Chapter 5.5Rebuilding Local 213

It would appear at first glance that the IBEW had successfully solved one of its thornier internal problems out on the west coast. In very Canadian terms, it looked like peace, order, and good government were on the horizon for Vancouver’s electrical workers. On a recommendation from Jack Ross, Malcolm Morrison was recruited in mid-1955 as interim business manager from his position as a powerhouse operator on the isolated Bridge River series of dams and powerhouses, about 250 kilometres north of Vancouver. More importantly, he was supposedly a reliable ally of the anti-Communist group of conspirators, but someone who was not directly connected to the successful ousting of George Gee and his left-wing allies in the local. The son of former long-time business manager Teddy Morrison, who had served in that position for Local 213 throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Malcolm Morrison had briefly been on the employer-oriented Executive of the Aluminum Council in Kitimat while working on the large postwar construction of that project. He had also been a candidate for business manager against George Gee in 1953, losing to him in a decidedly lopsided vote.1 Morrison was contacted by two leading members of Local 213’s recently appointed executive board, Jack Waplington and Angus MacDonald, who “pleaded with him” to take on the job as business manager.2 Installed into office by the International representatives of the IBEW, the saviour turned out to be a poor choice as he did not get along with the rest of the local’s appointed executive board and, more significantly, because of his clandestine backroom manoeuvrings involving both a major employer and his own local union. One of the executive board members would even go so far as to write that Morrison’s “attitude was secretive, cunning and at times decisions with employers appeared bad and underhanded.”3 John Carson, a former director of Industrial Relations with the BC Electric Company, recalls that Morrison developed “a very funny and strange relationship with myself; he would come to my home in the evening to talk or we would have a few drinks together at the University Club.” And since the president of BC Electric, Dal Grauer, “did counsel me to get close to Morrison, I acceded to these overtures of friendship.”4

What really doomed Malcolm Morrison to trade union political oblivion was not just his crass or covert class collaboration. The first part of the issue leading to his quick fall from favour was that he misled the Inside Wiremen’s unit about having received strike sanction from the International Office to bolster their collective bargaining position during negotiations in the fall of 1956. It was a complete fabrication. In fact, the International Office had sent a telegram expressly denying strike sanction as they had been informed by Jack Ross that it looked as if a tentative agreement was going to be reached with the electrical building contractors.5 About a year later, an activist crew of shop stewards, forged and developed during the Gee era, provoked another point of contention. With Morrison’s written approval, they led rank-and-file electricians in job action on a construction site at the Hooker Chemical plant in North Vancouver. Did Morrison support their militancy to bolster future claims of trade union legitimacy, to prove that he was not just a patsy for the International Office? In the end it didn’t matter. Jack Ross recalled that Morrison was “either a bloody fool or crooked . . . and I should really have had him thrown out of the IBEW.”6

The other part of the issue was that Malcolm Morrison then got caught in a second trap, this time of his own making. In late 1957, and on the face of it in contradiction to his support of the militancy exhibited by the inside wiremen, Morrison refused to consider a strike vote to provide much-needed pressure in negotiations with the BC Electric Company and the province’s two major line contracting companies: Hume and Rumble Electrical Contractors and Peterson Electrical Construction. As he stated in an interview with the local press, he did not want to potentially put the public at risk in case of a sudden breakdown in the supply of electricity around the province: “There is no thought of a strike. We know our responsibilities and we don’t intend to embarrass anyone.”7 Evidently viewed as an extremely poor approach to collective bargaining, the result, as John Carson remembered, was that Morrison was “eased out” by his very own union in December 1957.

As events transpired, the IBEW flew its Canadian vice-president, John Raymond, into Vancouver to have him removed. It was the second time in just under three years that the International Office had seen fit to replace Local 213’s business manager. The Vancouver Sun covered the story of Morrison’s removal under the telling headline “Electricians Most Embattled Union.”8 In contrast, the local’s Minute Books attempted to render an innocuous tone of diplomacy to the event in revealing that the switch in business managers had merely been ordered by Raymond “in line with further re-organization in the business office.”9 It masked what was in reality a head-spinning supplanting of at least a half-dozen of Local 213’s leadership personnel.10 Ironically, Morrison’s replacement, Jack Waplington, had been George Gee’s original “interim” replacement in 1955. Waplington had been one of the ringleaders and had personally crafted the wording of charges laid against George Gee in 1955.11 These purported to show that Gee was acting against the interests of the electrical workers’ union local, had made decisions contrary to the constitution of the IBEW, and was in fact a Communist.

The ouster and suspension of the foremost Communists from Local 213 in 1955 would continue to haunt the unsettled leadership group even after the unreliable Morrison had been dismissed. This bedevilling and recurrent theme became apparent three years later during the ongoing negotiations for a new collective agreement with the BC Electric Company and the two line contracting companies. During these important negotiations, George Gee was in the BC Supreme Court trying unsuccessfully to have his lifetime dismissal from the IBEW reversed. It was reported in the local press on February 11 that the hard-talking John Raymond, IBEW Canadian vice-president, had testified that the IBEW was resolved “to seek out members of the Labor Progressive Party and expel them . . . My experience with Commies, which L-PP members are, is that they are in opposition to free trade unions.”12 Gee replied in court a few days later, accusing Raymond of masterminding his ouster. He claimed there was a conspiracy to oust him from the union because he had refused to fire his tenacious and spirited assistant business manager, Don Wilson. According to the Pacific Tribune, Gee testified that “I was told that unless I fired Wilson the union would get me” and that “Raymond also told me that if I mentioned his threat he would deny it.”13

The BC Supreme Court case was undoubtedly viewed as an unnecessary and distracting sideshow by most of those involved in the collective bargaining process. There is no question that in 1958 there was a more important and pressure-inducing factor looming on the horizon during negotiations—inflation became a menace that threatened every electrical worker’s standard of living. Several front-page reports in the local newspapers in the following weeks noted that the consumer price index had reached a record 123.7 by the start of February based on 1949 prices equalling 100, with higher food prices accounting for most of the increase.14 This inflationary price cycle coincided with a year of record-high net profit of $13,792,214 in 1957 for BC Electric’s holding company, the BC Power Corporation.15 In the interim, the BC Electric Company had asked for a conciliation board to intervene and had agreed to its findings that wage boosts of up to 19 percent over two years were in order.16 The newly appointed leadership team of Local 213, however, rejected the findings of the conciliation board, asking instead for wage increases of up to 40 percent, more than double what the conciliation board had proposed. Contrary to what Malcolm Morrison had presumably imagined, a contentious three-week strike would ensue, involving some fifteen hundred discontented members of Local 213.17 The two major newspaper dailies in Vancouver, the Sun and the Daily Province, would both publish strongly worded editorials against the strike. The Sun, in particular, editorialized: “There’d be no trick about paying the 40 percent more demanded by B.C. Electric linemen. Just slap it on everybody’s light bill. But who’s going to pay—if the linemen win—the extra 40 per cent that all other unions will demand to keep pace?”18

Local 213 countered, pointing out in an officially published statement in the Sun that the electric utility wage rate across Canada since 1949 had increased 70 percent, so its rejection of the proposed 19 percent wage increase was not out of line. Further, dividends for BC Electric shareholders had gone up by 75 percent during the same time frame, and earnings per common share had gone up 100 percent. Recent record profits meant that BC Electric could easily afford a 40 percent wage increase. Local 213 concluded its arguments by mockingly asking for a “wage freeze” for all “B.C. Electric executives” in order to save the company money.19 In defending his local’s demands, newly appointed president, Art O’Keeffe, had told attending delegates at a packed meeting of the Vancouver and District Labour Council, that “we won’t crawl like Lazarus to get crumbs from Grauer’s table.”20

Then an intrepid labour reporter from the Daily Province newspaper got involved. The research Doug Collins undertook convinced him to offer a completely different interpretation of the strike. In a front-page article, he argued that wages “are only part of the story.” As a result of the machinations and backroom manoeuvrings that had occurred in 1955, the appointed leadership of Local 213 was “caught in the web of their own dictatorship.” They were afraid that “if they don’t make spectacular gains leadership of the local will slip from their grasp when the union comes out of trusteeship later this year.” He further surmised that every labour leader in Vancouver was aware of the political dynamic behind the strike but would never admit to this angle publicly because once a strike had started “no labour man would do anything but support his own side.” He also pointed out that, among other reforms intended to counter George Gee’s Communist legacy, the politically inclined “shop steward system was abolished.”

