‘A POSTAL WORKER RECALLS LABOR HISTORY

istory was made when postal
____» Workers from coast to coast
Went on strike for increased
Wages and better working con-
ditions in October 1918,

_ I started work in the Vancouver
Post Office in May 1910 as a
temporary day laborer or letter
Carrier when the wage was $2
@ day with the addition of what
_ Was known as the Western Allow-

 Ployees from Fort William to
Victoria,

After two years’ service and
@Ppointment to the permanent
Staff I was given an increase of
25¢ a day and for every additional
_“¥0 Years’: service I got another

*9¢ a day increase until I rea-
_ Ched a maximum of $3 a day.
Th addition I received my uni-
rm, boot allowance and street
ar fare while I was on duty and
in uniform,

Postal clerks received a few

dollars a month more than letter
arriers to offset the allowance
for uniform and transportation,

No set hours for labor were
N effect and no overtime was
_ Paid. if a train was late and the
— Mail delayed, letter carriers
“Simply waited and often they be-
8an their deliveries in the busi-
Aess district as late as 5 p.m.
“Ince letter carriers reported
°r work at 6 a.m, this frequently
Meant a 12-hour day, And at
Christmas there was no limit
at all to the hours of duty.

~ Postal clerks would be told
to report for duty at night when

© mails were delayed and they
too, received no extrapay. These

€stifying before: the U.S.
House Ways and Means Com-
Mittee on the free trade agree-

Ment in the auto industry between -

Canada and the U.S.A., United
Uto Workers vice-president
Leonard Woodcock urged that the
Johnson Administration “make
Own to the Canadian govern-
Ment the concern of this country

(USA) that adequate safeguards.

© provided for Canadian workers
affected by the agreement.”

_ He warned that “if the Can-
Adian government refuses to step
“DP its responsibilities towards
‘l0se adversely affected Can-
Adian workers can be expected
© Oppose vigorously the negotia-

__ 40n of other similar agree-
4 Ments,? :

Vice-president Woodcock’s
Stimony shows that the UAW
international office (1) favors in-
tegration of the U.S. and Can-
Adian auto industry; (2) supports
© aim of extending similar free
Tade areas to other industries;
Shares the official U.S,
Attitude vis-a-vis U.S,- Canadian

ance of $15 a month for em--

Now that Canadian postal workers are again involved in a fight for
decent living conditions it is well to recall the great struggle of 1918 in
which they won all their demands in the first national strike. This article
was written by MAURICE BUCK, who spent his entire working life in the
postal service and was an active participant in the 1918 strike. Now de-
ceased, Buck was well-known among postal workers. He wrote this article
for the Pacific Tribune in 1958. We are pleased to reprint it on this

occasion.

conditions prevailed for many
years in spite of representations
to the Post Office Department at

Ottawa.
* Ok O*

After the outbreak of the First
World War conditions became
even worse, Although the city
had grown, the Vancouver postal
staff had not been increased pro-
portionately and when the Post
Office Department imposed what
it described as war economy
measures, the load was literally

placed on the letter carriers, The -

number of daily deliveries was
cut and the men carried bigger
loads over longer routes,

The cost of living began to go
up and continued to go up, but
wages remained at the same
level, although the staff was ex-
pected to contribute to various
war funds.

The carriers, represented by
the Federated Association of Let-
ter Carriers, and the clerks, who
had their own organization, the
Dominion Postal Clerks Associa-
tion, had made no progress in
their representations to the gov-
ernment for better wages and
conditions, each organization
conducting its own negotiations,

and there was talk of strike
action.

The Union government of Sir
Robert Borden denounced this
variously as treason, less ma-
jestic, unconstitutional, . .in fact,
strike action just could not be
taken and our jobs would be for-
feited if we took it,

* * *

On a Monday morning early in

ELECTRONIC BRAIN

Stamwitz, Signalman’s Journal

“I'd like to see if it can budget my hus-
band’s wages to meet the present cost
of living!”

relations, namely, that Canada as
a whole is simply a U.S, sub-
sidiary.

Within days of Woodcock’s ap-

‘pearance before the U.S, House

Committee, Canadian Labor
Minister MacEachern stated to
the press that he intended to an-
nounce in the coming week,
details of special assistance to
Canadian workers displaced by
the auto agreement,

The plan announced by the
government entails a system of
displacement pay for laid-off
workers from a government fund
maintained by those companies
responsible for worker displace-
ment, This is an important for-

ward step in these days of spec-
ialization and automation, Its
significance goes beyond the auto
industry.

