The Dispatcher, October 1995
Edited by Harvey Schwartz

ROY C. SMITH

“Our modern union started out of that ’58 strike. Before we were still a. company union.”

I went to work on the waterfront in 1948, but I didn’t get into the union until 1954. We were casuals, equivalent to B men in the US. We got all the rough work: heavy fletchers, heavy sacks .of wheat, 260 pound sacks of sugar you had to handle by hand and on your back, copra, timber, and logs. All cargo down below was stowed by piece. You struggled on every job. In 1956, two years after I got into the union, I was elected to the executive board of Local 501, then the deepsea longshore local in Vancouver.

I was president of the local during the 1958 strike. Our two main issues were the eight hour day and pensions. I wanted us to hang out for a meaningful pension, a trusteed pension where there was joint control. The eight hour day was just as important, but we had a flimsy pension that was completely controlled by the employers. We never knew how much money was in the fund.

The 1958 strike was a real landmark in the history of the waterfront in British Columbia. It was the first strike that was won by the longshoremen. In the big ’23 and ’35 strikes, the union was broken.

Our modern union really started growing out of that ‘58 strike. Before we were still basically a company union, which we had been literally until 1944. In Vancouver, we had been in the employers’ Shipping Federation hall for many years, and in our discipline procedures the joint union-owner Labor Relations Committee wasn’t operative. The employer had a joker they hired—an ex-army colonel—who did the disciplining! If a man was guilty of a little infraction on the job, he had to go see Colonel Bailey. So we got rid of all that as part of the ’58 strike. We told the employers, “That’s gone!”

We also told the employers they had to get their hands the hell out of our agreement. There was a clause that our membership was restricted to 800 members. The employers had to agree to any other members coming into the union. We got rid of that. During the strike there were a lot of nonunion men working steady on the grain ships; we informed the employers that they were coming into the union. The employers flashed the restrictive clause, but to no avail.

The consolidation of the scattered Vancouver locals into Local 500 in 1966 sprung from all this. We were having amalgamation meetings for the locals in the Port of Vancouver starting around 1956. It started to gel after the 1958 strike. The first bit of organization was to amalgamate the five deep sea locals. There were five separate agreements prior to 1958. The ’58 strike put them together.

During the strike, too, we had a committee working on the structure of the Canadian Area and working on a constitution, so we would be ready later to set up the Canadian Area. This we did in ‘59, when we had our first convention. This movement to achieve autonomy within the ILWU was aimed at strengthening our union in Canada, because we couldn’t always rely on the International. We had to have strength in our own organization. All that we had prior to organizing the Canadian Area structure was a district council with no real authority and an International Rep. who had no support from the local membership.

GORDON WESTRAND

“People walked out of there feeling, ‘I’m the toughest son-of-a bitch in the valley because I’m ILWU’.”

The 1958 strike was a significant turning point for Canada because it seemed to bring everybody together. It had a common issue—pensions—that everybody could relate to. As a young kid then, it was my job to carry thermoses of coffee down to the picket lines. There was even a bit of a carnival atmosphere there. One fellow had a quarter horse he would bring in to give all the kids rides on the picket line. That indicated the longshore family atmosphere then.

The ’58 strike was the real birth of the Canadian ILWU. In the ’40s and early ’50s, there was nothing to really bind us, to say this is what we’re all about. The pension strike in ’58 did that. This was the first strike the union people really felt they won. I think some of the people walked out of there feeling, “I’m the toughest son-of-a bitch in the valley because I’m ILWU.”

DAVE LOMAS

“We never had a problem getting autonomy with Harry Bridges around.”

People figure we always had Canadian autonomy within the ILWU structure, but it’s not the case. We never had a problem getting autonomy with Harry Bridges around. He used to tell us, “When you’re ready to put on your long pants, let us know.” Getting complete autonomy wasn’t done in one jump. It took a long time. We didn’t start to transfer the jurisdictional and financial aspects of the union up here until the early 1970s.

CRAIG H. PRITCHETT

“The leadership took the position, pensions for all. Now that meant pensions for ex-scabs, too.”

