SEPTEMBER, 1973

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MEET JACK MUNRO ...

NEW REGIONAL
PRESIDENT

The following biography of
: incoming Regional President
_ Jack Munro was written by
sAshley Ford, labour reporter
=2on The Province, and is being
reproduced in the Lumber
Worker through the kind
permission of The Province
_ publishers.

__ Jack Munro, the 42-year-old
_ incoming president of Western
» Canada’s largest union, the
_ International Woodworkers of
America (IWA), doesn’t really
know when he made his
commitment to the trade union
movement.

But it all probably began on a
relief farm near Calgary —
_ euphemistically referred to as
_ McKinnon’s farm he observes
_ bitterly — where with his
j mother and sister he eked out a
q

| subsistence living for a
| number of years. He is. still
bitter about those years.

' Although Munro’s | rise
‘through the ranks of the 47,000
*member IWA has in union
terms been meteoric, he ‘is
little known outside the im-
» mediate ranks of his union and
_.the employers he deals with.
_ Yet no one can now deny he
is one of the powerful labor
figures in Canada.

Born in Lethbridge, Alta., on
March 28, 1931, Munro was
educated in Calgary. “I got to
Grade XI. Flunked English
and social and I decided then I
wasn’t going to get a secondary
school education.”

His early years were
miserable. His father con-

*tracted tuberculosis and en-
tered the sanitarium in
Calgary.

_ When he died the family was

. forced onto the relief farm.

“TJ remember going with my

mother to the authorities. She
~ has to swear on the Bible that
no one had given us any clothes
- or food so that she could get her
- allotment of $20 a month from
the government.”’

There were few funny
moments for Munro in those

_ days and he makes no bones
about his detestation for the
relief farm.

It was at the Canadian
Pacific railway sheds in
Calgary as an apprentice
machinist that Munro brushed

_ shoulders with a trade union
and became a member of the
International Association of

_ Machinists. Completing his

apprenticeship in 1954 he

_ moved to Lethbridge where he
spent many contented years
tinkering with the huge steam
engines in the roundhouse.

After holding minor union

_ posts, Munro shifted to Nelson.

The coming of the diesel

~ spelled doom for the young
machinist’s railway career
and he was eventually laid off.

Munro never went back to

_ the railway, but found himself

b

:

a job as welder in Kootenay —

Forest Products sawmill.

Although he didn’t know it at
the time, his career as a trade
unionist had begun.

‘While with the railway, I
never thought I would be a paid
official of a trade union and in
the railroad I was disillusioned
with what I saw. I was very
disgruntled and frustrated and

* saw bad things happening to

us.
He left the ‘“‘bad feelings’
behind and the IWA revitalized
his thinking and personal
approach to trade unionism.

Munro became active and by
the fall of 1960. was elected
plant chairman and attended
his. first international con-
vention in Miami.

The organizing ability and
personal appeal of the tall,
rangy Munro was starting to
take hold and he became a
staff official the next year.
Over the next few years he
climbed up the -rungs of the
Nelson local to become
president. During this period
he was elected regional third
vice-president on the slate of
the man he is now replacing,
Jack Moore.

The impressive showing he
made in the seven and one-half
month strike of Southern In-
terior Woodworkers was the
clincher in his step up to the
regional office.

Munro was on the
negotiatiing committee and
when the companies came
back near the latter days of the

dispute it was Munro’s
toughness that helped win the
day.

In the face of rank and file
wavering, Munro with his
personal appeal and force got
the men to reject the offer.

In fact we got a higher
rejection vote than we did for
the original. vote to go on
strike,’”’ he recalls.

The workers eventually won
a better settlement and Munro
was destined for higher things.

A tough, yet affable man,
Munro has few illusions about
the job ahead of him.

The IWA is notorious for its
internal bickering and fac-
tional fighting. It erupted in to
the open in 1968 when Van-
couver local president Syd
Thompson tried to unseat
Moore. He failed but has been a
constant thorn in the side of the
regional office. :

Munro indicates he is

-dedicated to ending this fac-

tionalism. It is his number one
job and he has already started
laying down the law in his way.

He knows the risks involved,
but feels forging a new unity in
his union is well within his
capabilities. Those that come
calling at his hotel door,
friends and enemies alike,
know a new regime is in power.

They also know that Jack

Munro is his own man and if
any tough work is needed he
will not shrink from doing it.
When accepting the presidency
on the opening day of the IWA
convention this week he said
matter-of-factly; ‘‘Jack Moore
did thinks Jack Moore’s way.
Jack Munro will do things Jack
Munro’s way.”’

The implication of this
deliverance was lost on
nobody.

Munro can be jovial one
moment and in a rage the next.

His smile accents the craggy
features of his face. But the
smile can vanish in an instant.

He is a woodworkers’ man.
That is not. always an easy
thing to be. The IWA demands
everything at once from a
leader and forces him to walk
the razor’s edge while in
power. There’s usually nothing
personal involved. It is just the
way this union operates.

