HISTORY OF THE 1.W.A.

Newfoundland and northern Ontario strikes

Article by Clay Perry

PART IX

Late 1950s and
early 1960s mark
turbulent times
for woodworkers
in eastern Canada

hroughout the 1950’s, the
democratic socialist C.C.F.,
which became the New
Democratic Party in 1961,
consolidated its position in
the Canadian Labour Move-
ment. Communism was los-
ing ground in North Amer-
ica and Europe. In the U.S., and to a considerable
extent in Canada, “McCarthyism” led an hys-
terical movement against communists and “fel-
low travelers,” which included anyone unwilling
to cede ultimate authority to the capitalist sys-
tem.” Internally, the Canadian communist
movement was suffering from defections over
their very hard leftist line, anti-Semitism in the
Soviet Union and, in 1957, the brutal crushing
of the Hungarian revolt.

At the same time, the Canadian C.C.F (Coop-
erative Commonwealth Federation) was moving
away from its Agrarian roots, becoming more
and more a Labour Party. That development
was fully realized in 1961, with the formation of
the New Democratic Party. An important aspect
of that evolution was the increasingly influen-
tial role played by the party’s National Secre-
tary, David Lewis, whose opposition to Commu-
nism, or to any cooperation with Communists,
was fortified by his childhood memories of per-

Q ae

SS

° Spirits were high during Newfoundland strike in 1959. Here, outside the picket shack, women

supporters of the International Woodworkers of America, joined the line following the arrests of

men by strike breaking police.

secution by communists in Poland.

By the early fifties, due to ruthless enforce-
ment of its “errant member” policy and to a con-
stitutional provision that forbade membership
to “Communists and Fascists,” the I.W.A. was
thoroughly “cleansed” of communist influence.
So it began to benefit from its position in the
mid-stream of Canadian labour. “Direct Char-
ters,” organized by the Canadian Congress of
Labour, usually of small forest industry opera-
tions, were transferred to the I.W.A. in Ontario
and the Prairies.

More central to this chapter, the Congress
urged the I.W.A. to organize Newfoundland log-
gers. H. Landon Ladd, who was to become the
central figure in one of our union’s most coura-
geous and colourful struggles, reports that in
1953, apparently at the urging of the Congress’s
Maritime Director, Don McDonald, the I.W.A.
had conducted a “survey of the pulp and paper
industry, the logging camps, of every nook and
cranny of this island.”

Ladd was born and raised in Vancouver,
worked in sawmills and mines, and earned his
stripes as a dedicated anti-Communist unionist
in the old Mine, Mill and Smelter Worker’s
Union, and as an organizer for the C.C.Lin
Ontario. He was an energetic, gifted organizer
and an eloquent, powerful speaker. ”

12/LUMBERWORKER/JUNE, 1998

’ e Strike breaking cops gang up on and arrest I.W.A. member in violent Newfoundland strike.

At that time, conditions in Newfoundland’s
logging camps at that time were miserable. Pay
was $10.00 per day, thirty per cent less than in

' Northern Ontario. The work week was a gruel-

ing sixty hours. Canned beans dominated the
menu. A Royal Commission established in 1959
found camp and sanitary conditions little
improved over those described in a report thirty
years earlier:

“Dark and squalid hovels which would
not be used for hen-houses except by the
most primitive farmer. Dirt is eve’ Me s
Rats are common. Dilapidation is the rule.
There is nothing to do in the evenings but
sit around on the bunks talking. The light
is from a limited number of flat wicked
kerosene lamps. Men have been passed
down to a dead level of a flat rate and have
grown resigned. If a man kicks there are
just now only too many to take his job.” ”

Flying home from Europe in 1956, Ladd
stopped in Gander, Newfoundland and phoned
John Joseph (Joe) Thompson, leader of the
Newfoundland Lumberman’s Association, gen-
erously described as “little more than a compli-
ant company union.” Thompson invited Ladd
to speak to the Association’s convention that
October. He was willing to turn over his organi-
zation to either the “Lumber & Saw,” the Indus-
trial Branch of
the United Broth-
erhood of Carpen-
ters and Joiners,
or to the I.W.A.,
but he wanted
assurance of a
lifetime salary
and a pension.
Ladd refused,
saying that the
I.W.A. was not
about to “buy a
union.” But at the
convention, the
I.W.A. was cho-
sen over the Car-
penters by a vote
of 26 to 16 How-
ever, Thompson
declared that
because the vote ° H. Landon Ladd
was on such an
“important question” it required a two-thirds
majority. The meeting was recessed, and, “after
some hasty arm-twisting,” reconvened for a sec-
ond vote. This time the result was a twenty-one
to twenty-one tie. Thompson then proceeded to
use his double vote as chairman to break the tie
and to defeat the motion to join the I.W.A. = his
earlier ruling on “important questions” and
two-thirds majority, getting lost somewhere in
the confusion.”®

Ladd recalled the events in his 1983 address:

“Well, I just moved up and said ‘I want to
thank you for your interpretation of democracy,
and incidentally, if there is anyone here who

Continued on page thirteen

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