However, the proposed dis-
placement pay for autoworkers
is far from adequate, Roughly
it is only half that of regular
wages. And the subsidation of
the displacement pay by unem-
ployment insurance benefits is
wrong and should not be tol-
erated by the labor movement,

The Autoworkers andthe whole
trade union movement should in-
sist that displacement pay should
be at the full wage rate and paid
to all workers so displaced until
they have returned to their jobs

October 1918, the letter carriers
were all in the Vancouver Post
Office, ready to start their de-
liveries, when a telegram was
received from the national exec-
utive of the Federated Associa-
tion of Letter Carriers in Tor-
onto, It said: “Negotiations
with the government have failed,
Letter -Carriers from coast to
coast are to go on strike im-
mediately,”

The carriers, toa man, downed
their mail bags and walked off
the job, The first national strike
of letter carriers in the country
was on.

The men marched to their
strike headquarters in the 700
block West Pender Street where
pickets and committees were ap-
pointed and for the next ten days
our men and their wives picketed
the Vancouver Post Office,

Within two or three days the
postal clerks walked off the job
and their action helped to bring
the strike to its successful end,
But the victory did not come
easily,

After being out only a few
days, staffs east of Fort William
decided to return to work, jeo-
pardizing the outcome, But the

or have secured other compara-
tive or better employment,

But this cannot provide a per-
manent solution, For the working
man’s future must envision
something more than displace-
ment pay, unemployment insur-
ance or the dole, His future
must take into account oppor-
tunity for advancement in his
economic, social and intellectual
status, To secure this he must
enjoy steady employment at good

wages. Yet such steady employ-
ment is seriously jeopardized by

production and market integra-
tion as exemplified by the free
trade area in auto,

For, despite all their fine
words of assurance about the
bright future of an integrated
auto industry, neither the gov-
ernment or the employers are
giving autoworkers any guar-
antees that all former jobs will
be available following plant and
production reorganization needed
to implement fully the auto agree-
ment,

Postal workers won all demands —
in first national strike in 1918

west remained steadfast and, with
Vancouver as the headquarters,
a joint committee of carriersand
clerks carried on negotiations
with the government, Finally
all our demands were conceded —
salary increases, better working
conditions, reclassification of the
service, higher pay for the super-
visors, a 44 hour week, overtime
pay and, last but not least, pay for
the 10 days we had been on strike.

On that wonderful Thursday
night we marched from our head-
quarters to the Vancouver Post
Office singing: “You'll get your
mail in the morning.” There,
Postmaster R.G, McPherson met
us with a handshake and then we
pitched in to clean up the ac-
cumulation of mail, By the fol-
lowing Monday night we were
back to normal,

One result of the united strike
action by letter carriers and
postal clerks was organization
of an association known as the
Amalgamated Postal Workers,
which later was enlarged to in-
clude other branches of the Civil
service under the name: Amal-
gamated Civil Servants of Can-
ada.

Unfortunately, workers in the
east would not give up the sep-
arate identities of their organi-
zations and many postal workers
in the west have failed to retain
the benefits of a single organiza-
tion and have reverted to or joined
associations which only repre-
sent a single department or
branch of the Civil Service, To-
day there are over 60 separate
staff organizations in the civil
service and one even hasa church
as part of its name,

What future for the displaced ?

Any further free trade agree-
ments likely to be negotiated
between Canada and the USA will
be in those industries like auto
where the parent firm is Amer-
ican and the Canadian plants are
branches of these firms, Under
these conditions the inescapable
trend will be towards the ab-
sorption of Canadian branch
plants into the U.S, parentfirms.
Instead of a free U.S.-Canadian
market we will have a North
American U.S. market,

This is not the road to wage
equality with American workers.
Rather it is the road to fewer
manufacturing jobs in Canada and
to lower comparative wages, Itis
the road to a northern economic
counterpart of the U.S, deep
south,

Canadian workers cannot af-
ford to go along with the U.S,
plan for complete domination of
the North American market des-
pite the support of international
union officers for it. Our path

to a brighter future is that of
Canadian economic and political
independence,

July 23, 1965—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 3