Munro accepts this challenge
readily. He talks the rank and
file’s language — tough and
spicy. Almost brutally at
times, he hammers home his
philosophy and policy.

“TI love this union,’’ he says.
“T wouldn’t be a paid official of
a union that I didn’t honestly
believe in.”’

Once again he is on the
theme of a united group. The
smile leaves his face when he
warns “I am not a peace-at-
any-price man.

“T believe one of the most
serious problems we have is
factions.

“Tf I accomplish nothing
else, I will weld _ this
organization together,’’ He
predicts.

“T want to listen to all sides
of an argument and then take
the position I believe in. I
honestly believe — and the
guys tell me I’m nuts — that if
you run the union well, the
politics will take care of
themselves.”’

For a union that spawns
politicians from its ranks at

* about the same rate as trees

are felled, it is a brave
assessment.

Munro enjoys tilting at
windmills and holier than thou
institutions and knocks his own
union when he feels it has
erred.

He told delegates in no un-
certain terms this week that
the threat of breakaway
unionism against the IWA
“started within our own
union.”’

The nationalism threat is
another major hurdle he must
steer his union through. But he
refuses to shrink and pass it off
as a passing phase like many of
his contemporaries in other
international unions.

He can’t. His union lost three
sawmills on Vancouver Island
to the raiding Pulp and Paper
Workers of Canada. Significant

and perhaps a gauge of how
effective he is when fighting
gets really tough is his in-
tervention at Somass Sawmill
in Port Alberni.

The large mill of over 1,000
men was under seige from the
PPWC. Munro and Alberni
local president Earl Foxcroft
went to work and when the
smoke cleared after the cer-
tification vote the PPWC’s
challenge was left in ruins.

Wherever the union has been
under attack Munro has been
there — except at those three
sawmills. And he’s as mad as
hell about them and quietly
mutters that ‘“‘we sat back
there.”

He is mindful however that
international unions have, in
some cases, been the authors
of their own misfortunes.

The IWA is as autonomous as
any Canadian union, but the
very fact that it is an in-
ternational union, has brought
it under the guns of the
nationalists.

Munro rejects the notion that
he is not a good Canadian
because he belongs to an in-
ternational union. ‘‘But I think
there are international unions
making serious mistakes. In
other words there are bad
international unions.

“Any international union
that can’t comply with the
Canadian Labour Congress
guidelines on autonomy should
revise their constitutions,’ he
says.

Munro views himself as a
traditionalist in the trade union
movement. He has _ no
hesitation in saying that some
unions have forgotten the time
honored phrase ‘‘unity is
strength.”

He hammered the message
home to delegates this week
and pleaded for this unity.

Readily admitting his
traditionalist feelings, Munro
insists the movement must not
neglect the original important
principles laid down by trade
union pioneers.

He is convinced there is a
place in the movement for the
young worker and says the
onus is on the unions to involve
these people.

“They have a completely-
different impression of work
than I have. We had to work
hard from a very young age,
but we have to realize that
times have changed and
younger people have to be
educated on how to work.”

“J think trade unions and
employers have to be more
understanding and make such
things as the job content and
worker involvement much

more meaningful.”

Munro also took a tilt at
politics and has been a card-
carrying member of the New
Democratic Party since 1963.
He contested the provincial
election against Socred Wesley

Black in 1966. He lost, but ~

improved his party’s share of
the vote.

Although a faithful party
member, Munro was in full cry
after the government and in
particular Lands and
Resources Minister Bob
Williams this week.

During a debate on in-
dependent contractors in the
forest industry — the union
wants to see them all sign a
memorandum of agreement

with local unions where they~

are working — Munro told his

_ delegates they ‘‘should work

harder to defeat Williams than
they did the Socreds” if he
didn’t do something about the
problem.

It’s his strong belief in what
he is doing that has kept him
out of management’s hands.
Just recently he turned down a
$30,000 post in private industry.

Money doesn’t mean that
much to him, but he says he’s
underpaid. It’s a situation
other IWA officers have had to
face and the $15,800-per-year
salary he will earn as president
of a $6 million annual business
isn’t exactly a princely sum.

Although he wants an in-
crease, Munro is not keen on
huge union salaries either and
thinks some union officials are
overpaid.

He doesn’t get much time to
himself, but admits he can be
sentimental.

Once again he pauses. He
looks at the battered watch on
his wrist. ‘‘My uncle gave me
that when I started my ap-
prenticeship. Had it for 24
years. I’ve treated it badly
sometimes,” he says quietly to
no one in particular.

He becomes sentimental
again moments later when he
recalls he was able to buy his
mother a washing machine
with his first pay packet.

Munro is proud of that. Just
as he is proud of the fact he and
his sister have just sent their
mother to Australia to see her
sister she hasn’t seen

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