“aa CN LABOUR AND SOCIAL HISTORY IWA ARCHIVES = Seen outside the Duncan Local 1-80 hall in 1953 were local union officers and staff, including Joe Poje (centre). Duncan Local 1-80 opened office over fifty years ago It’s hard to believe that 50 years have passed by since one of the IWA’‘s pioneer locals opened its current office in early December, 4953. Duncan Local 1-80 proud- ley inaugarated its Brae Road office to accolades that the new facility was “a credit to the com- munity in its design and equip- ment.” The building, as it looks very much today, contained offices for the president, finan- cial-secretary and business agents. Downstairs was reserved for the union hall, where local union meetings are still held today. On December 13, 1953 local loggers and mill- workers streamed into the office and hall to hold elections for the upcoming IWA Region One and B.C. Federation of Labour con- ventions. Nineteen delegates were elected for the IWA con- vention, including local presi- dent Tony Poje and financial sec- retary Ed Linder. At the meeting, the members approved a dues assessment to support Interior IWA members on strike (see story right). The building com- mittee reported on the growing local union’s successes, saying ‘ the new office and hall “firmly e establish our organization as a permanent institution in the communities embraced by Local 1-80.” Former IWA president spoke for public medicare Forty years ago, as support for a universal health care system in Canada was reaching fever pitch, the IWA‘s own former Region One President Joe Morris, who was then an Executive Vice President of the CLC, was invited to speak at conference of private medical services plan _ | providers in the | state of Arizona. Brother Morris stood up at the podium in December ‘63 and told the prac- tioners that, in Canada, public medicare was on its way and no private agency “has the right to Pursue its existence, when the goverment can do a better job.” Jaws dropped in the crowd. He added that Canadians were no longer willing to wait another gen- on for complete coverage. “In _ my country, the end is in sight for rivate medical plans,” he said, g that benefits of modern were seen as a right. IWA ARCHIVES = In 1953 Local 1-424 members near the community of Penny set up picket camps along 35 miles of the Fraser River. : Solidarity benefited Interior’s struggles Bitter strike in B.C. Interior saw IWA Coast locals dig deep to help workers’ strive for parity The IWA’s rich heritage points to numerous historical struggles to help out workers in parts of the country when they were truly “in the barrel.” A glowing example of this is one- half century ago when woodworkers in the Northern and Southern B.C. Interior regions struck for union security and wage parity with their IWA bretheren on the Coast of B.C. On September 28, 1953, 20 of 34 operations in the Northern Interior walked off the job. Over 1,500 IWA Local 1-424 members hit the bricks and the whole international union rallied behind them. On October 23, Locals 1-417, 1-423, and 1-405 walked out in 19 operations. Coast local unions overwhelmingly approved a special assesment to aug- ment the IWA’s strike fund, boosting strike pay to $15.00 a week for family men. The same locals, assisted by the Coast Women’s Auxliaries, gathered over two tons of clothing to send to the Interior region, mostly for kids. At all conceivable points of railway, airline and highway traffic junctions in the Lower Mainland, Vancouver Local 1-217 members set up informa- tion pickets, warning scabs from going to the Interior. Fund-raising occured at the sub-local level too. Port Alberni Local 1-85 members at the Tahsis Inlet operation held a “smok- er” (amateur boxing night) to raise funds for the relief effort. The B.C. Lumber Worker noted that for the previous three years, Interior lumber operators “have ruthlessly used their economic power to dictate conditions of employment for Interior Lumber Workers...” Up in Prince George, workers who were sold lumber for their homes had their last cheques frozen by the com- panies, as the local fought to get their wages released. The town’s CCF hall set up a soup kitchen which served moose stew three times a day. Local farmers donated vegetables and mer- chant donated foodstuffs. Some car dealers suspended the need for pay- ments from strikers. Meanwhile, local unions bolstered their picket lines to taken on compa- ny goons, which would look for lines with fewer IWA members to try to crash through. In the local media, the union was attacked as stories were fabricated against the strikers. Lumber bosses crept so low as to send letters to strikers’ wives. One let- ter from an employer in the Thompson/Okanagaan wrote: “We are writing this to the lady of the house because we feel it is the moth- er and the children who suffer in the case of a shutdown...” Wives of members in Galloway and Canal Flats in the province’s southeast, formed new Women’s Auxiliaries and a Hutterite farmer in Alberta donated turkeys at cut rate costs for Christmas. The B.C. government appointed Justice Arthur Lord to head an Industrial Enquiry into the labour dispute. District One President Joe Morris told Lord that the operators were trying to “liquidate” the IWA by forcing their own terms of a contract by “coercion.” The IWA wanted a 6 cents an hour across-the-board increase, three paid statutory holidays, job category revi- sions, better grievance/arbitration and a maintenance of membership clause in the agreement. A settlement was reached on January 6, 1954 which won the latter and achieved a 5- 1/2 cent per hour increase. In subsequent years, the IWA would struggle in the Interior regions to achieve parity. The monumental Interior strike of 1967 and 1968 would be the culmination of that struggle and, once again, the Coastal member- ship would dig deep to help out. Son of a clergyman was socal democratic pioneer BEFORE 2003 ROLLS OUT it might serve Canadian trade unionists well to recall that it was 70 years ago this past July that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, the fore- runner of the New Democratic Party, held its first national convention in Regina. At that convention, where its landmark policy document, The Regina Manifesto was adopted, the CCF dele- gates elected James Shaver Woodsworth as their first leader. Woodsworth was born in Etobicoke, Ontario in 1874 — the son of a clergy- man. His family moved to Brandon, Manitoba when J.S. was nine, as his father was appointed as the Superintendent of the Methodist Mission for Western Canada. After graduating from Winnipeg's Wessley College in 1896, Woodsworth went to Oxford England to study at Mansfield College. Near the colleges field house, he encountered starvation and destitu- NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF SASKATCHEWAN. = The CCF elected J.S. Woodsworth, seen here in his 20's, as its first leader. tion among England’s poorest and was forever changed by the experience. Back in Canada, from 1904-1913, he would work with immigrant slum dwellers in the north of Winnipeg and author books on social issues, calling into question the country’s social and eco- nomic systems. During the r1919 Winnipeg General Strike he was arrested, and later dismissed on sedition charges, for contributing to the Western Labour News. Woodsworth, after working in Gibsons Landing and on the Vancouver longshore for a period, joined the newly-formed Federated Labour Party and won a parlia- mentary seat for Winnipeg in Ottawa in 1921. In 1925 when Prime Minister McKenzie King lost the House of Commons majority, J.S. backed the Liberals in exchange for establishing pen- sions for Canada’s destitute elderly. He would barnstorm the country, speaking to groups of any size, rallying support among farmers, church groups and labour to support the foundation of the CCF in 1932, in the city of Calgary. He opposed Canada’s involvement in both the First and Second World Wars. Like many other socialists of his time, J.S. viewed war as a by-product of the capital- ist and imperialist systems. He died on March 21, 1942 and was recognized by foes and friends alike for his tireless work on behalf of the poor, as the CCF’s popu- larity grew to unprecedented levels. DECEMBER 2003 THE ALLIED WORKER | 19