“The IBEW leaders are a law unto themselves,” he continued. “They were not elected to office. They were put there by the international organization, and are answerable to the membership only to the extent they choose to be.” Moreover, the members know “that orders come from the top down rather than from the bottom up. They know that although there have been unit meetings, there have been no general meetings in three years. They know that opposing their leaders can be dangerous.” At the same time, he noted, “the IBEW chiefs were caught in a dilemma. If they accepted the award of up to 19 per cent over two years . . . they could be accused of being soft. If they didn’t they could be accused of being fools. As one of them says: ‘We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t.’”21

Local 213 was not long in responding. Ramsay McCullough, chairman of the union’s Publicity Committee, wrote a letter to the editor of the Daily Province. In a lengthy defence of the IBEW, in particular of the McCarthyist-style intervention by its International Office in 1955, he argued that “communistic influences received a jolt by the removal from the union of key figures.” He stood by the suspension of General Membership meetings, pointing out the current executive board “was brought to its required numerical strength by appointment under the constitution with representation from the different sections.” Monthly unit meetings were democratic “with complete freedom for expression of opinion” and open to all members, except for “those who stand suspended because of subversive activity.” He then zeroed in on the Communist threat to free trade unions:

This is as democratic a procedure as can be visualized in an organization wrestling with an element busily fomenting unrest and disruption, and which had gained considerable influence over a long period of time. When a festering, cancerous sore attaches itself to a healthy body, definite, positive and prolonged treatment is a necessary part of the cure. Communistic activity in unions must be stamped out and prolonged treatment is a necessary part of the cure. Communistic activity in unions must be stamped out or it will eventually lead to destruction.

In a telling statement, he concluded his extensive arguments by nevertheless admitting that “Employer and management have taken full advantage of L.U. [Local Union] 213 during this period of unrest,” but he also lambasted the newspaper for “giving a distorted presentation to the general public.”22

On the ground, meanwhile, tension during the strike was high as engineers and supervisory personnel attempted to keep BC Electric’s grid from falling into disrepair. It was reported in the Sun that an engineer in Abbotsford “was dragged down a short flight of stairs by a picketer.” In another incident, a group of picketers yelled “erroneous advice” to engineers repairing a broken-down power line.23 The Pacific Tribune also got into the act. Initially critical of the conduct of the strike, the Communist Party weekly pointed out that although the hourly earnings of electrical workers appeared high on first impressions, contract linemen were “risking their lives” and “have to make it in nine months” due to the “seasonal” nature of work in much of the electrical industry.24 It also made a jab at the International Office of the IBEW and Malcolm Morrison’s two-year appointed stint in office, citing Jack Waplington to the effect that Local 213 would “not be satisfied with peanuts this time.”25 Not much more was made of Local 213’s trusteeship and George Gee’s lifetime expulsion, perhaps in the interests of unity and the fact that the former business manager’s case was then being decided in BC Supreme Court.

The strike grew in intensity on March 19 when the electrical workers made the traditional threat to join forces with the street railwaymen’s union, and shut down all facets of BC Electric’s operations, including the transportation side of its giant corporate empire. However, Charles Stewart, Communist business manager for what was then a predominantly bus drivers’ organization, counselled moderation. As he thoughtfully observed: “No strike has ever been settled without a session around the bargaining table.”26 He may also have understandably been unwilling to give his support to a right-wing cabal of appointed “leaders,” a group of plotters who had only recently help oust one of his erstwhile comrades from trade union office.

It was evident that personal relations between Local 213 and major employers like the BC Electric Company remained in symbiotic flux even under the newly appointed leadership. On the one hand, the sudden and new-found militancy of the local’s appointed leadership was the result of a basic requirement to appear as solid trade union men who could effectively represent their fellow electrical workers at the bargaining table; on the other hand, BC Electric’s exigencies to safeguard record profits meant that even a “moderate” trade union leadership representing its employees could be backed into an unpalatable political corner. Extracting a measure of co-operation from its union was one thing but safeguarding the long-term bottom line was evidently the priority. The BC Electric Company’s John Carson recalls Jack Waplington phoning him late at night before Local 213 was going out on strike against the giant electrical utility and told him “not to do anything stupid.” The men wanted a strike and the best thing to do was to “let them get it out of their system.” The strike began at the start of March, and Carson recalled how it ended: “After three weeks Waplington came back and asked to go to binding arbitration. The Company agreed but the union lost as the arbitrator handed down the same decision as the Conciliation Report.”27

It thus appeared that being more conservative in political outlook did not necessarily mean that traditional trade union vocabulary and suitable posturing, or especially picket lines, could ever be abandoned. More to the point, as business unionists had always done everywhere, there appeared to be a concerted effort by Local 213’s appointed leadership group to delineate the crucial differences between conservative-led militant strikes and political radicalism.28 The way the strike was eventually settled also clearly demonstrated that impartial umpires—judges in this case—could, in fact, be quite partial. Of considerable importance, the BC Electric strike of 1958 kept open the divisive wounds from the McCarthyist intervention by the IBEW’s International Office three years before. Yet more was to follow, the tension between the perceived renewal of a Communist revival and a majority right-wing leadership providing a major underlying theme to the politics of Local 213.

While the BC Electric strike took centre stage, there were also two work stoppages of the inside wiremen during the turbulent years of the late 1950s; one by those employed by the City of Vancouver, the other a defensive struggle involving 1,200 electricians locked out by the electrical building contractors across Canada’s third-largest metropolitan area.29 The latter was by far the more significant of the two as the work stoppage was much longer in duration and the working-hours lost considerably more than in the BC Electric conflagration. The lengthy stand-off also briefly revealed the existence of an intriguing left-wing political stratagem in the building trade unions. The employers’ lockout began on May 30, 1958, as the electrical contractors sought a wage freeze at the previous rate of pay of $2.99 per hour. This aggressive action followed on the heels of a similar lockout imposed on the plumbers’ union on April 31. R. K. (Rollie) Gervin, the contractor’s spokesman, and far removed from his brief post–World War II stint on the BC Executive of the TLC, stated in characteristic employer language, that the industry “must keep down prices at the present level and . . . cannot condone another round of wage increases.” Pro tem president of the Vancouver local, Art O’Keeffe, described Gervin’s announcement as a “stab-in-the-back [and] . . . a treacherous breach of faith,” as it had earlier been agreed to by both sides that “no lockout or strike would take place while talks continued.”30 With growing unemployment now a major threat in the construction trades, and led by an appointed leadership of unproven qualities, the sentiment expressed earlier during the BC Electric strike was presumably also widespread among the inside wiremen; it was now the construction companies’ turn to try and take full advantage of the electrical workers and extract a financial gain from Local 213’s political quagmire.

