HISTORY OF THE I.W.A.

I.W.A. is born during the Dirty 1930’s which sees Canadian
loggers and millworkers strike for pay, benefits and security

Article by Clay Perry
PART Ill

The Great 1933-35 Strikes,
Wave the United Front,

the C.1.0. and the birth

of the 1.W.A.

n the last issue, covering the late twen-

ties and up to 1931, we dealt with forest

industry strikes in Northern Ontario, the

establishment in 1929 of the “Worker's

Unity League” (a labour “central,” like
our modern C.L.C., for Communist-led, revo-
lutionary unions), and one of the major strug-
aes of the time, the Fraser Mills strike of late
1931.

But the real strike action in the Canadian
forest industry began in 1933, as a part of a
wave of left-wing labour action across Canada
and the U.S., from West Coast Longshoremen
to textile workers in the South to automotive
part workers in Ohio.” Cochran reports that
US. strikes in 1933, mostly late in the year,
were twice as frequent than they were in
1932, and that, in 1934, there were 1,856 U.S.
strikes, with 1,470,000 workers participating.

Bruce Magnuson, a Canadian Communist
who became a Lumberworker leader in
Northern Ontario, reported that the Workers’
Unity League organized 292 strikes during the
depression, and “won” over 80% of them.”
The great majority of these strikes were of
lumberworkers, miners and needle trades
workers.

On June 3, 1933, the Lumber Workers In-
dustrial Union of Canada (L.W.I.U.C.) held
what we would today call a wages and con-
tract conference and resolved to launch a
campaign demanding a 20% increase in piece
rates, from $2.50 to $3.00 per cord, reductions
in board charges, camp committees, and an
end to “yellow dog” contracts, in which work-
ers were required on applying for work to
agree not to join any union. They gave the Pi-
geon Lake Company less than 48 hours to
agree, then 700 pulp cutters struck.”

For several weeks, the operators refused to
meet with the union “Reds,” but finally agreed
to a 10% piece rate increase and a substantial
decrease in board charges. Considering that
this took place in the middle of the Great De-
pression, it was a substantial, encourging
achievement. So the L.W.LU.C. and the I.W.W.
held a joint a “Northern Ontario Conference”
in mid-August, to prepare for the coming cut-
ting season, and demanded piece rate increas-
es of 25%, and improved camp and safety con-
ditions. Strikes started shortly after, and by
January, 1934, bushworkers from Thunder
Bay, Fort Frances, Hearst, Kapuskasing, Iro-
quois Falls, Chapleau and Rouen, Quebec,
were out. Bruce Magnuson began his long and
illustrious involvement with Lumberworkers
during this strike, acting as recording secre-
tary at strikers’ meetings.

Northern Ontario members will be interest-
ed to know that Chapleau strikers were so
strongly supported by their community that
they were able to draw relief for six or seven
weeks, and that prominent Liberals criticized
the Tory governments in Ottawa and Queen’s
Park for failure to support the strikers. Some
things do change. :

These were rough strikes. Magnuson re-
ports a skirmish in which 1000 picketers
broke up an effort by strikebreakers to re-
move horses from a Pigeon River Timber Co.
stable, and drove mounted police off with a

8/LUMBERWORKER/MARCH, 1996 ~

UBC Special Collections,

¢ In July of 1935 members of the Lumber Workers Industrial Workers Union of Canada gathered during a
bushworker strike in front of the Finnish Canadian Hoito restaurant in Port Arthur, Ontario (now Thun-

der Bay).

hail of stones: “...However, the next morn-
ing about 4 A.M., after boozing all night,
several hundred of the local constabu-
lary surprised hundreds of workers
(who were) sleeping in two halls adja-
cent to the previous day’s skirmish, by
driving the workers out of the halls into
the streets in 25 degree below zero tem-
perature, attacking them with their bil-
lies as they fled...one Norwegian worker
died a few years after as a result of this
merciless brutality.” ”

And Radforth quotes press reports of 250
strikers boarding a train carrying fifty strike-
breakers. Coach windows were smashed, two
policemen were injured, and J.A. Mathieu,
owner of a struck company, suffered three
broken ribs.

n interesting aspect of the Northern

Ontario scene is the role played by

west coasters. Carl and Martin Palm-

gren, Jack Gillbanks and Ted Guner-
ad all helped to organize the major strikes,
and all attracted the attention of the secret
R.C.M.P. Through the party apparatus and
Worker Unity League channels, there was
very close contact across a vast stretch of the
country.

Results varied from camp to camp, but usu-
ally included some increase in piece rates,
and some decrease in board charges. And the
Ontario Government, in a move similar to that
of B.C. (both perhaps patterned after U.S.
President Rooseveldt’s moves to settle pro-
longed coal strikes), established the “Woods-
men’s Employment Inquiry Act” early in 1934.
Under the provisions of this Act, investigators
brought some uniformity to wages and camp
conditions, and were probably most effective
where conditions were the worst, such as the
case of a man who worked for 27 days and
owed the camp fifty cents.©

In one instance, Investigator L.A. Dent
praised the strike committee, adding his view
that “great credit” was due to the union for
what it had accomplished, and recommended
that it be recognized. He said the operator's
“pugnacious attitude” was the. real barrier to
settlement, and criticized the Ontario Provin-
cial Police for openly expressing sympathy
for the operator. However, no change in the
attitude of the OPP was noticed.”

This wave of strikes reached its climax in
1935. The L.W.I.U. held a “Wage Scale Confer-
ence” in Port Arthur on April 7th and 8th, and

demanded substantial wage increases, free
transportation, camp committees and even a
form of “dues check-off” which stated: “Com-
pany to grant the right of workers to donate
money to unions and societies. Such money
to be deducted from pay cheques of each
donor.” ¢ t

In June, as the “sap-peeling” season started,
the Union issued a strike call and 2,100 pulp-
cutters walked off the job. Charlie Cox, an op-
erator and M.P.P., acted as spokesman for the _
employers. He blamed the “unrest” on “Red
Agitators.” The union responded with a pam-
phlet (They were great leaflet writers. On the
West Coast, they issued a strike bulletin every
day, in addition to numberless calls to other
unions, millworkers, the unemployed, etc.).
Quoting a Joseph Galitcki: “The tents are
full of holes, blankets were torn, and
lucky was the man who had two of them
The beds were constructed of small
spruce, balsam and poplar poles...the
men had to chop branches of spruce and
balsam to make the beds more comfort-
able...The timber is scarce and we had
to walk in water from six to ten inches
deep...there was no wash house, and we
had to wash in a small creek... These are
the reasons why the timber workers de-
clared a general strike in Thunder
Bay.”

They were out for over a month, winning a
small wage increase and recognition of camp
committees. More importantly, they put forest
industry unionism, at least among the pulp-
cutters, on a firm footing, the basis of union-
ism in Northern Ontario forests to this day.

MEANWHILE, OUT ON THE PACIFIC COAST
Arne Johnson, Hjalmar Bergren, Eric Graf
and the others were working under the same
general “Worker's Unity League” (Communist
Party of Canada) guidance. The object was to
produce a strong, coast-wide logging strike to
improve conditions and, thereby, to establish
a militant, revolutionary union in B.C.’s most
important industry. They decided to concen-
tate on the Bloedel, Stewart and Welch camp
at Menzies Bay. The union had the strongest
group of union men there, and the employer
was cooperating by being generally miserable.
So throughout the fall of 1933, union leaders-
worked hard and secretly to get as many mili-
tant union men, especially among the mostly
Scandinavian fallers, into that “most hated
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