IWA ARCHIVES

= Mona, seen with Local 324’s Judy
Anderson (1) and Brenda Wagg, was
an IWA convention guest in 2002.

‘Rebel Girl’ gave much to the
IWA through Ladies Auxiliary

On December 2, one of the former
IWA‘s greatest women activists
passed away. Sister Mona Morgan,
former first vice-president and
Director of Organizing of the IWA-CIO
Federated (Ladies) Auxiliary was 91
years old. Mona helped the
International Woodworkers of
America’s BC District Council No. 1
organize many women and commu-
nity members to support the union
during some of its most turbulent
years. As the leader of the Vancouver
Local 107, she worked in the local
with such local activists as Marge
Croy, Kay Rogers, Dorothy
Richardson, Viola Pulling and Edith
Cook. The activities of the Ladies
Auxiliary broadened the union’s
social justice agenda and promoted
issues including unemployment
insurance, government-run health
care and family allowances. During
the 1946 strike, which won the 40
hour work week, 15 cent an hour
raise and an early version of union
dues check-off, Mona and her Sisters
organized fundraisers, food drives
and entertainment for the strikers. A
special guest at IWA Canada’s 2002
convention in Richmond, delegates
also viewed an appearance by Mona
in a video on the IWA’s history. She
was predeceased by husband Nigel, a
prominent IWA leader in the ‘40s.

Pioneer activist helped lead
push for women’s progress

Union activist Alice Person, a former
New Westminster Local 1-357 member
who worked at Fraser Mills in
Coquitlam from 1951-1987 passed away
on September 26, at age 80. Sister
Person helped make
breakthroughs for
women's rights in
the IWA. She was a
key organizer, who
in ‘42, helped orga-
nize Hammond
Cedar which
became Local 1-
367. Later she would work at Alaska
Pine and as a cook in a logging camp.
In the early 70s Alice and fellow local
union members Verna Ledger and
Marge Storm pushed for the first |WA
Women's conference, held in 1973,
which criticized both the employer and
the union itself for the “systematic dis-
crimination in hiring” within the indus-
try. She was also active as a Ladies
Auxiliary member of the United
Fisherman and Allied Workers Union.

Alice Person

PHOTO BY NORMAN GARCIA

= Leo Gerard, International President of the United Steelworkers of America, is seen here at a September rally
for striking Local 1-3567 members at the Northwest Hardwoods in Delta, B.C.

“THE ONLY THING THAT IS GOING TO REBUILD OUR MOVEMENT IS OUR WILLINGNESS TO FIGHT”

Steel’s president is a Canadian

HE’S A CANADIAN and an “internationalist” in every
sense of the word. Leo Gerard, International President of
the United Steelworkers of America, has a lifetime of
experience on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border and in
the international arena.

Brother Gerard, president of the international since
2001, is succinct in his views on the world which working
people live in today: “There is a global economic system that
is being built around us,” he says. “And there are national
economic systems being built around us that are meant to
minimize the ability of workers to advance their interests.”

“The Steelworkers’ and the IWA’s history have proved,
union members are under attack in Canada, the United
States, and around the world and it is through interna-
tional workers’ movements and the united actions of
workers that unions can balance the economic power of
corporations,” says Gerard.

For Gerard, the job of leading an international union
the size of the Steelworkers’ 650,000 members, stems
from a lifetime of cumulative experiences as a trade
unionist. He was born a son of a miner and union orga-
nizer, in the Sudbury Nickel Belt and raised in the small,
company town of Lively, Ontario, just outside of Sudbury.
He lived in a company house and went to a company doc-
tor. His family shopped in a company store.

At an early age he would participate in union activities,
assisting his father, Wilfred Gerard (an organizer for the
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union) at various meet-
ing and events. As a youngster, Leo would help distribute
the union’s newspaper at plant gates.

He hired on at INCO and, not long after, participated in
a5 month strike in 1969. By the mid-70’s he became a
chief steward and was the education committee chair for
Local 6500. In 1977 he was hired on as a staff represen-
tative for Ontario/Atlantic Canada District 6. Leo became
the district’s director in 1985 and then Canadian Director
in 1991.

Over the years, Gerard has put a major focus on pro-
moting education and activism in the organization. After
becoming the International union’s secretary-treasurer in
1993 and re-elected in 1997, he played a major role in
overhauling the union’s financial management systems
and helped the Steelworkers go through a major restruc-
turing in North America. At the union’s international
convention in 1998, Gerard and retiring president George
Becker won support for a special dues assessment which
the union put to use to strengthen its presence in both tra-

ditional and non-traditional sectors of the economy.
Today the Steelworkers are a leading union in industrial
sectors — including mining, rubber, glass, aluminum
and, with the addition of the IWA into its ranks, the for-
est sector. Like the former IWA, the Steelworkers have a
proven track record of organizing in many different sec-
tors of the Canadian economy.

As the globalization of production escalates, workers in
every industrial sector are being attacked. Gerard says the
union must have strategies to “empower our members
and our leadership.”

“The only guarantee we have in the economic and polit-
ical environment we are currently in, not just in Canada
and North America, but around the world — is that if we
don’t fight, we are guaranteed to lose,” he adds. “And our
sons, our daughters and grandchildren are entitled for us
to put up the best fight we can. The only thing thatis going
to rebuild our movement is our willingness to fight.”

The Steelworkers hold the view that a major part of the
fight back is to develop new and innovative collective bar-
gaining strategies. This is especially important to former
IWA locals, which are seeing the industry, assisted by gov-
ernment legislation, gut the gains that workers have made
since 1937. In B.C., association bargaining is in the
process of being dismantled, by major companies like
Weyerhaeuser, Interfor and TimberWest.

“In our global economy itis very difficult to win a strike
if you are just walking up and down in front of a plant.
These multinational corporations can serve their market
needs from other regions of Canada, North America or
the world,” adds the international president, who has wit-
nessed the trend in numerous Steelworker sectors.

Gerard says the union will be calling on its experience
in building strategic campaigns to take on such corporate
giants as Weyerhaeuser. It is hoped that the union’s
strategic alliance with PACE (the Paper, Allied-Industrial,
Chemical and Energy Workers’ International Union) will
lead to a merger with the USWA.

This past year, the Steelworkers and former IWA locals
began an alliance with PACE to take on Weyerhaeuser
across international boundaries. Over time, this alliance
may lead to North American, hemispheric and global struc-
tures to take Weyco and other multinationals on. Battles
will be fought out in provincial, federal and intemational
arenas. IWA Council-affiliated locals will be working in a
union led by Brother Gerard - a guy from rural Ontario
who has a unique global perspective on workers’ issues.

24 | THE ALLIED WORKER DECEMBER 2004