After a collective bargaining impasse lasting almost three months and halting work on a record $52 million worth of construction projects, the provincial government appointed H. Carl Goldenberg, a prominent Montréal-based lawyer, to head up a special industrial inquiry commission, to be made up of labour and employer representatives, that would propose a collective agreement to end the impasse in bargaining.31 Local 213 nominated R. J. (Russ) St. Eloi, business manager of Local 170 of the Plumbers and Pipefitters’ union to represent them. Out of the blue, and in a public thumbing of his nose at the hierarchy of the building trades, the politically middle-of-the-road St. Eloi in turn brazenly nominated none other than George Gee to represent Local 213 on the Goldenberg Commission. St. Eloi was quoted by a Vancouver journalist to the effect that the swap of union representatives to the commission of inquiry was merely to prove that “no collusion exists between the unions.” He went on to nonchalantly tell the reporter that he did not think that anyone in Local 213 knew that he would nominate the previously ousted George Gee: “It just happened that way.”32 Blithely ignoring the recent past in his comments, this was quite obviously a sensational and politically loaded nomination. While it may have been part of a blatant retaliatory move by St. Eloi over jurisdictional disputes with Local 213 dating back a number of years, the Pacific Tribune reported that the Plumbers and Pipefitters’ International Office threatened to take punitive action immediately if Gee’s name was allowed to stand.33 Such talk, according to the Tribune, “incensed union members, who recognize that contractors had counted heavily on being able to provoke international intervention and so break their militant stand.”34 The unspoken point, however, is that St. Eloi’s nomination of George Gee to the Goldenberg Commission was also an unambiguous and prescient message to the construction companies: come to an acceptable agreement with us or be forced to deal with the Reds. In the midst of a prolonged and unnecessary lockout, it was clear that desperate times required desperate measures. And Communists were waiting in the wings in several Vancouver locals of the building trades. If employers didn’t want them opposite at the bargaining table, then they needed to negotiate and settle with non-Communist, or even anti-Communist, union representatives. Otherwise, the membership would find ways to have Reds represent their interests again. The question publicly posed was made abundantly clear: who would the construction companies rather deal with, them or us?

In the end, employers and the inside wiremen pre-empted the Goldenberg Commission and agreed to a collective agreement on their own accord on August 15.35 The employers’ decision may have been hastened by a court ruling that found two major Vancouver electrical contracting firms, Hume and Rumble Limited and J. H. McRae Company Limited, guilty of “having illegally locked out their . . . electricians.”36 On the other hand, given the dubious end result in the recently settled BC Electric dispute, the electricians had every reason to be wary of yet another “neutral” government-brokered decision; equally as important, the inside wiremen avoided a potential industry-wide imposition of a collective agreement and were thus able to continue to play one building trade agreement with any particular union against another to their advantage.37 On August 30, it was announced that Local 213 had climbed down from its initial ambitious demands—first a sixty cents per hour increase, then thirty-six cents per hour—and signed a new contract for a much more modest eleven cents, to $3.10 per hour—or a 3.3% increase.38 The agreed-upon raise of eleven cents nevertheless made the inside wiremen for the first time the top wage-earning group in the construction industry. The Vancouver Sun reported that “the pace-setting electricians have [also] won fringe benefits that are the envy of the other trades—like coffee breaks twice a day.”39 The International Office of the IBEW, meanwhile, had to live with the fact that a red tinge of influence had briefly been given back to George Gee as he was again in the public limelight, this time as Local 213’s representative on the Goldenberg Commission. But they were able to extract some measure of revenge: the provocative and defiant Russ St. Eloi was quickly dropped as Local 213’s nominee and replaced by the more politically conservative Les Crampton, representing distant and isolated Prince Rupert IBEW Local 344.40 St. Eloi, an evident agitator, was thanked for his input and told to keep his pants on straight, while Gee was short-circuited yet again as the lockout quickly ended and the Goldenberg Commission packed up its bags and was dissolved. Not that the International Office was paying close attention as it may have been in talks in Washington with American employers at meetings of the Council on Industrial Relations. However, before disappearing, the inquiring task force issued a terse and economically discerning statement: “it is evident to this Commission that a chaotic condition exists in the Building Construction Industry in B.C.”41 The longest and costliest construction industry work stoppage up to that date in British Columbia was over.42

Hoping that the recent strikes had proved the worth of Local 213’s anti-Communist leadership group, the IBEW’s International Office partially lifted the trusteeship in July 1958. Elections were going to be allowed earlier than originally announced, but general meetings were deemed too unpredictable to be resumed at this early date.43 The electoral contest witnessed a curious “right-wing fight for power,” with mostly Gee-era coup plotters running against similarly conservative candidates.44 The left, still apparently somewhat in disarray, chose to focus its efforts and contest only a few positions in these elections. The recent strikes and current lockout had demonstrated to a discerning rank and file that conservative trade unionists could also be militant; spearheading job action was clearly not the sole prerogative of the “left.” The appointed executive board had not allowed itself to be bullied by employers overtly seeking to take advantage of the recent turmoil within Local 213, and it had also managed to downplay the irritating interventions and pronouncements of a remote International Office.45 Justifying Doug Collins’s earlier suppositions, John Carson thought that because of the ongoing political problems existing within the local union, the appointed leadership at the time needed to fly their trade union colours and was “going for too much.”46

The balloting, fortuitously timed to take place toward the middle of the employers’ lockout of the embattled inside wiremen, saw the hoped-for politically anti-Communist majority returned. Angus MacDonald, for example, comfortably won the influential position of president of Local 213.47 Holding in check the conservative majority on the newly elected executive board was Jack Cody, formerly known as John “Curly” Wilson, a Mackenzie-Papineau veteran, and at the very least a quiet supporter of Communist Party activists within Local 213. A popular leader of the BC Electric gas workers, Cody won the powerful post of business manager by defeating Art O’Keeffe by a minuscule forty-eight vote margin, 1,174 votes to 1,126.48 There were at least three others sympathetic to the local’s left faction (among them John Kapalka, Ben Margolese, and David Caverly) also elected as representatives of their respective trade units.

There are several reasons that explain Cody’s notable electoral success toward the end of the anti-communist McCarthyist era. First, the new political landscape emerging within Local 213 in 1958 reflected the continuing reality of a majority composed largely of workers employed by the BC Electric Company. The latter retained a conservative trade union outlook, as they enjoyed good benefits and year-round employment. The left, meanwhile, knew that most of its support would come from the line contractors (Unit 2) and the inside wiremen (Unit 6), where physically arduous working conditions and periodic unemployment were constant reminders of the need for a strong and militant leadership; Cody proved temporarily capable of winning votes from these two historically intertwined groups as he was both from the BC Electric Company and also on the left of the political spectrum. Second, the residual anger directed at supporters of the trusteeship imposed upon the local union by the IBEW’s International Office, a number of whom had been candidates, lingered. Third was the bitterness engendered within some of the membership by the failed tactic of the recently wasted three-week strike against the BC Electric Company; it was not an insignificant factor that the negotiating team in this regard had been headed by appointed business manager Jack Waplington, one of the lead conspirators in the scheme resulting in George Gee’s lifetime expulsion from the union. Finally, the divisions in the anti-Communist group were undeniably helpful to Cody’s electoral success. Local 213’s hotly contested election for business manager witnessed previously private in-fighting between the appointed executive board members now come into public view. Eager to enjoy the status and power associated with union office, the previous co-operation of this politically anti-Communist group was now discarded and thrown to the curb. Lineman John Kapalka, who was briefly on the executive board at this time, remembered well the relationships among the leading personalities of the board during the early part of the trusteeship: “They didn’t get along . . . they were fighting like crazy.”49 Running for the only significant salaried position in Local 213, that of business manager, were Jack Waplington, Malcolm Morrison, Jack McSorley, and Art O’Keeffe. They criticized each other relentlessly during the electioneering. Art O’Keeffe, in particular, felt he was being snubbed by his former allies and lashed out at a meeting of the inside wiremen on May 26, 1958. It was only two months before the mail-in balloting was to take place. He had been directing the meeting but asked Brother Charles Sumpton to temporarily take the chair so he could speak his mind from the floor on the latest executive board report:

