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Reviews / Comptes Rendus
| Andrew Neufeld and Andrew Parnaby, The IWA in Canada: The Life and Times of an Industrial Union, (Vancouver: IWA Canada/New Star Books, 2000) |
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IN THE IWA IN CANADA, Andrew Neufeld and Andrew Parnaby record the "life and times" of an industrial union that has played a major role in the development of British Columbia (and to a lesser extent Canada) since the 1930s. The union has ensured some redistribution of wealth from the exploitation of Canada's forests; in BC it also has played a role in promoting social justice and combating racism. As former BC premier Dave Barrett puts it (with feeling) in a video I show my BC history students, "[the IWA] set a standard that everybody got the same wage and you didn't get cheated because you were an immigrant." |
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The IWA in Canada is a well written and illustrated chronicle that deserves a broad audience. Throughout the book, Neufeld and Parnaby place the struggle to establish a union of all woodworkers in the industry, "from the stump to the finished product," at the centre of the story. They locate the union's origins in the early efforts of groups like the Industrial Workers of the World and the One Big Union to organize the West's blanketstiffs and bunkhousemen in a single organization. Following the collapse of the 1919 labour revolt, organization in the forest industry almost disappeared for over a decade. Then, in 1937, "reds" like Harold Pritchett, Ernie Dalskog, and Nigel Morgan, along with "depression-weary" woodworkers who remained committed to industrial unionism, founded the International Woodworkers of America in Tacoma, Washington, as part of the CIO boom. Neufeld and Parnaby make the important point that the IWA's immediate success in the United States was not matched north of the border in BC where a hostile legal and political climate prevented the great organizational breakthrough until the changes brought by World War II. By 1946, however, the IWA had won a master agreement on "the Coast" of BC and further organizational and contractual gains in the 1950s and 1960s allowed the rank and file to participate in the post-war boom and compromise "shaped by big government, big unions, big wages, and big profits." (183) As is well known, during this "golden age," anti-communists allied with the CCF and helped by government pursed the "reds" from the union. Neufeld and Parnaby portray the "reds" sympathetically as effective unionists who were respected by the membership. As IWA historian Clay Perry put it for many of the rank-and-file, "[There was] a sense that since companies, in their heart of hearts, did not believe that there should be unions, it was not a bad thing that they be matched with union reps that did not believe there should be companies." (120) |
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From the 1970s to the 1990s, government and company attacks on the IWA and a series of deep recessions marked the end of the postwar boom and compromise. Neufeld and Parnaby describe how the union and its members fought back through strikes, support for technological change to make the industry more efficient and competitive, and the continued promotion of sustainable harvesting practices. During the 1990s, some NDP policies in BC supported woodworkers and their communities. In other cases, government (and not just in BC) sided with environmental groups that wanted large areas of forest lands left in their natural state. As the Lumber Worker put it about the "Lands for Life" policy in Ontario: "The result was parks for the preservationists, compensation for companies, and nothing for workers, communities, or First Nations who depend on the forests for their living." (277) Today, the union and its members face a major assault by the neoliberal policies of provincial governments in provinces such as BC, Ontario, and Alberta and the imposition of heavy duties by the US Department of Commerce as part of the softwood lumber dispute. It appears that the IWA and its members will make a great deal of history in the next decade. |
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The IWA in Canada is popular history which emphasizes the heroic struggle of woodworkers to build "one union in wood." A large portion of the narrative focuses on BC, reflecting the longstanding commitment of the province's forest industry towns to the union. However, Neufeld and Parnaby also trace the union's efforts to expand across Canada. The authors' account of the dramatic and costly struggle to establish the union in Newfoundland in the late 1950s reveals the length to which the membership was prepared to go to expand the IWA and to improve the lives of loggers. The long and bitter 1986 strike against contracting out in BC also reveals "that when the existence of the union is threatened and obvious to the membership there is no limit to the length the membership will go to save it." (231) This is stirring stuff that unionists and other Canadians should know about. |
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The only failing of the book is that it is written largely from the point-of-view of the leadership and the institutional development of the union. There are histories of the locals but not much sense of what it was like to be a member of the union or what the union has meant to its members and communities. There is also little reflection in the latter part of the book on the nature of the leadership and the organization during the era of the postwar compromise and beyond. For example, the authors cite Bryan Palmer's critical analysis in their evenhanded description of the long ago purge of the "reds" but rely heavily on Jack Munro for their discussion of the IWA's more recent role in "stopping" Operation Solidarity in 1983. Interestingly, the current IWA president, Dave Haggard, recognizes past mistakes and the need for change in his "Reflections" at the end of the book: "We need, for instance, to recover some of the social activism and union pride that motivated our founders and predecessors. We need to rekindle the sense that the union is "us," that the union is only as strong as its members. Remember: although history is partly about "leaders," it is even more about the hundreds of thousands of working people who ... dream[ed] of a better future ...." (305–6) The context for this significant and powerful statement needed more development in the book. |
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All in all, The IWA in Canada is a good and important popular history of the union that its members should be proud of. More books like this one need to be written about the "great" unions of Canada's past and present. |
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Duff Sutherland
Selkirk College
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