- FEATURE

The lessons of °32

A page of

workers’ history

By VAUGHN BOWLER

As the latest economic crisis deepened in the early 1980s, represen- tatives of monopoly in Alberta targeted ¥S trade union movement for destruc-

on.

In the summer of 1986, Tory Peter Pocklington set out to smash UFCW Local 280P at the Gainers packing plant in Edmonton. His voracious appetite for concessions had been whetted in 1984, when the union gave in on several fronts. By 1986, though, when a new contract was due to be signed, Gainers workers had come to realize that one

concession inevitably led to another. _ They had to stand and fight.

The result was the now-famous “Battle of 66th Street.”’ As the presi- dent of the Alberta Federation of Labor, Dave Werlin, said at the beginning of the strike-lockout: “Unless the union wins the fight that has been imposed on them .. . conces- sions already forced on the building trades could become a trend which would grow and spread to be picked up by all employers. The AFL will be call- ing on organized labor to mobilize its full support ... to do everything pos- sible to stop the scourge of concessions bargaining by greedy employers.”

The self-destructive policy of concessions is not new in Alberta’s labor history. Back in the 1930s, the leadership of most local unions took their orders from the U.S.-based American Federation of Labour. _

Its policy was that during economic crisis there was little the unions could do to defend their members’ wages and working conditions.

There were unions, however, which thought and acted otherwise. One of the most noteworthy was the Mine Workers Union of Canada (MWUC), Which affiliated with the militant trade union centre, the Workers Unity

League, in 1931. Among the left-wing leadership and rank-and-file of the union were many members of the Communist Party of Canada, including Harvey Murphy who led the Crowsnest Pass miners’ strike of 1932. Murphy had the ability of sparking the coal min- ers into action. ‘‘He was his best on the public platform,’” commented one ob- server, ‘‘workers loved his caustic jibes at their bosses, the police, and the poli- ticians.”” :

By 1925, mass unemployment and wage reversals among the miners were so bad that they decided to act. They abandoned their old international union with its concessionary policy and began a recruiting drive for the MWUC.

People who believed in concessions retained influence in the new union, until 1929 when capitalism’s near col- lapse made the system’s bankruptcy crystal clear. Leadership in the union then passed to Murphy and the left- wing forces. When the bosses began to import ‘‘reliable’’ labor from Wales while most local miners could only get a few days work a week, and when they refused to negotiate with the Workers Unity League, a strike was called, and picket lines sprang up at the mines in Blairmore, Coleman, Bellevue and Hillcrest.

The mine owners did not fear the strike initially. Much like Peter Pock- lington at Gainers, they thought they saw an opportunity to smash the union and render the Workers Unity League a death-blow. They failed to reckon, however, with the resolve of the miners who, one historian recalled, ‘‘were fed up with the kind of lifestyle imposed on them by economic depression, the fed- eral government, and corporate totalitarianism.”

On May Day 1932, the miners of Blairmore, along with the youth-wing of the union and the women’s organiza-

“In a spirit of working class solidarity, May Day Photo: Communist Party leader Tim Buck, was proclaimed a civic holiday, and Blairmore’s _ standing left of car, in the Alberta town of Nor- ~ main street was renamed Tim Buck Boulevard. degg in 1935.

tion, staged a large and colourful demonstration. Trailing through the valley, beneath the white peaks of the Rockies, could be seen red banners emblazoned with the hammer and sick- le, bearing slogans such as ‘‘No Sur- render, Nationalize The Mines.”

On May 12, the strike began to look shaky when the Coleman miners voted

- to return to work by a margin of 292 to

237. The company, helped by a conser- vative ‘Citizens League’, had or- ganized a vicious racist campaign to convince the Coleman miners that their problem was not the anti-worker sys- tem but ‘‘insidious foreign elements.” Under the guise of a crusade against communism, the ‘‘true blue British’”’ were successfully split by ‘‘divide and rule’’ tactics from the various miners of Italian, Slavic and other origins. Soli- darity at Coleman crumbled, and for their efforts and racist elements were rewarded with a company Union and wage cuts. Meetings of the MWUC were brutally broken up, and John Sto- kaluk narrowly escaped the designs of unidentified gunmen.