He began to speak against the Executive Board report . . . [but was] ruled out of order. After some altercations . . . Bro. O’Keeffe started to speak again in the same vein and was [again] ruled out of order. Uproar from the floor, Bro. Sumpton vacated the Chair.50

Jack Cody had obviously also participated in this first round of voting. As no one candidate received more than the required 50 percent of the votes on the first ballot, a second run-off was required between the two highest vote-getters from the initial round, Art O’Keeffe and Jack Cody. With a hard-working campaign committee putting in a lot of sweat-equity, and little or no solidarity on the right, Cody squeaked through as the winner. He was evidently assisted by the already-elected president Angus MacDonald’s personal dislike of candidate Art O’Keeffe, to the point that O’Keeffe later wrote: “he [Angus MacDonald] most actively supported Bro. J. Cody against myself.”51 Personal animosities and their ensuing political fallouts have a place in history, and within the frame of reference of Local 213 during the late 1950s and the first half of the 1960s, this might be a fitting illustration.

Riding the wave of militancy into office, the mostly unassuming and easy-going Jack Cody was unable to publicly advance his cause to the rank and file as an effective business manager. Even though he might have pulled some strings in the St. Eloi affair immediately following his election, he could not promote himself in the columns of the local’s monthly newspaper, the Business Manager’s News Letter (which had replaced Live Wire), as George Gee had been able to do, since editorial control had been taken out of the hands of its founder, the articulate and hard-working scribe, Tom Forkin, in June 1955. Held in high regard, Forkin was the youngest brother from the Irish-Canadian family of six radical siblings from Brandon, Manitoba, and an often-eloquent exponent of the twin merits of trade unionism and socialism. Control of the local’s mailing list, always a source of controversy, had also been seized by the more conservative members of the board. They promptly spoon-fed the rank and file, hundreds of whom were new members during this growth period in British Columbia and held traditional views that did not question the status quo. Cody, however, prompted by apparently newfound supporters from the inside wiremen’s unit, in particular a certain William E. (“Electrical Bill”) Stewart, who “raised the question of the International Trusteeship” in February 1959, was insistent that Local 213’s autonomy be returned.52 A few months later, at an executive board meeting of the local April 23, 1959, the “question of autonomy was discussed for four hours” and Cody also threatened to resign unless the International Office relented a year early in its initial five-year suspension of the local union.53 Cody’s threat to resign could not easily be shrugged off by the powers that be in the IBEW since he had almost single-handedly brought the BC Electric’s gas workers into Local 213 only a few years before, in 1954; hypothetically, at least, he might also have been capable of taking the now approximately three hundred dues-paying members out. By May 28 of that year John Raymond, International vice-president, had sent a telegram “giving permission for General Meetings in June.”54 It was probably the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion veteran’s most important political victory during his two-year stint as business manager. Incisive, but often cynical in his analysis of key figures in the history of Local 213, Terry Simpson volunteered a more critical assessment as to why Cody soon became a one-term business manager:

Jack Cody was not the kind of guy that liked to be in the limelight, he didn’t like to be in a leadership position, he always had to be persuaded to take one. I remember supporting him for Business Agent and he was a terrible disappointment. He always had this tendency to be the nice guy. . . . He couldn’t take the heat. And if he wasn’t an alcoholic, he was verging on being one, so his health suffered. . . . There were all kinds of times when he didn’t come to meetings. . . . But if pressed directly he would flare back with great courage, élan, verve; he was great under momentary, visible pressure. Jack was a great guy but he was pushed into a position in which he really should not have been.55

The biennial executive board elections of September 1960 were preceded by the resignations in February of executive board members John Kapalka and Dave Caverly after the IBEW International Office vetoed the election of delegates to the Canadian Labour Congress convention, scheduled to take place in Montréal in April. The Washington-based International Office had seen fit to unilaterally replace Local 213’s delegates with electrical workers of its own choosing. The veto followed on the heels of the arbitrary removal of the assistant business manager, Art Goy, who had been appointed by Jack Cody. The dismissal of the wiremen’s representative (for the second time in his career) was apparently connected to a petition eventually signed by 1,066 electrical workers, which asked the BC Federation of Labour to assist them in regaining the autonomy Local 213 had once enjoyed.56 But the petition was predictably rejected by the International Office. When contacted by the BCFL, International President Gordon Freeman replied like a remonstrating father that “it was up to the local union members to conduct themselves properly and in line with [IBEW] international policies.”57 Perhaps too sincere in what he perceived to be the truth of the matter, John Kapalka declared to the press that the IBEW was wrongly informed on a key issue: “The international is using the Communist bogey to keep the local in trusteeship, but I know there is not a single Communist on the board.”58

Local 213’s 1960 elections thus witnessed slates representing left and right run against each other, the tumultuous events of the recent past having succeeded, if nothing else, in polarizing the electrical workers. The right had meanwhile managed temporarily to patch up its differences, while Jack Cody was convinced to abandon the post of business manager and run for president against Angus MacDonald. This was an electoral contest in which he lost by a 30 percent difference in the final vote count, along with the other representatives of the left-wing slate.59 The remnants, and rebuilding elements, of the Communist faction inside Local 213 could sense even then that Angus MacDonald was an important stumbling block to progressive policies within Local 213, and that he was the executive board figure who needed to be defeated in elections. At the national labour convention in Montréal, appointed delegate MacDonald had even made a name for himself as a Gompers-type of trade unionist when he had strongly objected to the CLC’s vote of entering into a formal political alliance with the CCF.60 This long-advocated monetary and political alliance, similar in nature to the relationship with unions inside the Labour Party in Britain, led the following year to the founding of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Canada. But Angus MacDonald strongly disapproved. Following on directives from Vice-President John Raymond and their union’s International Office, he led a forty-man IBEW delegation out of the vast CLC meeting hall in Montréal in protest.61 MacDonald declared that the trade union movement should remain politically neutral as it was in the United States and that its participation in the new party “would be detrimental to our union . . . we favour instead intensive political education.”62 Returning from his trip to Montréal, Angus MacDonald then faced off against Jack Cody in Local 213’s presidential election contest. John Kapalka was to run for the post of business manager against Art O’Keeffe; the left faction’s idea of running a non-Communist—a “fellow traveller” in the McCarthyist vocabulary of the time—for the local’s top position was an all-too-transparent attempt to deflect the anticipated Red smear campaign.63 However, relying on a reliable tactic used against left-wing administrations everywhere, Angus MacDonald and the right-wing slate focused immediately on Cody’s perceived weak financial acumen and demanded that “we examine L.U. 213 deficit and . . . all Unit Executive Committee members . . . be called for discussion of this problem.”64 Subsequent column headlines in the Vancouver newspapers give a distinct indication as to the inevitable public red-baiting flavour of the campaigning that took place side by side with the internal focus on union finances. The Vancouver Sun titled a report “Anti-Red Slate Named by Union,” while the Daily Province crowed about the results in a column headlined “Reds Lose in Union Elections.”65 Upon releasing these pleasing electoral results to the public, a spokesman for the new executive board pointedly informed a reporter “that the removal of Communist influence from the union could mean removal of the trusteeship the union was placed under by the International in 1955.” In another politically incisive remark, this same reporter interviewed an unidentified electrical worker, apparently an anti-Communist, following Cody’s defeat. He commented with typical McCarthyist vocabulary: “Now we have a mandate from the members showing they want us to run a trade union and not a political party like the Reds try to make it.”66

There followed a succession of difficult, yet ultimately successful, negotiations with employers. Led by newly elected business manager, Art O’Keeffe, and riding an attendant wave of media publicity, the anti-Communist executive board would essentially stay in place until 1966. Tight control of mailing lists and careful editorial supervision of the Business Manager’s News Letter, followed by outbursts of suitably militant statements to the local press during negotiations—along with good collective agreements—ensured a succession of seemingly unassailable solid election victories for a conservative majority.67 Despite the false start with Malcolm Morrison, it appeared the hopes of the International Office of the IBEW were now in the process of being realized; Local 213 was finally going to revert to a quiescent business union model with the usual bumps along the road when it came to collective bargaining, but trade union “normalcy” being the hoped-for frame of reference.

