ee.

cal Union was nominated at a special mass

meeting of all labour organizations to be the *

council’s delegate to the 1890 convention of
the Dominion Trades and Labour Congress
of Canada, the question of paying his way
to Ottawa was raised and resolved by adop-
tion of a resolution “that everybody in the
hall should have the privilege of voting on
the condition that all who voted should
contribute towards the expenses.”

Although the campaign for the nine-hour
day was the first order of business in the
Vancouver, New Westminster and Victoria
councils, agitation for the eight-hour day
had evoked a response as early as 1863 from
gold miners in the Cariboo, who briefly
won their demand only to have it snatched
back by the mine owners.

The first to strike for the eight-hour day
on Vancouver Island were the coal miners
at Wellington, who had received an AFL
charter for the Miners and Mine Labourers
Association in 1889. Vancouver Trades and
Labour Council raised $79.25 through a
raffle to aid the strike. The Robson provin-
cial government sent a battery of artillery to
break it.

In Vancouver, hours of work varied
widely. Plasterers worked an eight-hour day
for $5. Carpenters got $3 for a nine-hour
day — they had struck for and won reduc-
tion from 10 to nine hours in 1885, but
found they could not enforce nine hours on
the job and were forced to strike again in
1889. General labourers were paid $2 fora
10-hour day. And earlier, in 1887, the
Knights had struck the sawmills, the city’s
main industry, for the 10-hour day.

The demand for nine hours, which soon
became eight hours a day, had its lighter
moments, as when the first six little street-
cars appeared on city streets. A resolution
from the Hod Carriers supported the
Knights in their condemnation of “the
Electric Railway Company for running the
street cars on a Sunday.”

The one issue that was certain to produce
impassioned speeches but no disagreement
was Chinese exclusion.

Two years earlier, the Knights had
launched a campaign to drive Chinese
workers out of the city. On the night of Feb.
23, 1887, attacks on two Chinese camps,
one of which was wrecked and the other
burned, prompted the provincial govern-
ment to declare martial law, suspend the
city charter and send in special police.

Exploited by employers who used it to
divide workers and thwart union organiza-
tion by isolating those already set apart by
race, language and customs; fanned by
demagogic politicians who saw it as a popu-
lar platform that could only win votes, Chi-
nese and Native Indians having been
disfranchised in 1874; and taken up by
white workers who feared that cheap labour
controlled by labour contractors would
drive down their own wage standards, the
Chinese, and afterwards the Japanese and
East Indian exclusion issue poisoned B.C.
politics for more than 60 years.

Its ultimate expression was the forced
removal of Japanese-Canadians from the
coast and expropriation of all their property
and possession after Japan entered the
Second World War.

Despite the fact that Chinese exclusion,
mirroring the times, was part of its plat-
form, Vancouver Trades and Labour
Council did initiate labour political action
by endorsing F.L. Carter-Cotton, the suc-
cessful opposition candidate for one of the
two Vancouver City seats in the 1980 pro-
vincial election. Formal party lines were not
established officially until 1903.

A century later, in a city grown to
become the hub of a metropolis, these pio-
neering efforts have produced the successes
of the COPE-NDP unity slate and its chal-
lenging program for the city of the future.

A labour editor for half a century and
author of British Columbia: The People’s
Early Story, long out of print, Griffin is now
working on a new history of B.C. labour and
social protest movements.

PHOTO — RANDY CARAVAGGIO

The Victoria Labour Council ponnee i
Vancouver, 1894.

* pe

%.

n the 1989 Walk for Peace; (inset)

- i.
é fi

Labour Day parade down Cordova Street in

Annual Report to the Minister of Mines

1889

Total output: 579,830 tons.
Note: same four companies are operating as in 1888

Nanaimo Colliery (4 shafts)
Wellington Colliery (1 shaft)
East Wellington Colliery (2 shafts)
Union Colliery (1 shaft)

Nanaimo Colliery

697 Whites at $2 to $4 per day
16 Boys at $1 per day
162 Chinese at $1 to $1.25 per day

Total employed: 775

Wellington Colliery

750 Whites at $2 to $3.75 per day
12 Boys at $1 to $1.75 per day
100 Chinese at $1 to $1.25 per day

Total employed: 862

OUTPUT

223,870
273,383
51,372

HOME

40,113
76,524
7,636

31,204 100

East Wellington Colliery

175 Whites at $2.25 to $5 per day
3 Boys at $1 to $1.50 per day
12 Chinese at $1 to $1.37 per day

Total employed: 190

Union Colliery

132 Whites at $2.50 to $4 per day
182 Chinese at $1 to $1.25 per day

Total employed: 314

Total number

EXPORT

179,286
197,510
43,089
23,790

employed in 1889:

2,141

Pacific Tribune, May 1, 1989 « 19

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