All the other mining communities of the Crowsnest Pass resisted the racist campaign, preferring instead the watchword ‘‘Workers Of The World Unite!’ While they faced a co- ordinated assault from the radio, press and the reformist UFA government of Premier Brownlee, the material and moral support of groups such as the Farmers Unity League and Workers International Relief saw them through to the conclusion of the dispute. Stead- fast picketers forced the mine owners into agreements tha maintained the wage levels of 1930-32. Workers were free to join the union of their choice, blacklists of ‘‘red agitators’ were torn up and the provincial government promised relief for the unemployed. New contracts were signed on Labor

Day, 1932, and while the owners did backtrack on some provisions, the MWUC was one of the few unions in Alberta to avoid a wage cut during the Hungry Thirties.

One of the significant political results of the Crowsnest Pass strike of 1932 was the fall election of a workers’ slate to Blairmore Town Council. That dubi- ous creation of the coal companies, and the Citizens League failed to seat a single councillor.

The new mayor and the council set about uncovering the corruption of previous big-business administrations. They organized a boycott of those firms who supported the Citizens League, sought more relief for the unemployed, and collected taxes from the wealthy that were in arrears. In a spirit of work- ing class solidarity, they proclaimed May Day a civic holiday, and renamed the town’s main avenue Tim Buck Boulevard in honor of the imprisoned national leader of the Communist Par- ty. Buck had been in jail since 1931, along with other leading Communists, because of their unrelenting exposure of social conditions in Canada.

Blairmore’s Workers Town Council was elected many more times in the following years. However, when the chill winds of the Cold War began to blow, a new generation unmindful of the miners’ struggle fell for the lies of a new anti-communist crusade. Socreds, Tories and Liberals covered up certain undigestible facts. Street names were transformed overnight. But the capitalists, their media hacks and paid politicos will never succeed in erasing the historical record of the Crowsnest Pass strike of 1932. Those events, like those at Gainers in 1986, will live on in the collective memory of Canada’s working people, reminding them of what can be accomplished under their own banners.

“The projected sale of Dome Petro- leum to Amoco Canada Petroleum — the 100 per cent-owned subsidiary of the U.S. multinational Amoco Corp., Chicago — must be stopped,” urged the Communist Pary in an April 26 press Statement. It continued:

“Parliament, and every MP must be called on to prevent this most shameful sell-out to U.S. interests of vast Canadian oil and gas resources. The federal gov- erment’s announced approval of this so- Called sale has demonstrated there 1s an

election promise that Brian Mulroney is living up to: the final destruction of the

National Energy Program.

“Instead, the Mulroney government bases its approval of this abject surrender to U.S. monopoly on what Energy Min- ister Marcel Masse calls, “The principle of a private sector solution.’ This same reliance on the private sector was, Mul- roney told us, supposed to provide ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ and an end to mass unem-

ployment!

“In the case of Dome Petroleum, this.

Dome sell-out means end of NEP: CP

‘private sector principle’ is meant to drive the last nail into the coffin of the National Energy Program, and to write ‘finis’ to Canada’s strategic necessity to have ownership control of Canadian energy resources.

“Through its wholly-owned subsi- diary Amoco Canada, Amoco Corp., Chicago would become the largest oil and gas company in Canada. By this sell-out, Canadian ownership of the oil and gas industry will be cut to 40 per cent from over 50 per cent.

“The immediate need is to prevent final approval of this treacherous Dome Petroleum-Amoco transaction by Invest- ment Canada, the Mulroney govern- ment-created agency which has yet to reject a single foreign investment in Can- ada.

“Canadians, through their mass organizations and individually, can pre- vent this happening by besieging members of Parliament with the dem- ands to stop the Dome Petroleum sell- out and to restore Dome Petroleum to Canadian control.”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 6, 1987 ¢ 5