I was the founding president of the new Canadian Area in 1959. We took the old District Council and gave it some meat and a constitution with the blessing of Harry Bridges, Bob Robertson, and Lou Goldblatt, the ILWU International officers then. We put together an organization the employers had to meet head on.

The push for autonomy in the late ’50s was part of a national struggle in Canadian unions for disaffiliation from the US. We raised the question of autonomy within the ILWU because we didn’t want to break our international ties and tradition, but we still wanted to stay in the mainstream bid for Canadian sovereignty. There was the whole question of Canada having its own national policy based on its own constitution, not on the American constitution including our own court system injunction acts, and labor law. We never moved for disaffiliation, because we had an international that recognized that Canadian autonomy was something the union should be fighting for. That really consolidated the union here, and then you couldn’t kick the ILWU out of Canada with a ten foot pole.

The other thing we did at the same time to unify the union was that the leadership of the Canadian Area took the position in the 1959 negotiations and through into 1963: pensions for all. Now that meant pensions for ex-scabs, too. We got pensions for all the guys who went into the service who went to work in the shipyards because there was no work on the waterfront early in World War II, who lost their jobs because of the ’35 strike but had come back into the industry, and who had scabbed in ’35. We never differentiated, and we were able to hold the union together by saying, “The past is gone; close the book, move ahead.” All the slogans we had at those early Area Conventions led to that direction.

In 1966, when I was the Canadian Regional Director, I promoted the amalgamation of several locals in Vancouver into one longshore unit, Local 500. The advantage was the consolidation into one agreement. I didn’t consider warehouse as something out in the barnyard, or grainliners as something different from longshore. It was a changing industry with new methods of shipping; I thought we should bring ’em all together. If we hadn’t of gone that road, we’d have been crafted out of business.

I spoke industrial unionism to them rank and filers. The old-timers wanted to hang on to their slings and winches. I told them you’re crazy—you won’t be around. The young guys overwhelmed ‘em; they made the decisions at the meetings. The warehouse guys were all 22 to 35 years old. They could see the changes. They all wanted to get on forklifts, they all wanted to drive machines. She was a comin’ for you, and I’ll tell ya, she’d a been all contracted out if we hadn’t pulled the union together.

ROY C. SMITH

“We were put in the paddy wagon and taken to the Vancouver City Police Jail.”

In 1965-66, there was another crisis when the employers withheld the proper pay for statutory holiday work that our members had been collecting for years. So on Victoria Day in May 1966 we refused to work the waterfront. The employers had achieved injunctions against me—I was then president of the Canadian Area—and nine local presidents. We were told to order the men to work on statutory holidays. We refused, saying we would not do so until the employers paid the proper amount.

We accepted jail in lieu of fine that June. We were put in the paddy wagon and taken to the Vancouver City Police Jail. We spent a night there in the big drunk tank. The following day we were taken out to Okalla, a provincial jail, with Mounted Police escort. One young Mountie had his hand on his gun all the time; I suppose he figured we were a slew of Al Capones. We were there for five days. In that jail we managed to have an Area Executive Board meeting!

We decided we were going to stick together. We had the deputy warden promise us this. When we were sent to the minimum security camps on the Chilliwack River they split us up. We protested and kept reminding them of the promise, and after three days they got us all back together again. We were in three weeks when the federal Minister of Labour promised to bring the dispute before Parliament, the B.C. Federation of Labour paid the fines, and we were released. The following fall Parliament amended the Statutory Holiday Act to cover all longshoremen. We had won.

I’m damn proud of myself and the others involved in these things, and of our membership, because at that time, when we took something back to the membership that was a worthwhile program or position, and something had to be done about it, the membership was always there. If you haven’t got the membership behind you and involved, the employers know that, and they just laugh at you, whether you are in negotiations or whatever in hell you are doing.

DAVE LOMAS

“We have to know the history so we know where we’re going.”

We went through all those tumultuous periods and came out with a united organization here in Canada. But we can’t forget the past, because we still have struggle ahead of us. We’ve got new people in the union who may not know this history, and we have to educate them to understand that those kinds of problems can come up again, and we have to be able to defeat them. We have to know the history so we know where we’re going.