B.C. Loggers Fought the Early

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across Vancouver Island in 1934 but was badly organized. The strikers, many of whom had lived precariously in tent colonies, returned to work with slim gains which varied from camp to camp. Later, the Union declared the strike to have been a mistake, because of poor preparations and lack of organization. The Lumber and Sawmill Workers’ Union, branch of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, appeared on the scene, and attempted to establish jurisdiction in the lumber industry. This brought to B.C. the struggle, then being waged in American AFL circles, between craft and industrial unionism. The fight between two rival elements in the American Federation of Labour was a long and bitter one, with the lumber workers among its chief victims. It was the most costly and bitter quarrel over jurisdiction in American labour history.

1935

With a policy that “might makes right” Big Bill Hutcheson, head of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, had forced the AFL to return an independent 50,000-member Woodworkers Union to the Brotherhood’s jurisdiction. The Lumber and Sawmill Workers’ Union was created as a non- beneficial subsidiary of the Brotherhood. All those who worked in wood were held to be subject to the Carpenters, but loggers and mill workers were never allowed voice or vote in the Brotherhood’s conventions. This became a thorny point for the loggers of British Columbia at a later stage. Meanwhile, in- dustrial unionism in mass production industries grew until the open break with craft unionism occurred in the 1935 AFL convention and led to the formation of the CIO and a little later its Canadian counterpart, the Canadian Congress of Labour.

The record shows that the loggers of British Columbia were obviously torn between a desire for unity as a means to better their circumstances and the need for an industrial union in their own industry. >

A conference held in Vancouver in December 1935, at- tended by delegates from the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union, the Lumber and Sawmill Workers’ Union (AFL), and the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, resolved:

“That in view of the situation in the sawmill section of the industry, where the majority of the workers are unorganized, and in view of the fact that the United Brotherhood of Car- penters and Joiners are taking steps to organize in the sawmills, that this Wage Conference of the Lumber Workers’ Industrial Union held at 130 West Hastings, Vancouver, December 29, 1935, calls upon all sawmill workers to join the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and pledges the fullest support from the loggers in building the organization in the struggle for higher wages and better conditions.”

1936

This was followed in 1936 by the submission to membership vote of terms of affiliation with the Lumber and Sawmill Workers’ Union as a section of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. The affiliation was approved, but bore

4/The Western Canadian Lumber Worker — Special Edition

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all the earmarks of pressure from the Communist Party, through the Workers’ Unity League. At the same time, the prevailing conditions clearly indicated the need for a united organization in the industry, with sufficient strength to remedy injustices crying for redress.

The operators were profiting enormously under the existing Empire Trade Agreement and a lumber pact with the United States. Wages were disgracefully low. Loggers in the Alberni Valley fought for a wage increase which gave them a rate of 50 cents an hour. Three hundred loggers in the Franklin River area reported that few averaged more than $3.00 a day. Men were housed, ten to a small double-decked bunkhouse, without proper sanitary facilities. For this sort of accommodation, and poor grub, they were “soaked” $1.25 a day, and 15 cents a day extra for blankets, if provided. Fallers and buckers, then placed on contract rates, fought for and won an increase of 10 cents per thousand, but were lucky to make $4.00 a day.

Fraser Mills employed 270 workers. Twenty-five percent made 25 cents an hour, and fifty percent made 50 cents an hour. For the most part, mills worked two shifts, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. to 12 noon on Saturdays. Night shift work was in five nine-hour shifts.

Trade union organizers were forcibly ejected from logging camps and mill property. The boss loggers employed the notorious Tom McInnes to smear the organization as a “red” plot over his weekly radio broadcasts. Wage cuts were imposed at the employers’ whim. The blacklist was made effective by the employers through private hiring agencies, such as the notorious Black's Employment Agency. Lumber workers were discharged for union activity, forced into the infamous Bennett

slave labour” relief camps of the day, where they toiled on road construction for 20 cents a day and board. Out of 11.000 loggers, only 2,500 were organized. A much lower percentage of

mill workers was organized, for the m i one ' wer to employer intimidation. y Were: mone ah Gaiinas noes