~

By MIKE PHILLIPS ~*~

‘T've always seen my role as
Sringing facts to people about the
of world they live in and how
ey can bloody well better it in
rms of struggle. Always on the
is of the need for struggle . . .”

* * *

|
| They were called the ‘‘four
rsemen’’, George Harris, Jean
, Ross Russell, and C.S.
Nackson. Together for more than
years they led the 20,000-
member United Electrical work-
fers union, (UE) as a bulwark in
‘the Canadian trade union move-
nt for the forces within the
‘house of labor seeking to create a

/movement which is summed up in »

\UE’s motto: ‘‘The members run
this union.”’
_ After 43 years in the saddle,
cs. Jackson, the last of the
‘horsemen to pass on the reins of
office to the next generation of
rank and file leaders, reflects with
the Tribune over the years he de-
voted to bringing facts to the
people so they could struggle
more effectively for a better life:
___ It’squite a history. In 1978 at an
Ontario Federation of Labor con-
vention the UE leader described
himself as a ‘‘midwife’’ of the
mass industrial labor movement
in Canada. The description fits
|despite the hard rock, raspy
gmage Jackson's often blunt de-
fence of workers’ rights in and out
of the halls of labor has created.
It was in late 1935 and early 36
+hat Jack and such early CIO
pioneers as Dick Steele laid the
_Zoundation for the thass industrial
'yabor movement in Canada.
Steele, an outstanding member of
the Communist Party, was a
pioneer in the formation of the
Steel Workers Organizing Com-
| mittee in Canada, the forerunner
of the United Steelworkers. He
jater was killed in action during
-the Second World War in the fight
to defeat fascism in Europe.
The beginning for C.S. Jackson
was a call from workers in a plant

wanted to join the CIO. Jackson
recalls: ‘‘I was able to establish
contact with the UE in the States
and on that basis, helped along by
Dick Steele and later by Bob
Ward, we opened an office on
Dundas Street in Toronto, and
proceeded to sign up-people into
every union you could name.
‘Workers from Viceroy,
Canada Packers, Guttapercha
Rubber, Goodyear, General Elec-
tric Lamp and all those plants in
the west end. There was another
office in the east and on Cumber-
land Street built around General
Steel Wares and other plants.”’
Then, still on a volunteer basis,
he was called to Brockville, On-
tario at the request of workers at
Philips Electric, later known as
Philips Cable, where after three
weeks some 365 out of 400 plant
workers signed with the CIO giv-
ing UE its first Canadian union
contract and the CIO’s second.
Philips signed in late May 1936
after the United Autoworkers’
victorious strike for union
recognition at General Motors in
Oshawa during the previous
month.
In September, 1936 the UE set
up the Canadian district with
Jackson as a Vice-president of the
- union. To hold the post, Jackson
was elected president of the
Canadian. council.

In 1941 Jackson was illegally

thrown into an internment camp_

for leading a six-day strike at
General Electric in Toronto. With

the War Measures Act in effect,

GE used this to frustrate UE’s bid Ff

for a first contract and recogni-
tion. While in New York on union
business, Jackson was told that
along with some 11 to 15 UE ste-
wards who had led the GE strike,

- he had been charged with inter-

rupting the war effort and was
scheduled for trial within the next
few days.

He never got a trial. Im-
mediately upon returning to To-
ronto the RCMP arrested him and
he was interned at Camp
Petawawa for six months. Mass
pressure over the illegality of in-

-terning him without going through

the courts led to his release. Even
the Toronto Star had editorially
supported Jackson’s cause.

Remembering the events
Jackson recalls: ‘‘It was very ob-
vious that it was all part of a plan
to help the companies frustrate
the drive to organization. A lot of
CIO people were being picked up
as well as many other militant
trade union leaders.”

There was little doubt of GE’s
role in Jackson’s internment. “‘It

-did result in our losing the leader-

ship of that shop for about five

years. GE signed a contract.
‘Tn fact, the company knew be-

fore I did, that I was being re-

leased. They got hold of the

committee and said: ‘‘Jackson is
going to be out in two days. Here
sign the goddam agreement’.””
Though the CIO remained
based on a class struggle policy in
terms of action around labor’s
economic demands, until 1947,
this class outlook never sank
roots politically. When the cold
war, which was marked by. CIO

‘president Philip Murray inviting

General George C. Marshall to
the 1947 CIO convention, de-
scended on the labor movement
on both sides of the border, the

‘fight by unions like the UE to

keep these big business ideas out
of labor’s ranks entered a difficult

‘period.
he'd previously worked in who

The first unions to feel the cold
war sting of the big-business in-

spired assault on labor were those

organizations fighting for militant
class struggle policies and: re-
jecting any compromise with the
employers.

