OH NO!

rf WISH I could earn dough as
easily as R. V. Stuart. All he
has to do is say “No”, with trills
‘and variations, like playing}
“Wait Till the Sun Shines Nellie”
on the mouth organ.
He’s got « magic word for every
argument raised by the boys—com-
“pra His ideas of a compromise
is like what Joe Blotz found out
swhen be went bunting up Bella
Coola He met a very unusual
bests; the! cola ipaek Enphich.

the bunch on the union job to make
steady work and good pay stick,

They seem to think that it’s
done with mirrors. And they're
the first to squeal when they get
clipped.

‘They used to curse the bosses’
blacklist. With this absenteeism
from the union, they’re blacklist-
ing themselves out of better
wages.

MIKE SEKORA
MIKE Sekora was there. Good
old Mike. He doesn’t smoke

not-so-secret habit. He'd just as
soon squash a “wooie” as a bed-
bug and then holler about the
smell, 2

or earry matches, but he’s got al |

Mike Sekora, International
Organizer.

He’s been cruising around the
camps Alert Bay to Powell River
way on his private yacht: He
gave us the low-down on the

fstate of IWA organization in

those parts. Wooies are getting
lonesomer and lonesomer. Log-
gers aren’t so dumb. It takes
more than hot air to get a good
contract.

Trouble is that Local 1-71 has
more square miles per member
than any other union on earth.
On the outside fringes, Hand-
some Harold has still got a few
hero-worshippers, but he has
picked up only one certification
in the camps on the Coast so far.
The betting is that he might, get
four this year, but no more. He’s
fixed a few foreman to hire only
wooies.

Mike and Stu Alsbury had a legi-
timate beef about the WIUC certifi-
cation at M and M Camp. The day
it was given by the Board, Mike had
signed up 18 out of 32 in camp for
the WA, Anybody could get a WI
UC book for free. No vote was
taken, so who knows what union the
men wanted?

It’s a set-up for the bosses work-
ing in cahoots with the Labor Rela-
tions Board.

It gives them a chance to work the
old saw-off by pretending that they
must do business with two. unions,
even though one is a phony.

SEE HERE, R. V.!

PAGING R. V. Stuart! Now we
Imow that the operators have

one story for the shareholders

and another for the workers.

President E. P. Taylor, B.C.
Forest Products Ltd., told his
backers recently that net profits
for six months ending March 31
were $610,052—more than double
dividend requirements and equal
to 30.5 cents a share invested.

This wasn’t quite as good as
the same six months the previous
year, but this was only because
logging operations were shut

ATLAS PRINTERS

Social & Commercial Printers

356 Alexander Street
VANCOUVER

| ' PAcific 3723

I wish co announce the
OFFICE at 9 East

ing resumed
cordial in
‘in for a visit.

opening of my NEW DENTAL

Street, corner Carrall, hav-

ractice after an extended holiday. A
is extended to all old friends to come.

Dr. R. Llewellyn Douglas

down for four months, said he.
During the next six months,

Mr. Taylor expects an improve-|

ment, in spite of market uncer-
tainties. %

The only thing worrying him
is that there may not be a possi-
bility for the repetition of the

||exceptionally favorable results

of the previous two years.

Before Mr. Stuart told the IW
A Policy Committee that the
owners were likely to be bank-
rupt by midsummer, he should
have warned his millionaire cli-
ents that the lumber workers can
read too.

Some of them can even put
two and two together and make
four.

@
WORSE TO COME!
‘HERE is no Franklin D.

Roosevelt in the United States
is time to save the Free Enter-
es from themselves. Govern-
ment intervention at that time,
and awar since, has kept busi
ness from another industrial
panic—at least until now.

Every financial page of every
big newspaper daily for months
past-has-been_filled.with glowing
reports of the staggering. profits
made by U.S. corporations in re-
cent years, and especially the
past year.

This mass production .. . all
added up to a tremendous surplus
of goods that the workers have
not the purchasing power to ac-
quire.

Hence the American continent
seems again slated to have want
and unemployment in the richest
nation on earth.

Labor papers and government bur-
eaus of statistics give estimates of
acute unemployment—from a low of
3,700,000 to 5,000,000.

Wall Street witch-bunters are so
busy chasing Red$ they haven't the
time to bother finding markets for
the surplus they swipe from their
own people.

U.S. Congress is so busy fighting
organized labor... it bas no time
to look at the economic crisis in the
making.

Voters on both sides of the line
have elected representatives who be-
lieve this sort of thing is all right?
So what? 3
(Vancouver Typo Bulletin)

IT CAN HAPPEN HERE’

It is rather shocking to read
this appeal by the Chicago Picket
in a country that is forever
boasting of its free enterprise
and freedom. Says The Picket:
“It is time to go all out for re-
peal of the law that establishes
government by injunction, denies
the right of jury trial to union
members, abridges the right of a
free labor press, denies to union-
ists their freedom of speech, ex-
alts treachery, puts a premium
on scabbing, and in: short de-
prives working people of rights
they had won 100 years before
Robert A. Taft and the National
Association of Manufacturers
took control of Congress.”

To All TWA Local Unions

It has been brought tp my at-
tention that a number of local
unions have not contributed to
the strike at Laurel, Mississippi,
and some of the locals which
have generously contributed are
wondering if the strike is con-
tinuing. Of course, we have had
news items, in the International
Woodworker relative to the strike
but apparently some of the locals
have not noticed these news arti-
cles,

Vice President Botkin is at
present in Laurel assisting the
local union in the strike negotia-
tions, and it appears there is
some weakening on the part of
the employer.

Strike support is drastically
needed at this time. I suggest
that all local unions, wherever
financially possible, set aside a
definite amount to be forwarded
to the strikers at Laurel on a
weekly basis. You can be assured
that you will be notified as soon
as the strike is concluded.

Hoping that you will immedi-
ately take action to assist this
most worthy cause, ’remain

Sincerely and fraternally yours,

J. E. Fadling,

International President. -

1

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