WH GOLD COLLECTION - LOCAL 1-80

= Steel gang members at
Lake Logging in 1937.

LWIU crew fought for safe
conditions at Lake Log in ‘34

Back seventy years ago when
there was nothing more than lip
service paid to the safety of all
workers and forest industry
fatalities often went unreported
in “the boss press” in B.C., the
IWA‘s predecessor union, the
Lumber Workers Industrial
Union of Canada (LWIU) pro-
moted the formation of worker
safety committees for all phases
in lumber camps, to directly
confront employers over unsafe
work practices. Not only did
some committees take direct
action — to combat “speed up”
methods promoted by employ-
ers, ensure proper safety equip-
ment was installed and general-
ly fight for safe work practices —
but others fought to see that
their fellow workers would
receive medical attention if
injured. In August of 1934, the
LWIU's B.C, Lumber Worker
reported that wards in
Vancouver's two large hospitals
were full of injured loggers, that
death and accident rates among
forest sector workers were the
highest in the province, and that
“hospital services are mainly
confined to a charitable institu-
tion...” In the first two weeks of
August, 1934 alone, there were
five fatalities officially reported
in the media. Union members at
Lake Logging in Cowichan took
action to ensure that workers
would be taken care of in local
hospitals and that “the doctors
in Duncan will not be able to put
anything over on them.” The
LWIU attacked employers for the
primitive working conditions
they provided. Meaningless
safety slogans were just that
“,,.to the rigging man who has
to jump for his life because the
“puncher’ has orders to ‘hit the
ball,’ or to any logger who has
to work six months of the year
in snow and mud, repeatedly
donning wet clothes every
morning because of no dry-
room facilities, the words ‘safety
first’ are like a slap in the face.”
The newspaper exclaimed that
“SAFETY FIRST MUST BECOME
A PHRASE OF ACTION, NOT A
BOSSES’ SLOGAN!”

IWA ARCHIVES

= In ‘43 Ernie is seen with a vessel from IWA Local 1-71’s ‘Loggers Navy,

Ernie Dalskog: a man for all seasons

Finn-Swede immigrant logger
was regarded as one of labour’s

most formidable organizers

To know a little bit about the late
Ernie Dalskog is to know a little about
how the IWA was formed in its early
days. Brother Dalskog, who moved to
Canada from his native Finland in
1923, worked with many of the IWA’s
immortal pioneers — Ame Johnon,
Eric Graff, Harold Pritchett, Hjalmar
Bergren and John McCuish to name
just a very few.

In 1946 The Financial Post begrudg-
ingly termed Dalskog as one of the
most formidable leaders in the
Canadian labour movement as the IWA
B.C. District Council poised for its his-
toric province-wide strike — a strike that
would usher in the 40 hour work week
and boost the burgeoning union to
37,000 members. A fifteen cents an
hour increase broke the wage freeze
imposed during WWII and the IWA
gained the checkoff of union dues.

When he first came to Canada, Emie
worked in the bush clearing power
lines north of Cochrane, Ontario. After
a few months he moved to Vancouver
Island and worked in the coal mines.

Like many other single men, Emie
was sent to a relief camp during the
Great Depression. He became active
and was elected as secretary of the
Finnish Workers Club and became
active in the Single Man's
Unemployment Association which
offered assistance and organized Relief
Camp Workers.

In 1932 he joined one of the IWA’s
predecessor unions, the Lumber
Workers Industrial Union of Canada, a
union that had been defunct from
1923-27 due to the blacklisting activi-
ties of the B.C. Loggers Association.

In early 1934, Emie was dispatched
to hire on at Elk River Timber near
Campbell River when a strike broke
out. Ernie served on the strike commt-
tee. In 1936-37, during the dawn of the
CIO industrial organizing drives, he
organized loggers from within the
workforce at a Pacific Mills Camp

(Carstairs) in South Bendick Arm He
was blacklisted for organizing and
working as a logger in Jordan River.

In 1937, Emie became a founding
member of the great Loggers’ Local 1-
7i. During
those days, log-
gers were fired
outright for
joining the
union or even
if they were
j caught think-
ing union or
t| reading the
B.C. Lumber
Worker —a his-
torical predecessor of The Allied
Worker.

