submission by i

Ten leaders of the Longshoremen’s Union were sent to prison
Friday for a total of 31 months by Mr. Justice D. R. Verchere in
Supreme Court after reading a statement why the union refused
to carry out an injunction granted to the employers’ association
ordering the men to work on a statutory holiday.

The action of the courts and shipping companies have sent a
wave of indignation throughout the labor movement in B.C. The
B.C. Federation of Labor commended ‘‘the 10 officials for their
total dedication to trade union principles by accepting jail terms
rather than order their membership to work on a holiday.”’

Following is the full statement read in court by R. C. Smith,

president of the ILWU, Canadian area and also chairman of the
negotiating committee for contract talks with the waterfront

companies:

Statement for the purpose of
showing cause why I, Roy C.
Smith and my colleagues who
are before you today resorted
to civil disobedience against an
unjust law.

I want to make clear, Sir, that
this statement is not intended to
cast any aspersions on yourself,
your colleagues or the judicial
system ofour country, This state-
ment is only intended to give the
reasons why I and my colleagues
who are before you today took
the action we sincerely feel was
justified.

Firstly, we do not feel the men
we represent are required to work
on those holidays mentioned in the
Canada Labor (Standards) Code
since that Code states that it
applies “notwithstanding any
other law or any custom, con-
tract or arrangement, whether
made before or after the com-
mencement of this Act”, and
there is no section of that Act
that states that employees are
required to work those days,
(Section 4, Subsection (1)).

Further to this, the employers
wanted to force us and our mem-=
bership to perform a “contract
of personal service”, or in other
words to work when we felt we
were justified in not working
and, frankly, did not want to
work. We were, and are, con-
vinced that our basic rights in
a free country were being
usurped by the employers’ posi-
tion, so flagrantly, that we had no.
alternative but to ignore it.

It may be said that we could
have attended the Court on May
19th to give these reasons, If
we had, we would have been
recognizing that the Employers
had a right to ask for these
mandatory orders, to clubus into
submission with injunctions,

The employers’ use of the in-

~ yy

nN] 3

junctions in labor disputes has
brought us to a stage of frustra-
tion. Many times when we attempt
to protect our agreements, to
protect our jobs, our very liveli-
hood, the employers seek to beat
us down with injunctions,

The cost of fighting such action
in the courts is prohibitive. We
have a case in progress now —
the Squamish case — which has
cost us $12,000 in legal fees to
date, It is being appealed, The
cost of the appeal, if taken to
the Supreme Court of Canada
will cost us another forty or
fifty thousand dollars, besides
the salaries of our officers and.
others who must be involved in
the processing of such action,
Five injunctions a year could
cost our membership up to
$400,000 a year. This is almost
as much money as is going into
the Union-Employer Welfare
Fund for the purpose af medical,
sick benefit and insurance cov-
erage for our people.

The use of injunctions in labor
disputes does not settle the issue
but. rather tends to make for
more dissension between the
parties. An employer, by use
of the injunction, can keep the
union constantly in the courts
and diverted from its main func-
tion and that is protecting agree-
ments, negotiating agreements
and servicing the welfare of the
membership in looking after pen-
sion, welfare, compensation,
safety and other problems,

We cannot, and will not allow
ourselves to be bullied by the
employers into doing something
which will take away the rights
of the membership we represent,

If we did allow the employers
to do this, we would be acting
contrary to all the principles,
now traditional in this country,
which involve the rights of em-

ae

nee

LONGSHORE LEADER ON WAY TO JAIL.—R..C. Smith, president of Canadian Area,
ILWU, is shown leaving the Court House last Friday under RCMP escort. He is
being ushered towards waiting ‘‘paddy wagon” to serve four months. Nine other
Longshore leaders were sentenced to three months each. Many unionists were
cheering the Longshore leaders outside for their courageous stand.

ployees to organize, to bargain
collectively, to jointly protect
themselves against abuse by the
employers, to either work or
not as they see it under the pro-
visions of legislation enacted by
a duly elected House of Parlia-
ment,

If we did allow ourselves to
be bullied in this way we would
be failing in our responsibility
_to our membership and be guilty
of cowardice.

Management is so obsessed
with what they consider are man-
agement rights that they have
neglected to realize that the legal
and civil rights of their employ-
ees must be maintained, Injunc-
tions have frustrated our union,
We feel that in order to protect
ourselves, we must reluctantly
engage in civil disobedience.

We are not criminals who
blatantly and indiscriminately
defy the law. The members of
our Union are responsible citi-
zens of the various communities
in which they live. |

This is the only country, to
our knowledge, where employers
use the injunction as a weapon
in labor disputes. In England,
after whose judicial system we
modelled ours, injunctions are
very rare in labor disputes, In
England the Court does not grant
injunctions which require people
to do personal services, The
employers in this country seem
to have strayed far afield from

the British justice upon which”

Canada founded its system.

This is only to show, Sir, that
the solution to disputes between
labor and managment. cannot be

ons

found in the courts, but must be
resolved through honest andcon=

structive discussion between the
parties,

Labor, including our Union,
has been accused of indiscrimi-
nate work stoppages. We are not
guilty of this charge. We are
forced into this action by employ-
ers who refuse to recognize our
hard-won gains and who go to

the courts to try to get what they
are unable to achieve at the bar-

gaining table,

This is the reason why we are
forced to protect ourselves

through civil disobedience,

The employers havenotcharg- _

ed us as representatives of the
membership of our Union but as
individual citizens, Besides being
individual citizens, Sir, we are
representatives of our Union duly

elected by secret ballot of the —

membership. We have authority-
only to do what the membership
directs, Therefore, what the em-
ployers are really attempting to
do is to club the entire member-
ship of our Union into submission
by asking the court to put us in
jail. They are really attempting
to break or at the least, weaken
our Union through inunctionse
We cannot and will not let them
succeed,

These are the reasons, Sir,

why we defied an unjust law,
not the courts, and were forced
into this desperate regrettable
situation, It is unfortunate that
the courts are caught in the middle
of these disputes. Our judicial
system, patterned after tradi-
tional British justice, is being
slighted by the employers and
the people responsible for enact-
ing the legislation which allows
them to use the courts in this
way. ae

into

ae

Vancouver,

The immediate release of the jailed Longshore
leaders was demanded Saturday by the provincial
committee of the Communist Party when it metin

A statement adopted by the members who came
from many parts of B.C., said that “the jailing
of 10 Longshore Union officers because of the

. refusal of their membership to work on a statu-
’ tory holiday constitutes a brutal use of the courts
in defiance of the Canada Labor Standards Act
which specifically states that Longshoremen are
not required to work on statutory holidays,

**There is absolutely no justification for this
unprecedented action which offends the entire
democratic conscience of our province,

"Release jailed unionists’

“The Provincial Committee of the Communist
Party demands the immediate release of these

officers.

‘¢We pledge ourselves to work in co-operatior
with all sections of the labor movement and other
democratic-minded organizations and people in
B.C. to secure the release of these jailed union- :

ists.

statement.

“Such action must be further extended to bring
to an end the use of ex-parte injunctions in labor
disputes which have become a major weapon of
employers in the pursuance of their aims against
organized labor,” says the Communist Party

~ June 24, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUME—Page §