Jack Cody did not then merely disappear from the stage of Local 213’s political drama. He was unceremoniously kicked out, along with four other left-wing supporters in April 1962. With large mega-projects such as the Peace River Dam commencing in the far northern reaches of British Columbia, master contracts or “international agreements,” were imposed on the multi-jurisdictional job sites. With several local unions from the IBEW having members present on such large construction crews, the result was that the electrical workers would have to pay two sets of union dues, one to the local union whose jurisdiction covered the site, the other to their local of origin. As a circular surreptitiously mailed to the homes of several hundred members of Local 213 explained in November 1961, this set-up meant that it “provides for double taxation for single representation.” There were other issues covered by the non-sanctioned circular as well, mostly having to do with an increase in Local 213’s dues structure that would help to reduce the deficit and cover an increase in salary for the local’s new leadership team. The proposed increase in dues was also intended to stabilize the Electrical Estates corporation, set up in 1949, during the Gee era, to handle the Dunsmuir Street union hall and ancillary expenses, such as the cafeteria, off IBEW accounts. Finally, the circular asked that Local 213 adhere to past policies of the inside wiremen’s dispatching method, the “Union Seniority Hiring Policy.”68

Changes to the way unemployed electricians were chosen for companies requesting electrical workers might lead to favouritism and an unfair distribution of available jobs. These points of discussion appeared at first glance to be middle-of-the-road matters, expressions of common sense and, at most, calls for review relating to a sense of democracy and fairness. No inflammatory language or intent can be discovered anywhere in the pamphlet. Yet it was still too much for the conservative group now in charge of Local 213. In particular, questions and criticism relating to a more “flexible” approach in dispatching, whereby unemployed electricians were sent out to various job sites, was not to be permitted if companies were able to recall by name a few of the more productive wiremen they might already know. Despite the record-long lockout during the construction work stoppage of 1958, relations with employers were apparently considered to be of paramount importance and so needed to be repaired. No discussion of how the spare-board at the union office might be manipulated, was permitted.69 As the circular was non-authorized and only the former business manager would have had access to membership addresses, Jack Cody was immediately accused of complicity. Under questioning at an executive board meeting, he openly admitted to having written the circular and even to having signed his name to the original. For that, he received a four-year suspension from union activities. His presumably left-wing co-conspirators were also suspended. George Sharpe and George Ferarro received four-year suspensions as well, while Ian Gow and Norman Read received two years each.70

Jack Ross cut to the chase in his assessment of the non-authorized circular. The International representative wanted to make clear “he was talking purely [of] the Communist Party and their sympathizers.”71 Having the executive board then mop up the remnants of what might have been missed in 1955, the IBEW watchdog was just doing his job.

Art O’Keeffe’s election as business manager in 1960 was significant. O’Keeffe had been part of the initial group of seven electrical workers on the local’s executive board who had actively plotted the ouster of the Communists in 1955. A Catholic trade unionist originally from Campbellton, New Brunswick, he was, to all outside appearances, a loud and opinionated union man who had definitely not been shy of demonstrating his dislike for the Communist Party in the 1950s. Also a former lightweight boxing champion, he had even once declared in alliterative fashion that Canadians in “democratic institutions such as unions,” were very unlike “the tub thumping claquing clique of parroting proletariats eagerly ready to adopt every stereotyped formula proffered by those countries or people who espouse communist doctrines.”72 But publicly proclaiming an anti-Communist outlook did not mean that O’Keeffe was anti-union or pro-employer. On the contrary, John Carson recalled that Art O’Keeffe was always “a very difficult person to deal with . . . he had a very strong streak of orneriness” about him and was also very “distrustful of management.”73 Terry Simpson was far more disparaging:

Art O’Keeffe had a history that went back to the George Gee era . . . He had a lot of drive, a lot of ambition. He picked up over the years a fair amount of savvy. He was not, in the theoretical sense, particularly clever politically. But in a practical way he was a political animal: he had a phenomenal memory for names and he was a real political glad-hander. But he was involved in the George Gee affair on the wrong side . . . his personal political ambition led him into it. In later years he has treated the George Gee affair as if he wasn’t involved or as if he was a by-stander. That’s rationalizing. He was directly involved, he was in it. He was part of having my dad [Ed] suspended.

Once he had carved out his own turf, Art O’Keeffe was not the kind of creature that you might have expected, or certainly he was not what the International expected . . . He was a real bulldog. He was . . . if there is such a thing, a pure and simple trade unionist.74

Art O’Keeffe was to remain business manager of Local 213 throughout the remainder of the 1960s leading up to the Lenkurt strike. The members of the executive board continued to squabble bitterly among themselves, to the point even of bringing charges against each other to the IBEW International Office in January 1963. In a letter of defence written to Bill Ladyman, soon to be appointed Canadian vice-president of the IBEW, O’Keeffe successfully resisted charges of public slander brought against him by Angus MacDonald. In his written defence to the International Office, the combative business manager presciently declared: “I have nothing to apologize for . . . I can assure Brother MacDonald and the members that I shall not stand idly by and see him recklessly endeavor to have me supplanted as business manager through his betrayal, treachery, deceit and unprincipled actions now, or in the future.”75 Upon successfully defending himself against the charges brought upon him by his own local union president, a precarious truce ensued.76 This lull in hostilities between former allies remained in place throughout the next three years.

What may have brought an abrupt end to the internecine skirmishes in Local 213’s leadership group was the reminder that the International Office of the IBEW could be ruthless and unpredictable in its interventions in local affairs, even with anti-Communist officers in charge. A prime example of unwarranted interference came in the spring of 1963. The circumstances involved a group of linemen and their ground crews working for Peterson Electric at Shalalth and Kelly Lake, near Lillooet. Temporarily headquartered in the historic gold rush-associated town, the project involved erecting a new set of hydro lines connecting the remote Bridge River series of dams and powerhouses to Prince George. Untested technology was being integrated into the construction of these hydro lines, in this case in the form of an ultramodern and powerful Sikorsky FV-58 helicopter. The company planned to have the new helicopter carry two 9,500-pound power poles simultaneously, in contrast to the usual load of a single pole. At issue, while working in extremely rugged terrain on the eastern slopes of the Coast Mountain range, was the very real concern that working in, and under, an unproven helicopter could be dangerous and life-threatening. As events transpired, the new helicopter proved not to be sturdy enough. There were serious problems in controlling weight-shifting and its effects on the stabilizer rotator, particularly when unloading a significantly heavy object. Spilling one or both of the power poles from height could also prove deadly if it occurred before a helpless and exposed ground crew was ready to receive them.77 Unrelated reports of an accident leading to the hospitalization of Brother Orr at Kelly Lake and another much more unnerving incident at Shalalth that led to the death of Brother Toby Lee did not help ease tensions.78 These incidents were jarring reminders to the line crews of the dangers inherent in their jobs, and they became noticeably edgy about working conditions as it appeared that International vice-president John Raymond had given Peterson Electric his unilateral assent to the experimental use of the helicopter prior to notifying Local 213. The members had demanded at the previous Unit meeting “That Bro. Raymond consult the Local Union before [underlining in original] the employer is, on matters of working conditions.”79 As negotiations had also been ongoing for a new collective agreement with the line contractors during the preceding nineteen months, it was felt that it was time for additional pressure to be exerted on the employers.80 In consideration of the recent accidents in the Bridge River area, it was decided that “No member of Local 213 under the light of present circumstances shall work under helicopters.”81 Art O’Keeffe met with the provincial deputy minister of Labour May 5, with the result that a stand-off based on concerning and outright dangerous safety issues appeared to be in the making.82