Ernie would do all jobs for the IWA.
In early 1939 he would become the
business manager of the B.C. Lumber
Worker, where he and others fought to
keep the paper alive. In June of 1939 he
was dispatched to help Fred
Lundstrom organize loggers and mill-
workers in Port Alberni and became
secretary for the local. Back then, the
workers at Alberni Pacific Lumber
Division were forced to work overtime
to make up for equipment breakdowns
lasting over 20 minutes and inexperi-
enced workers were paid 40 cents an
hour while senior men went without
work and lived in areas with open
sewage and no sidewalks. A major suc-
cessful drive took place to organize the
Sproat Lake loggers.

In 1941 Ernie, by then the financial
secretary of the Loggers’ Local, would
endure the rough seas on the coast to
travel with Laur Wayne skipper and
local president John McCuish to orga-
nize in the inhospitable Queen
Charlotte Islands. Many times Dalskog
and McCuish would wait for cover of
darkness to hike into logging camps to
collect dues. By 1943 the Laur Wayne
and a newly acquired vessel, the
Annart, (together called the Loggers’
Navy) were used to organized the
QCTI’s north coast and Central Coast -
Johnstone Straits areas. During WWII
the union successfully fought rationing

Ernie in later years

of fuel for the boats, as the IWA sup-
for the war.

In July of 1943, Ernie, then second
vice president of the B.C. District
Council and soon to become
International Executive Board mem-
ber, would be sent to Vancouver to
begin the IWA’s Loggers Hiring Hall —
an effort, supported by the federal gov-
ernment, to bring blacklisted union
supporters back into the woods for the
war effort. Ernie wrote a column in the
B.C. Lumber Worker entitled “Along
The Skidroad” — a part serious, part
tongue-in-cheek look a the life of log-
gers during the war. In the column he
condemned greedy corporations who
were lobbying for reduced taxes.

In ‘43-44 Ernie would oversee much
of the organizing activities in
Vancouver Local 1-217. Large mills such
as the Canadian White Pine Division,
Sitka Spruce and various mills along
False Creek and the Fraser River were
organized under his guidance.

In March of 1944, Ernie pushed to
establish the Death Benefit in Local 1-
71, a benefit still available to Local 2171
members’ families today. In July of
that year, the Loggers’ Local could
boast of 3,270 members — then the
largest local in the entire International
Woodworkers of America. Loggers lob-
bied for UI coverage, assistance for dis-
abled workers and a “National Health
Insurance Scheme.”

In 1945, Emie was dispatched to
begin the IWA in northern B.C. while
the union spread to organize in the east
and west Kootenays and Okanagan-
Boundary Country. In the north he
reported workers were unorganized all
the way from Prince Rupert to the
Alberta along the Canadian National
Railway line. In July 1945 Local 1-424
was granted its charter as an amalga-
mated local covering five certifications
with 160 members. Union meetings
were held in Giscombe, Aliza Lake,
Prince George and Newlands.

In the northern Interior lumber
camps conditions were horrific.
Loggers had no facilities to shower in,
there were no dry rooms for wet
clothes, and workers packed their own
bedding from camp to camp.

As the Department of Labour held
Interior-wide hearings on the 8 hour day
(which the union viewed as an employ-
er-driven ploy to undercut the IWA’s
organizing drives), Emie forged on to
organize the Upper Fraser Spruce Mills.
He also spread the union gospel from
Terrace to Smithers and on through
Burns Lake, Dekker Lake, Francois Lake,
Hazleton and the Fraser Lake districts,

Prior to and after the 1946 strike,
Emie and his union collegues pushed a
program for 100 per cent unionization
of the industry. And they were very suc-
cessful — albeit too successful for the
business establishment's liking. As the
Cold War raged, Ernie and other com-
munist-affiliated trade unionists and
fellow travellers were banned from par-
ticipating in the International union
under U.S. law. That contributed to
what Ernie would later call “The
Terrible Mistake” — the fracture of the
IWA in Canada and the establishment
of the ill-fated Woodworkers Industrial
Union of Canada (WIUC).

22 | THE ALLIED WORKER SEPTEMBER 2004

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