| FROM PAGE 13

Knew that because people that we didn’t
know began coming down to the line.”

,.. And it was always a volunteer picket
fine,” Pritchett adds. “We never pulled
“anyone off the job to take’ part.”

_ Although little could be said publicly of
the effort at the time, progressives through-
out the trade union movement were organ-
Bes Supporters to take shifts on the picket
__ That support was bolstered by a piece in
the July 10, 1959 Pacific Tribune entitled
¥ ee cas It noted that the observer
€re writing “‘one of the finest pages
i B.C. labor hina” . =

For all those on the line the issue was
welear: defence of a union whose strike was
“threatened by scabs and anti-labor legislation.
That issue had also moved to front and
centre for the B.C. Federation of Labor.

Pressed by the ILWU for a declaration of
“support, the federation officers met — and
then dramatically issued a hot edict against

Northland, an action which moved the
Bi union central into direct defiance of

ill 43.

_ Pledging support to the longshoremen,
secretary Pat O’Neal declared: “We are
going to fight to protect the rights of trade
unionists who refuse to scab and who are
peing intimidated with the help of imported
strikebreakers.”

_ He added: “It is unfortunate and regret-
sable that these undesirable elements of
society are being protected by the anti-labor
segislation introduced by the government at
‘the last session of the legislature.”

__ The federation’s statement was issued the
same day as the ILWU established the
pbserver picket line, July 3. Within hours, it,
too, had touched offa flurry of court action.

| At4 P.m., the Supreme Court granted yet
nother injunction instructing all picketers
jo leave. It named the executive members of
the B.C. Federation of Labor as well as a
number of members of the ILWU.

\_ Capt. Terry, availing himself of the club
given him by the Socred legislation,
jaunched a suit for damages against the
jederation.
_ The oppressive weight of injunctions was
not just felt by those taking part in the
Northland strike. During this same month,
Suly, members of the Ironworkers Local 97
were hammered with court inunctions
ordering them first to refrain from striking
‘onstruction work on the Second Narrows
‘Bridge and then ordering them to return to
work after they went on strike anyway and
‘refused to work because they considered the
‘bridge unsafe.

_ Only a year before, the half completed
‘bridge span had collapsed in a tangle of
‘twisted steel, killing 18 people, most of them
‘members of the Ironworkers Union.

__ And that same month, Fisherman editor
\George North was sentenced to 30 days for
“flagrant contempt of court” for editorializ-
engin the paper about the bridge injunction
‘and another issued against fishermen in
‘words that have now become part of labor
thistory. :

“Injunctions,” he wrote, “won’t build

bridges or catch fish.” ig
__ He was the first Canadian editor ever to
‘be jailed for contempt.

Down on the picket line, police officer

Fred Dougherty read out the injunction
order which instructed all those present to
leave within an hour.

_ Those around him listened impassively
-and then one man put into words what
"Many Were thinking: “Youll have to serve
'an injunction against each one of us and
that won’t do you any good because there’ll
_ be others to take our place.” 2
The injunctions did come, thick reams of
’ paper. Kennedy recalls that “people looked
' at them and then threw them on the street.”
__ The observer pickets stayed while the
' police kept watch around the clock from the
_ bluff overlooking the road.

Some SIU scabs had gone back to the ©

_ docks and occasionally,’ trucks would go

- Northland strike left le

through the line. But nothing of significance
moved.

Capt. Terry himself took out one ship in
an attempted show of force, but was com-
pelled to bring it back in when deck officers
refused to handle it.

Then, on July 7, the first breaks came.

In Supreme Court, Justice A.D. MacFar-
lane reserved judgment on Northland’s case
for contempt against the B.C. Federation of
Labor executive and members of the
ILWU. He told the company that there was
not sufficient evidence to support the case
and noted that if further evidence was not
forthcoming, the case would be dismissed.

And in the offices of the Canada Labor
Relations Board, a board panel ruled
against the SIU, rejecting its application for
decertification of the Marine Engineers.

The following day, July 8, at 6 p.m.
NAME re-established its legal picketline.
The observer pickets moved farther up the
road but remained.

Two hours later, the captains refused to
cross the line. And a half hour after that,
Capt. Terry himself arrived at the picket line
and brought the remaining scabs out to a
thunderous chorus of boos.’

He later told reporters: ‘““We’re going to
shut the whole shooting match down and
go fishing for a few weeks. I was ready to
talk to the engineers. But not after they put
their pickets back up. This company is
going to have a bludgeon used on it.”

They were ironic words from a man who
had been closely linked -with the Social
Credit government (he continues that asso-
ciation with a new Socred government as
the owner of Potter’s Distilleries and a
Delta horse ranch) and who had readily
taken up the bludgeon of anti-labor legisla-
tion handed him by W.A.C. Bennett.