A pronouncement of astonishing proportions was then delivered from faraway Toronto. IBEW Canadian vice-president, John Raymond, announced that seventeen linemen employed by Peterson Electric were suspended from the IBEW. The linemen’s unwillingness to put their lives at risk had resulted in Peterson Electric complaining about what appeared, on the surface, to be a complicit and collaborationist International officer. It is more than plausible that Raymond received his information on the helicopter issue from his colleague in BC, the omnipresent Jack Ross. And, as the line contracting operations were a closed shop, the immediate consequence was that the company fired the seventeen safety-conscious electrical workers.

It was as if someone had set off a fire alarm. Committees were hastily put in place, negotiations with Peterson Electric instantly intensified, and a telegram was immediately sent off to Joseph Keenan, International Secretary of the IBEW in Washington.83 Voicing the outrage and very real safety concerns of Local 213’s executive board, the telegram strongly protested “the action of I.V.P. [International vice-president] J. A. Raymond in sending a directive which has resulted in the dismissal of seventeen members of the L.U. [Local Union] employed by Peterson Elect. Construction on this project. Directives of this nature in our opinion make it impossible to implement the normal process of collective bargaining.” The lengthy telegram then expressly demanded that an “immediate job conference be held with our Bus. Mangr. to establish safety and working conditions on the project, & the members be immediately returned to work. We earnestly request your support on this important issue.”84

The IBEW could not sweep injury and death while working on the job under the carpet. The death and injury of two union members trumped concerns that Peterson Electric might be forced to go over budget and spend yet more money on safety procedures. Moreover, veteran lineman John Kapalka had already pointedly asked in a meeting “why conditions on H & R [Hume and Rumble] Ashcroft job did not apply to Peterson Elec. job at Shalalth?”85 The end result was a complete victory for Local 213. The long, drawn-out negotiations with the line contractors went to arbitration and was settled before the end of June, while Keenan backed the Vancouver local to the hilt. All seventeen linemen were reinstated with full backpay, and it was announced at a Unit 2 meeting June 3 that John Raymond was going to resign from his post as Canadian vice-president.86 Art O’Keeffe and his fellow linemen could savour a rare win over both a reckless company that put workers’ lives at risk and an interventionist International officer who opposed them. But the events surrounding the “Peterson Seventeen” served to remind the Vancouver electrical workers of the sometimes difficult and contradictory oppositional context in which they functioned. Having forced an International officer to step down, Art O’Keeffe might also have unknowingly painted a very large and visible target on his back. When he heard the news about Toby Lee’s death and John Raymond’s resignation, former lineman George Gee might have shaken his head in simultaneous disgust and disbelief.

While real events from the world of work intervened on an intermittent basis to stun some of the leading personalities involved in trying to shape the political culture of Local 213, successive biennial executive board elections returned many of the leading personalities in the local union to positions of influence, including several key players from what has playfully been described as the “Carrall Street gang”—workers based out of Carrall Street in Vancouver’s historic Gastown district.87 With steady jobs in Vancouver and good pay, this conservative group of electrical workers attracted politically similar people within the local, such as five of the seven original signatories of the charges filed against George Gee. Those who were more to the left, meanwhile, though greatly depleted in number by the 1955 purge, still managed on occasion to elect non-Communist, left-wing representatives from one of Local 213’s six units—among others, Tom Forkin and John Kapalka from the line contractors, and Sam Shannon and George Angus from the inside wiremen. Jack Cody, then head of the gas workers unit, still appeared to have tangible links with the Communist Party.88

The units met on different days of the week each month, but once the trusteeship was finally lifted in its entirety in 1961, the most important meeting was the general meeting held on the first Monday of every month at Local 213’s spacious and impressive union hall at 111 Dunsmuir Street, closely adjacent to downtown Vancouver.89 Despite its internal troubles, the large Vancouver local remained remarkably in character with its historical claim to be a hybrid structure integrating the horizontal features of industrial unions into the vertical and exclusionary organization of craft unions.90 In addition, as Communist Party members attempted to rebuild their political caucus within the electrical workers, notably among the inside wiremen during the late 1950s and early 1960s, they were sometimes supported by their allies in the progressive, non-Communist left. These allies and sympathizers were often elected as Local 213’s delegates to the provincial Building Trades Council, to the Vancouver and District Labour Council, to the BC Federation of Labour, or to the Canadian Labour Congress. In 1965, Local 213 sent six such delegates to the BC Federation of Labour Convention—Les McDonald, Tom Forkin, George Angus, Sam Shannon, Jim Kinnaird, and Tom Constable.91

If the electoral results of executive board elections were the only lens through which to view the Vancouver electrical workers’ local, it would appear from the outside to have the usual internal political tensions between left and right, and sometimes irreconcilable personality differences on the “right,” but for all intents and purposes the local gave the impression that it was politically stable enough during the first half of the 1960s. As events transpired, electoral results were misleading and the apparent stability was built on quicksand, a calm before the storm of the Lenkurt Electric strike in 1966.

A major issue that continually dogged Vancouver electrical workers in the postwar era was that of accessing jobs outside their immediate geographic jurisdiction, a concern that related specifically to Jack Ross. On multiple occasions it appeared that Ross made recommendations higher up the IBEW chain-of-command that were intended to limit the jurisdiction of Local 213 around the province. While there is no conclusive proof of a direct link, the end result was that workers from his former home local had difficulty in being dispatched to the electricity-oriented mega-projects then being built in British Columbia. There were specific complaints going back to the construction of the massive aluminum-focused Kitimat–Kemano project in the early 1950s, where there is also evidence of undercover RCMP surveillance of the workforce.92 As the militancy of the electrical workers in the Vancouver-based local was well known to employers, an effort to control and minimize its sway became apparent via the granting of jurisdiction to recently created Local 344 in Prince Rupert. Given that the federal government had designated Kitimat–Kemano as being of “highest priority” for “defence needs,” it appeared that Local 344 was granted its charter for purely political reasons.93 The supposition was that Ross and his superiors in the International Office had awarded the tiny northern local jurisdiction for the Canadian aluminum project to be able to control access to the gigantic worksite. Particularly infuriating to members of Local 213 was that Local 344 could arbitrarily accept, or reject, applications to work “on permit” from electrical workers belonging to other IBEW locals. No explanation was required for the approval or denial of these individual, cross-jurisdictional, work-permits.94 But it certainly helped to clarify why Les Crampton and Jack Ross shared office space in the Dunsmuir Street union hall.

