Chapter 1. A Brief Retrospective
In Canada as elsewhere, the 1960s marked a decade of explosive social and cultural change. It witnessed the development of several anti-nuclear war organizations, on-campus student revolts and building occupations, women turning increasingly toward feminist issues, protests against the Vietnam War, the growth of youthful Maoist and Trotskyist circles as rivals of the Communist Party, the political reawakening of First Nations, crises in the self-identity of youth and the use of drugs, and—most compellingly from the point of view of this research—the use of unsanctioned “wildcat” strikes by young workers pushing back against the limits and restrictions of more traditional business union practices. These were troubling yet exciting times, with new issues confronting Canadians regularly on the front pages of their local newspapers, or increasingly on their new colour television sets during supper-time news hour. It is now appropriately a growing topic in Canadian historiography.1
Yet during at least one key event involving the trade union movement, there was certainly ample evidence of direct continuity from previous decades of class struggle, state repression, and interventions on the part of the IBEW International Office, in Washington, DC. A baby-boom generation of young students in Vancouver’s Lower Mainland were confronted in their educational pursuits by a huge wave of strike activity right across Canada in 1966, including the eruption of the violent Lenkurt Electric strike in the adjoining Vancouver suburb of Burnaby. It was a perplexing case of old problems resurfacing, sparked by a new issue during the turbulent sixties. Supported by a cadre of progressive trade union men, including a small number of communist electrical workers, scores of women workers fought hard during what was considered an illegal wildcat strike, but then lost a well-publicized fight due to historical factors seemingly beyond their control. Ironically (and the 1960s were full of ironies), these historical factors were definitely not new in either place or circumstance. Originally granted its local union charter in 1901, IBEW Local 213 was proud of its radical tendencies—conservative critics might have categorized them as factional irritants—though there is little doubt that Vancouver electrical workers had long been at odds with their International Office. As a consequence, Local 213 was also not a stranger to subsequent witch-hunting for red agitators.
The Lenkurt Electric strike began toward the end of April 1966, initiated by frustrated women workers forced into doing unwanted overtime work. On the surface, it appeared that a mere morning parking lot “study session” on the issue went sideways quite suddenly and turned into a spontaneous full-blown wildcat walkout. As will be recounted, it quickly became much more than that and helped to precipitate, first, a widening left-right split within Local 213 and yet another heavy-handed intervention by the IBEW’s International Office into the local union’s affairs. Second, the events at Lenkurt also resulted in a strengthening of resolve by other unions in the province toward openly defying BC Supreme Court ex parte injunctions that left-wing critics claimed were intent on recriminalizing picket lines. An important mid-decade event in what historian Bryan Palmer has termed the “Rebellious Era,” the Lenkurt episode did not end well for most of the strikers and their supporters. As was dramatically described in front-page Vancouver-area newspaper columns, there were severe repercussions for several high-ranking members of the BC trade union movement. Unlike in other areas of BC and Canada during the decade, the strikers and their supporters were badly beaten, with the end result contributing to the fragmentation of the idea of a single narrative explanation for the era, particularly as it pertains to the labour scene.
The events at Lenkurt harken back to myriad past and darker labour confrontations that erupted with violence on the picket line and prison-time for strike leaders. While putting employers on notice that rank-and-file electrical workers could certainly not be considered pushovers on the collective bargaining front, it nevertheless did not free the local from the clutches of a conservative and an increasingly concerned International Office. When confronted with the reality of an unsanctioned walkout, the representatives of the International Office in Canada and the American officials in Washington to whom they were answerable, were quickly and overtly amenable to the demands of both employers and the state. Such class collaboration was certainly not a new phenomenon as far as the IBEW was concerned, but it was symbolic of the upheaval of the 1960s that the Lenkurt strikers included a significant number of women workers. Simultaneously, there was also unfinished business to be taken care of in the form of yet another internal inquisition and punishment for left-leaning trade union militants—a cleanup of sorts due largely to a renewal of Communist activism within Local 213 in the 1950s. Caught in the sweep of the conservative IBEW net were Les McDonald and other left-wing members of the local.2 More importantly, it would be the third time in less than half a century that the International Office had intervened in Vancouver in a substantial way, provoking serious altercations at union meetings. The first such incident occurred following a vote by the city’s electrical workers to join the socialist-oriented One Big Union (OBU) in 1919 and their concomitant participation in the Vancouver general strike. On that occasion the IBEW had revoked Local 213’s charter and replaced it with another, that of the relatively short-lived Local 310.3 Following near-physical confrontations at a union meeting in late August and then legal proceedings, Local 213’s charter was eventually restored after a four-and-a-half month hiatus.4 A fragile understanding of its place in the world and an uneasy modus operandi fell into place as the Vancouver-based local limped through the next two decades. The events of the 1960s, then, can perhaps best be described as a re-emerging left-nationalist movement within the ranks of the electrical workers.
The Lenkurt Electric strike represented a strike that was lost for Vancouver-based electrical workers, not won, and this is an important distinction of the era; collective memory seems to want to forget the bitter defeats of the past, when, as those on the “left” might argue, the lessons to be learned from the analysis of a strike that is deemed to have been lost are crucial to eventually formulating winning strategies for future struggles when faced with similar circumstances. Out of the Lenkurt debacle, however, emerged the formation of a new entity in November 1966, the Canadian Electrical Workers’ Union (CEWU). Profoundly disillusioned by the response of the IBEW to the strike, the new union was led at first by the persistent and never-say-die George Brown, and staunchly supported by Jess Succamore. Within three years, in 1969, the CEWU merged with the Canadian Association of Mechanical and Allied Workers (CAIMAW), which became a founding member that same year of the Council of Canadian Unions (CCU), both dedicated to becoming democratic Canadian union organizations.5