. But if Capt. Terry hadn’t yet given up,
neither had the SIU. It had already expelled
12 of its own members who had refused to
scab and on July 9, SIU goons incited sev-
eral of them to a bloody beer parlor brawl
that ultimately involved other ‘unionists as
well. The following day, police arrested 13
people and seized SIU goon’s cars in which
they found baseball bats, knives, bicycle
chains, billy clubs and a sawed-off shotgun.

The strikebreaking actions of the SIU
sparked dissension among the membership.
SIU members aboard one British Yukon
Ocean Service ship wired B.C. Federation
of Labor secretary O’Neal and declared:
“The unlicenced members of the. Clifford J.
Roger protest the actions the SIU has taken
with longshoremen at Northland.”

Finally, the support demonstrated by the
B.C. Federation of Labor and the solidarity
embodied in the observer picket line began
to tell.

On July 11, federal mediator George
Currie was brought into the dispute by the
federal labor department. And as observer
pickets kept up their vigil outside his ship-
ping company, Capt. Terry was forced bac
to the bargaining table. :

Then, on July 16, the Marine Engineers
announced their victory — Capt. Terry
had agreed to sign a collective agreement.
As scores of people stood by, the picket lines
came down at 6 p.m.

The agreement put in writing the terms of
the conciliation report giving the engineers a
closed shop and wage increases of 10 per
cent and 10 per cent over two years. It

reinstated locked-out longshoremen and .

firmly established their jurisdiction. Finally,
it provided for withdrawal of all legal suits
initiated by the company against union
members.

_ But far more important than the actual
agreement that was won was the profound
impression it left on the trade union
movement.

It was to assist employers such as Capt.
Terry in defeating strikes that the W.A.C.
Bennett government had introduced Bill 43
in the first place — to cripple union efforts
to picket. B.C. unionists may not have been
able then to defeat the legislation itself but at

the employer’s efforts to use it against them.

The strike set a pattern of unity and mil-
itant action that would be followed, perhaps
re-shaped to meet new conditions, in strikes
to come. The ‘“‘Northland formula”, as the
tactic of observer pickets became known,
was applied and adapted many times in the
battle against injunctions that was to mark a
number of major strikes over the next 13
years — at Allied Engineering, at Lenkurt
Electric, at Standard Oil.

It would finally take a change of govern-
ment in 1972 to repeal Bill 43 and remove
injunctions from labor disputes but the mil-
itant campaign that the labor movement
waged played a central role in bringing that
change about.

The Northland strike also wrought signif-
icant changes in the province’s labor
movement. The apparatus that the federa-
tion had set up to support the observer
picket line was consolidated at an historic
conference on Aug. 1, 1959 at which the
federation mapped a strategy of strike sup-
port and support for all picketlines — a
principle that has now been embodied in the
phrase, “In B.C., a picket line is a picket
line — you don’t cross.”

In the 25 years since then, the province’s
labor movement has been an inspiration to
trade unionists across the continent for its
picketing policy.

The struggle by several principled sea-

men inside the SIU also triggered union’

changes. They themselves became the
nucleus for the formation of Local 400 of
the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway,

Transport and General Workers whose
members now work the towboats and coas-
tal shipping. But the strike also halted
further SIU raiding in this province. Not
surprisingly, their former union president
Norman Cunningham went on to become
the chief negotiator for the B.C. Maritime
Employers.

Underlying all the changes was the stand

_ taken at the outset by the ILWU. It was not

prepared to stand by and see a strike
smashed by an employer and strikebreakers
aided by a punitive law and the courts and
launched a program of action to defend that
strike. More important, they set out to bring
the trade union movement behind that pro-
gram and, by the stand it took, the B.C.
Federation of Labor consolidated that
unity.

The outcome would have been vastly dif-
ferent had the ILWU not determined to
fight the employer’s tactic and, because of
the Socreds’ legislative attack, the law itself.

“There’s no question — if we hadn’t
taken up the fight, the SIU would have
taken over the whole jurisdiction and the
strike would have been busted,” Kennedy
emphasizes.

“The majority of the people involved
knew that the legality was questionable,
that they might face jail or fines,” he says.

“But the principles of the trade union
movement were under attack — and when
it comes to defending workers’ rights, some
times you have to take action that is outside
the law because it’s a bad law.”

MAY DAY GREETINGS -

& best wishes for
peace, jobs & freedom in 1984

United Steelworkers of America
Local 480 - Trail

ee

UNITED WE STAND

MAY DAY GREETINGS

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 2, 1984 e 15