The IBEW’s reduction of Local 213’s jurisdiction in British Columbia continued into the 1960s and was vehemently protested by the Vancouver-based electrical workers. On July 25, 1960, a resolution was passed at a general meeting that was direct in its request for a change in policy: “That Local 213 appeal the decision of I.V.P. [International vice-president] Raymond in granting the jurisdiction of the Revelstoke dam project to Local 993 Kamloops. That a wire to this effect be sent immediately violently protesting the decision.”95 Ross also tried to meddle with elections in the various component units of Local 213. Following election results in 1964, “Bro. Shannon asked President MacDonald for a statement regarding the interference of Bro. Ross on Local Elections.”96 In January 1965, Sam Shannon, the long-serving aggrieved chair of the inside wiremen’s unit, offered a telling report to his members in which he “pointed out on a map of details of jurisdiction of BC locals. Said he is very displeased with the way jurisdiction has been handled and that we were not given time to make any representation before a decision was made in the Vernon area.”97

To their credit the IBEW brass in Toronto responded. John Raymond had “retired for health reasons,” so newly appointed Canadian vice-president, Bill Ladyman, flew out to Vancouver on July 5, 1965, and ordered the “Executive Committee of Units #1-3-4 & 6 and Ex. Board of LU 213” to be at a “Special Meeting” with himself and Jack Ross.98 He explained to the assembled leaders of the local union that he, and he alone, “was responsible for disposition of jurisdiction in Canada. Will do what is right for best interest of members in BC.”99 The implication was that the Vancouver local should stop the campaign of vilification aimed at their International representative. Local 213’s Minute Books do not indicate the tone of the ensuing discussion or whether the assembled local leaders asked how Ladyman could possibly make an informed decision on jurisdiction without information from someone on the ground in British Columbia—in other words, Jack Ross.

The “Special Meeting” and Ladyman’s remonstrations do not seem to have made much of a difference. In November, it was moved “we recommend that we appeal to the I. P. [International president] the allocation of jurisdiction on the Peace & Columbia & the assignment of our jurisdiction to other Locals.”100 The complaints about jurisdiction, and hence access to jobs for members of Local 213, were persistent and appeared on a semi-regular basis. These complaints were often tied to the surge in demand by employers during the periodic construction of large construction projects around the province.101 Rightly or wrongly, the Vancouver electrical workers felt that Jack Ross was directly involved in these important decisions.

Further aggravation from the International representative helps to explain his persistently poor reputation. By mid-1965 the focal point for Local 213’s growing and documented unhappiness with Jack Ross was his questionable dealings with the BC District Telegraph Company (BCDT). The company, which specialized in installing and maintaining fire and burglar alarms, had been stalling in the midst of a year-long set of difficult negotiations with Local 213. A breakthrough seemingly appeared when one division of BCDT’s unionized workforce voted by a narrow margin on February 8, 1965 to accept an offer of a collective agreement put to them by the company.102 However, Art O’Keeffe and the rest of his negotiating team repudiated the vote from this single coterie of workers among the larger group and decided to wait for approval from the International Office to conduct a strike. It is unclear from court documents as to how BCDT was able to conduct a vote unilaterally within the lone section—without Local 213’s participation or assent—but it was to prove the undoing of the attempt to wrest more concessions during bargaining. Then, on April 22, a disgruntled Art O’Keeffe reported at a union meeting the unsettling news that “six out of 12 men in Plant Dept. were terminated.”103 Even more insidious, there was a company-supported move at the same time “to support dissidents [who] endeavoured to throw out the I.B.E.W. by applying for decertification and revoking the check-off.”104 But the heart of the issue was that Local 213’s negotiating team refused to sign the proffered collective agreement. Instead, they patiently persisted in waiting for permission from their International Office to use the traditional threat of a strike to motivate the company to increase its offer. None of this was unusual in the collective bargaining arena, though the refusal to accede to a majority vote of one group of workers could be considered somewhat risky.

The move to wait for strike approval backfired. To the local union’s shock and dismay, it was discovered on May 30 that Jack Ross had personally intervened two weeks before and signed the proffered agreement with BCDT on behalf of Local 213.105 The Washington headquarters of the IBEW had apparently been aware of the secret and parallel set of negotiations with the company and may even have instigated the intervention.106 Months later the International Office was still insisting that Local 213 officials recognize “the right of the International and in particular of Jack Ross, International Representative . . . to sign the agreement.”107 Art O’Keeffe and his negotiating team had, it seemed, been betrayed in their collective bargaining efforts.

Initially stunned, O’Keeffe was naturally outraged and repudiated Ross’ actions. Considering the newly signed contract to be to its advantage and exploiting the divisions within the union, the company immediately paid an increase in wages to all its employees retroactive to February 8 as per their hoped-for agreement. It simultaneously embarked on court proceedings in an attempt to have the contract signed with Ross recognized as a legal document in good standing. This distressing state of affairs was turned on its head with Local 213’s victory in BC Supreme Court and by their increasingly indignant business manager, Art O’Keeffe. On November 30, 1965, Justice G. F. (George) Gregory dismissed the case initiated by the company and found that “only the local as certified bargaining agent had the authority to agree to the terms and . . . execute the agreement.”108 The judge was complimentary, even generous, in his initial comments directed toward Jack Ross, writing that the International representative “was acting in what he thought was the best interests of the Brotherhood and perhaps of the trade union movement generally.” Changing his tone, Justice Gregory then sternly concluded: “His good intentions, however, are not sufficient to give him authority to sign on behalf of the Local and I hold as a matter of law he did not have that authority.”109

Despite the decisive legal ruling, the damage was done. Art O’Keeffe would be stymied in his attempt to restart serious negotiations with BCDT. A telegram from International President Gordon Freeman dated January 4, 1966, once again denied Local 213 permission to strike.110 Persistent to the end, O’Keeffe planned to address the IBEW convention, the last step of any appeal process within the electrical workers’ organization, to render a verdict in his favour. In his letter of appeal the embattled and increasingly exasperated business manager commented:

Local 213 I.B.E.W. did everything humanly possible to restore unity with the BC District Telegraph Co. Ltd. Employees . . . all efforts were expended on the part of Local 213 to ensure that the I.B.E.W. continued as a certified bargaining agent for all employees under the British Columbia Labour Laws. The Union received no support or co-operation from the International Office and the Union was impeded in its efforts to do a proper job. The dispute took approximately one year to settle. The entire case has been most time consuming, complicated and very costly to Local 213, all of which was completely unnecessary because of the attitude of International Representative Ross and International Vice-President Ladyman.111

The IBEW convention was slated to take place in St. Louis in September. It was a long way off and the appeal would eventually be denied as other events would intercede and sidetrack the attempts to have the local union’s bargaining tactics respected. A collective agreement was eventually signed with the BCDT in February 1966, and was much the same as had been rejected by the negotiating team a year earlier. Despite local union efforts, the settlement finally agreed to must have been viewed as a setback. As Art O’Keeffe had ironically complained years earlier, it appeared once again that employers were attempting to obtain the desired results by “trying to use our International Offices as their wailing walls.”112

The real problem, yet again, was that the divisions between the leadership of the local union and the American headquarters of the IBEW were now apparent to all interested observers, as was the enmity directed toward the latter’s veteran representative in Vancouver, Jack Ross. The rank and file in Local 213 was not long in responding. At a general meeting on November 1, 1965, a resolution was proposed calling for the immediate replacement of Jack Ross as the International representative for BC.113 Union activists were undoubtedly emboldened by the outcome in the Peterson Electric tragedy two years earlier, wherein International vice-president John Raymond had been forced to retire, and were seeking a similar dénouement in relation to Jack Ross. But the resolution was tabled to a future gathering, demonstrating, perhaps, the reluctance of the local’s leadership to totally condemn one of their own, a high-ranking and powerful officer of the union. Undeniably, however, a sizable proportion of the membership had had enough.

