: 2nd Issue
September, 1962

WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER

B.C. Loggers
Fought The

Early BATTLES

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2

The loggers struck in camps throughout the Prince George, Prince-
ton, Comox, Cowichan Lake and other areas. During the month of
May, 1919, 69 strikes were in progress, involving about 80,000
workers in Canada.

Soon after withdrawal from the OBU, the Lumber Workers’ In-
dustrial Union affiliated with the Workers’ Unity League, and became
part of the Third International, known as the Red International.

Socialists, who had been active in forming the LWIU and who
were prominent in the B.C. Federation of Labour, rejected the proposals
of Soviet Union emissaries to Canada for the organization of an under-
ground revolutionary movement. They expressed preference for demo-
cratic parliamentary procedure of social progress. Thereupon professed
Communists entrenched themselves in the LWIU and began a conspiracy
for control which culminated in their attempt at outright seizure of
IWA organizational resources, October 1948.

1 921 Unemployment and internal strife brought an alarming
decline in membership from 23,000 to 13,000in 1921. The
LWIU persevered but made slow headway in organizing the un-

organized. Camp strikes against intolerable conditions were frequent, -

_but isolated, to be followed by cruel suppression by the employers
of all organized activity. Strike action flared up 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 be-
tween 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.

1 93 5 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 Wood-
workers 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, industrial 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, attended
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 in-
dustry, where the majority of the workers are unorganized, and in
view of the fact that the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners
are taking steps to organize in the sawmills, that this Wage Con-
ference 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 or-
ganization in the struggle for higher wages and better conditions.”
19 This was followed in 1936 by the submission to member-

ship vote of terms of affiliation with the Lumber and

Sawmill Workers’ Union as a section of the United Brotherhood of
and Joiners. The affiliation was approved, but bore all

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Three IWA Officers who piloted the IWA through stormy waters: (From
left) the late George Mitchell, District and Regional Secretary-Treasurer,
Stewart Alsbury, District President, 1948-1953, and Joe Morris, District
and Regional President, 1953-1962.

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
dey, and 75 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 on hour, and fifty percent made 50 cents an hour, For the
mest part, mills worked two shifts, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30: p.m. and 7:30
a.m, to 12 noen on Saturdays. Night shift work was in five nine-
hour shifts.

Trade union organizers were forcibly ejected from logging camps
and mill preperiy. The boss loggers employed the notorious Tom
Mclanes fo 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
infarnous Bennett “slave labour” relief camps of the day, where they
toiled om road construction for 20 cents a day and board. Out of
11,060 loggers, only 2,500 were organized. A much lower percentage
of mill workers was organized, for they were more directly exposed °
to employer intimidation.

Racial prejudice raised its ugly head. Orientals were barred from
union membership but a Japanese Camp and Mill Workers’ Union
was affiliated to the AFL but not to any international organization.
Chinese “auxiliary” locals were sometimes formed. Under the “Tyee”
system, Orientals worked for less than the minimum wage.

The extent of organization is indicated by the revenue of the
LWSU District Council in 1935: $5477.43.

The strikes that punctuated the year 1936-37 will be dealt with
elsewhere. Here. we are concerned with the early developments of
organization..

July 1936 saw the first convention of the Loggers’ Local, No. 2783,
LSWU, when the assembled members authorized the purchase of a
gas-boat to establish contact with remote camps. A little later the
famous “Laur Wayne,” sometimes called the flagship of the Loggers’
Navy, made many cruises from the Queen Charlotte Islands to camps
on Harrison Lake. . ite

(Continued on Page 4)

ae

A founder of the IWA, International President, Al Hartung, who

at sucessive B.C. conventions of the IWA took a forthright
for trade union principles. : ae en