Left-led unions like UE, the
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
(later to merge with the Steel-
workers) and the United Fisher-
men and Allied Workers were €X-
pelled from the house of labor as
the right wing leadership carried

out its job for big business by

splitting the union movement,
from within, along political lines.
Class struggle advocates were
mercilessly turfed out of the
movement, even if they were, like
Jackson, one of the three authors
of the original Canadian Congress
of Labor (CCL) constitution.

; In these struggles UE stuck to
its principals and the real charac-
ter of the organization shone
through. One incidenit in particu-
lar is remembered with pride by
Jackson and the whole UE.

‘‘We were fighting the bloody
leadership all along, and it was
getting close to where we were
going to get kicked out. I think
Mine-Mill had already been
kicked out.

‘*There was a battle on the floor
of the convention. We kept ham-
mering away at (CCL president
Aaron) Mosher and finally he got
mad. The red baiting was getting
pretty hot so they got a motion
through to remove the four UE
officers from the convention

C.S. JACKSON RETIRES

Union makes

us strong

‘floor. So. we had to sit on the

sidelines.

‘‘Well, the idea was to silence
the union, but it didn’t work. Be-.
cause our people had had good
education and almost every one
of our delegates — we had about
40 at the convention — took the
floor on every bloody issue and
they knew exactly what they were
talking about. The other delegates
around them were amazed.

‘That was I'd say, one of the
highlights for me, because it gave
the real picture of what kind of

union we ran. It’s a rank and file ~

union and it’s the rank and file
that handles it.”

Throughout its expulsion UE
maintained its fight for class
struggle policies, labor unity and
contact with a broad section of
local union people through its in-
formation bulletins and the
widely-read pages of the UE
News. By 1974, this principalled
fight was rewarded when UE de-
Jegates resumed their rightful
place at the 1974 CLC con-
vention, their principals and or-
ganization still intact.

“There were other reasons’’,
Jackson reveals with a slightly
wicked glint in his eye. ““From the
point of view of the labor councils
and the provincial federations
there was no challenge, no de-
bate. And, from that point we»
were missed.

Over the past 43 years Jackson
has been in the thick of the fight of
the working people against the ef-
fects of the capitalist system on
their lives, and to bring the rule of
big business to an end. To-day’s
generation of trade unionists, he
says face great struggles as the
system slides into its deepest
crisis ever. A lot of illusions will
have to be shed, and the tight grip
of private enterprise thinking in
the minds of working people will
have to be shattered if progress is
to be made.

He is blunt in his criticism of

the labor movement's failure to
point the way for the people
throughout the country who are in
‘101 different areas’’ fighting
back against the grim toll the sys-
tem’s crisis is taking on their
lives.

‘People are learning the value
of collective effort’, the UE
leader explains. ‘‘But what lead
do they have? The trade union
movement is giving no lead. They
adopt the forms labor has, but
they don’t get anything out of the
trade union movement that en-

.

courages them to amalgamate the
process.”

Recently advanced proposi-
tions by CLC president Dennis
McDermott and others that labor
should drop such ‘‘old-
fashioned’’ weapons as the strike
in favor of ‘‘more intelligent’ tac-
tics like pulling union funds out of
banks, leave Jackson cold.
‘‘ They're just a rationalization for
a do nothing policy.

‘*There’s damn little evidence
the people at the top of the labor
movement see their role as co-
ordinating the struggles of their
members on the collective bar-
gaining front. On the contrary, it’s
still a battle of each union for it-
self.

‘‘And, even within each union,
its between groups of workers
vis-a-vis a particular agreement in
carrying on that struggle.

‘‘The Inco strike has shown a
potential for broad support to a
struggle, and that had to be done
in spite of the Congress. Whether
the CLC leadership can be forced
into recognition that this is part of
their role is a key question.”

Jackson hopes. the recent vic-
tory of the Bell strikers with mas-
sive financial support from the
CLC will tip the scales in the
direction of the leadership accept-
ing their responsibility and that it
will make them ‘‘more anxious to
get in there and do something for
the next round.

‘The big test is going to be the
postal workers’ struggle and the
CLC convention is going to be
confronted with some sort of a
decision on that question.”’

Over the past 43 years in which
Jackson has locked horns with the
employers and with adversaries
inside the labor movement who
opposed the building of a militant
trade union movement with a
working class outlook, he usually
managed to get the last word.

There’s no reason this tradition
should be ended here.

‘I’ve been part of the develop-
ment of a wide.numpber of people
finding their way into the recogni-
tion of the class struggle who have
become willing participants. That
has been the most satisfactory
accomplishment of my life.”

Limited edition May Day poster

VV

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Design by Cate Cochran
adaptation of

original graphic

by Max Lingner 1934

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PACIFIC TRIBUNE— MAY 9, 1980— Page 9

CU ES et a ne a -