Another factor adding pressure to this crescendo of disharmony and increasingly unstable political state of affairs was the sheer number of new electrical workers sworn into Local 213 in the 1960s. The number of new workers becoming members of the Vancouver local from 1956 to about 1964 was low to stable. Even then, by 1960, Local 213 could boast that: “We are [the] largest [IBEW] local in Canada.”114 But 1965 and 1966 were especially noteworthy for the number of new workers being inducted into the union. For example, in one month alone, September 1965, fifty-nine new electrical workers were initiated into Local 213, and then seventy-seven members were inducted on March 31, 1966. There were now around 3,300 members in the Vancouver local.115 This flood of new members consisted mostly of workers (many of them from Britain) who hadn’t experienced the Great Depression as adults and were only peripherally affected by the McCarthy era as young men. The majority had attained some level of high school education, were literate, and expected well-paying jobs during the postwar boom. They surrounded the older members of Local 213 with their brashness and willingness to be adventurous and try out new ways of doing things. If pushed, they could also challenge authority. As historian Ian Milligan has written about this emerging generation’s effect across the country, “they brought a new inquisitive energy to a labour movement that had become increasingly staid, refusing to accept the old ways and sending a strong message to their aging leadership.”116

Though he had been inducted into the IBEW somewhat earlier, Jess Succamore, who became one of the key actors during the Lenkurt strike, was a good illustration of this new wave of workers coming into Local 213. Born in 1931, he had grown up in a working-class family in the county of Lancashire, England. His father had been a union shop steward but was not politically active outside the confines of the factory floor. Jess Succamore immigrated to Canada as a young man in 1952. After working odd jobs in Montréal and Toronto, he by chance landed a high-paying post as a lineman on the Kemano construction site near Kitimat, BC. He knew nothing about line work but was fortunate in that he only had to erect new steel and aluminum towers, not string electric wires. Working occasionally at dizzying heights, Succamore and his neophyte workmates survived by listening carefully to the foreman’s instructions and sticking close to the few real linemen on the job. That’s when he also fell in love with the natural beauty of British Columbia and decided to stay out on the west coast, working for various employers during successive years and all the while paying his union dues to the IBEW. At the beginning of the 1960s he secured a job at Phillips Cables in Vancouver, which had been organized years earlier under the umbrella of the manufacturing unit of Local 213.117 Succamore had only occasionally attended union meetings before then and knew very little about the electrical workers’ local before a marathon five-months-long strike broke out in 1962 at his place of work:

During that strike there was no money coming from the International. I couldn’t believe it. The people involved with us from Local 213 were generally good; O’Keeffe and all of them, there were no problems, but we had to raise the money ourselves to keep the strike afloat . . . it was the first time I got to look at the IBEW constitution. It said that the union’s strike fund shall not be allowed to go below two million dollars. And I says: “So what?” That’s like going to the bloody doctor with a snake bite and the doctor telling the patient: “Sorry we’ve only got one serum and we have to save that for an emergency.” Well, the patient is obviously going to die. And that’s precisely the situation we were potentially facing during the Phillips strike.118

It was during the Phillips strike that Succamore started attending Local 213’s meetings on a more regular basis. He was part of the new wave of workers entering Local 213, discovering the Vancouver electrical workers’ local for the first time. He was not entirely happy with what he found, especially as it was revealed to him that it was not uncommon for IBEW headquarters in Washington to refuse to contribute financially to its own striking electrical workers.119 In Succamore’s opinion some of the local’s leadership group were solid trade union men, like Art O’Keeffe, but others in the front office most definitely were not:

I got into a real argument with John Morrison, one of the assistant business agents. He tried to con people at a union meeting about what had taken place during the Phillips strike. I had never spoken before at a local meeting, other than to ask a question, but I stood up and took him on. Well, he was going to charge me and put me in my place . . . it was a bullshit thing, and of course it never happened. That was the first time I was noticed by those people in the union office. Before that, I was just a faceless guy.120

Tom Constable replaced John Morrison as assistant business manager four years later, but it had little to do with Morrison’s difficult relationship with Jess Succamore or with the workers who had been on strike at Phillips Cables. It was Jack Ross who again intervened and had Morrison sent back to the ranks of the working stiffs, filing complaints of “slandering or otherwise wronging a member of the I.B.E.W.” against him owing to “the background and dispute over Collins Radio.”121 The controversy that led to Morrison’s ousting began in late 1965 when electricians from Local 213 found non-union workers from Texas working on new BC Hydro microwave system towers. When Morrison confronted Ross with the presence in BC of these “Collins Radio cowboys,” he was told that Ross himself “had cleared the men as supervisory personnel, who did not have to belong to the union.”122 At first glance it appeared that a simple question, even one couched in patronizing tones, received a similarly simple answer. On the surface there was nothing to it. But according to the defence filed at the union hearing by Morrison’s counsel, none other than Art O’Keeffe was purportedly railroaded by accompanying accusations of slander directed at Jack Ross. These accusations came via “unsubstantiated evidence presented by non I.B.E.W. person, Mrs. Ann MacDonald.” As this was presumably Angus MacDonald’s wife, not exactly an objective person to have testify, O’Keeffe maintained he had “never witnessed such flagrant flouting of justice as was demonstrated . . . at this hearing.”123 The electrical workers could probably be forgiven if they doubted the credibility of President Angus MacDonald’s spouse as the main witness in the charges of defamation of character brought against John Morrison. The immediate consequence of this “she said–he said” soap opera was that Morrison lost his position in early March 1966, a post in which he had built up ten years of valuable experience. He was also suspended for three years from attending union meetings or involving himself whatsoever in Local 213’s affairs.124 The BC Telegraph affair only served to belittle the serious responsibility the membership expected from their leaders. Though the right-wing Morrison was not the most popular of assistant business managers, this arbitrary change in the leadership team simply served to rile up the membership even more. At a general meeting held on January 3, 1966, rank-and-file members again presented the previously tabled resolution from November 1 to have Jack Ross replaced as International representative. This time the assembled electrical workers voted on the resolution and returned a “near unanimous” vote for his removal.125 Art O’Keeffe added salt to the wound by recounting the “many instances over past two years during negotiations with BC Hydro where I.O. [International Office] appeared to be working against us. Read considerable correspondence to illustrate his point.”126 An increasingly combative O’Keeffe was visibly choosing sides in the internecine battles that were now becoming readily apparent to the rank and file in Local 213.

Bill Ladyman, the new Canadian vice-president of the IBEW, flew out from Toronto again to meet with Local 213’s executive board on January 13, 1966. One of the electrical workers present at the meeting kept copious notes of what transpired. Bill Ladyman expressed himself forcefully: he was alarmed at the growing Communist influence in Local 213. According to the notes, Ladyman’s solution to the problems facing the Vancouver electrical workers was to “get rid of reds in 213.” He refused to discuss the question of International Office interference or listen to the information supplied by the executive board members about Jack Ross. He preferred, instead, to “turn clock back 10 yrs . . . to McCarthyism and witch hunts.” He insisted that Local 213’s perceived problems with the International Office and Jack Ross were the “fault of Communists.”127 To an outside observer his commentary would seem to have come straight out of right field and was, on the surface, completely unrelated to the issues at hand. Having addressed himself to a knowledgeable group of insiders, Bill Ladyman’s angry and exasperated remarks must have been more than somewhat disconcerting to the assembled representatives of the executive board.

This, then, was the unhappy set of circumstances leading up to the Lenkurt Electric strike. Within an enduring framework of class tensions, and sometimes open class conflict, it was literally also a viper’s nest of personal intrigue, political factionalism, and a constant whirlwind of activity. Perhaps no different from other IBEW locals, and despite the backdrop of a firmly entrenched Washington-based version of business union co-operation with employers, Local 213’s leadership circle nevertheless appeared forced to extricate itself from a repeated set of bewildering crises.

Meanwhile, what of Les McDonald?