HISTORY OF THE I.W.A.

Union’s history represents decades of
sacrifice and struggle for better life

Articles by Clay Perry

n this issue of the Lumberworker, we
begin a series of articles on the histo-
ry of the I.W.A., and the unions that
preceeded it in the Canadian forest
industry.
The first installment “sets the
scene”, and begins to deal with the
1905 - 1924 period, when for the first
time loggers and millworkers in B.C., the
Prairies and Northern Ontario began to work
together, organizing, striking and otherwise
agitating for better wages, working condi-
tions, and laws.

Later issues will discuss the “Dirty Thir-
tees”- depression and labour’s various re-
sponses to it - the C.I.0.; then the years imme-
diately after World War II -the great victory of
the 1946 strike, the “October Revolution”of
1948, when the “white block” took over the
leadership; and subsequent issues will deal
the fiftees and following decades.

The last major Lumberworker history was
in 1971, when Grant McNeil wrote “The I.W.A.
in British Columbia”. A few years later, the
then International office in Portland pub-
lished its History of the International Wood-
workers of America. Myrtle Bergren’s “Tough
Timber” and Lembcke and Tattam’s “One
Union in Wood” tell the story from the other
point of view, sympathetic to the old “red”
leadership, and highly critical of the “whites.”
These were good histories, generally wel-
comed by the membership.

But much has happened since those years.
The Canadian membership established its
own independent union in 1986, after merging
the Eastern and Western regions, and merging
with Ontario locals of “Lumber and Saw’.
There was also the year of one of the biggest
and toughest strikes in our B.C. history. Then
there was the long and valient struggle of Zei-
dler workers in northern Alberta.

Industry and capital have changed. In the
early sixtees H.R. MacMillan rejected a pro-
posal to build a mill in Northern Sas-
katchewan, declaring “we are a B.C. compa-
ny.” Today we deal with giant corporations
that straddle the globe, that can suddenly
move their capital to the U.S. South, to South
America or to Asia. Politics have become
more complex, more hostile to Labour.
Unions have to shape their strategies and tac-
tics, their understanding of where they want
to go and how to get there, with one eye on
what they want and the other eye on what
their opposition wants, and is likely to do.

And there are new sources. Clay Perry has
interviewed many old-timers, many now gone,
that were prominent in the thirtees (and a few
who were leaders even before that, including
Neil Gainey, who went to work in 1905, and
became secretary of an important I.W.W local
during World War I). In addition, the national
archives have released some of the records
kept by the R.C.M.P. of their close and hostile
surveillance of forest industry labour back to
1919, when officialdom became so alarmed by

the Winnipeg General Strike that they caused
the creation within the National Police force
of units permanently assigned to radical
labour.

And we should understand that the compa-
nies, the “Boss Loggers,” under various names
like the Canadian Lumberman’s Association
and the B.C. Loggers’ Association, were orga-
nized first, for both ecomonic action against
unions, and for political action.

Every I.W.A. CANADA activist should know
about the murder in 1929 of organizers Ros-
vall and Voutilainen, about the strikers in 1937
who trekked sixty miles through bitterly cold
weather to Fort Frances, and so on, but that.
fascinating and inspiring history is not gener-
ally known west of Ontario. Last, the histori-
ans of our union have been chiefly concerned
with defending the record of one or another
of our leadership traditions - the whites, the
reds, the syndicalists - and even more with at-
tacking opponents of their chosen tradition.
Such histories have their place, (and anyway,
who can blame a partisan for taking a “last
shot or two”?). But they should be read
against a background of understanding of,
and pride in, all periods of our history. That is
what this series will try to do.

Members are encouraged to respond, pro-
vide suggestions, make comments, add new
sources, old-timers that they know. Such can

take the form of letters or to Norm Garcia,
Editor of the Lwmberworker.

PART I

Wobblies,

B.C. Loggers,
The 0.B.U & the
L.W.1.U.

JUNE 27, 1905 - Thirty-two years before
Canadian Harold Pritchett chaired the Taco-
ma, Washington founding Convention of the
1.W.A. - Big Bill Haywood banged his gavel in
Brand's Hall in Chicago, and declared the as-
sembly to be the “Continental Congress of the
Working Class”. It was the birth of the I.W.W.,
(the “Wobblies”), the Industrial Workers of
the World, and while it was to cause alarm
throughout the United States and Canada, its
most lasting impact was to be on forest indus-
try labour, from Northern Ontario to the red-
wood country in Northern California.

We begin our series on Canadian forest in-
dustry labour there because, from that time
on, there has been a steady evolution of
unions and unionism in Canadian forests, and
because, in many ways, the spirit of “the Wob-
blies” persists to this day. The short, unofficial
strike is still called a “wobble,” by many
workers who don’t know the source.

Here are some recollections of Neil Gainey,
recorded in 1981, of a March,1923 I.W.W.
strike, against the Windlaw Lumber Company
in the B.C. Kootenays:

“We wanted showers in the camps, that
was one of our demands. But people in
town, business people, would make fun of
that. I remember one guy I talked to, he
said ‘showers in camps! I’ve never in my

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sand regulations presented by the lnduarial Weeker dl the Woe

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Charter was granted to woodworkers. I.W.W. was
established in 1905.

life seen a clean logger!’ So I said “of
course you haven’t, you asshole, we don’t
have showers!!’”

In 1915 Gainey was secretary of the St.
Mary’s, Idaho, local of the I.W.W. Like thou-
sands of others, he worked the river drives,
then the chief method of moving interior logs,
starting in Northern California in January,
moving north with the spring into the Koote-
nays, ignoring the border.

Logging camp conditions were frightful:

UBC Special Collections

“This time I happened to have two
hats. I hung one of them up in the rafters
... and I didn’t take it down until Christ-
mas time. I put my hat on, and the damn
thing wouldn’t fit. I thought someone
might have tricked me and put paper in-
side the band to make the hat smaller.
Well, anyway, I looked inside the band
and if there was one bedbug in there
there as a million of them.”

Even public offficials in both the U.S. and
Canada were critical of the conditions. The
B.C. Board of Health reported in 1917 “the
lack of observance of the primary rules of
sanitation in camps.” In 1919, it noted that
“one of the most generally needed and very
necessary wants of the logger is some manner
of having his blankets laundered.The average
logger possesses only one pair. These he gets
laundered every time he quits and goes to
town ... consequently very often his blankets
become infested with vermin.”

tories about bedbugs, and the “bindles”

(bedrolls that loggers had to carry with

them from camp to camp) and the

“free speech” demonstrations - the first
one was in Toronto, in 1906 - are chiefly what
has come down to us, but there was more to
“the Wobblies” than that. Their appeal was
primarily to young, single, itinerant workers
like Gainey, who worked in railroad construc-
tion, logging and on farms. Gainey had been
born in Canada, but the real strength of the
1.W.W. was the immigrant.

And the forest industry in those years was
manned by a lot of immigrants. Chinese immi-
grants worked in Vancouver's Hastings mill in
the 1880's - and their presence, unfortunately,
was one of the causes of the 1886 strike there.
They often had to create unions of their own,
to combat the anti-oriental prejudice that then
infested (pre-I.W.W.) unions. Chinese-Canadi-
ans struck in 1919, probably assisted by the

Continued on next page

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&/LUMBERWORKER/NOVEMBER, 1995