Jason Kenney edges closer to blaming Albertans for the province’s COVID-19 predicament

Right you are, DJC, although I’d certainly hope my union wouldn’t be representing me in a posthumous capital filing. I would definitely (if I survived) appreciate my union’s help with the workers’ compensation board, too.

But I have wondered where the union movement has been in the Wild Kenneydemic Rising province. It’s so different there than here in BC—or, at least, they way it used to be. At risk of sounding a bit ‘in-my-day-sonny,’ I have felt the comparison in person.

I started paying dues to the International Woodworkers of America union as a teenager, Somas sawmill. In the proverbial seven years I was a member, the base rate (greenchain, cleanup, tree-planter, &c) went from $5 to over $15. Port Alburnout was the highest paid community in Canada for much of this time, every sort of retailer from cars to department stores filled the town (even a four-storey Woodward’s store). I was the only witness (I liked to make my lunch before a few hundred loggers trampled through the lunchroom) to the grumpy old faller who discovered a contractual infraction which became known as “No Pie No Work” —and which picketed off about 7,000 IWA and Pulp Workers for the day (a Thor’s Day, I recall, because we had to hang around in camp—no cook shack, mind—to marshal for Freya’s Day. Or drive the rough logging mainline to town and watch the spectacle— and to get back somehow). Our local (1-85) was notoriously militant in this heady time, sending “flying pickets” to operations throughout the Big Island on the slightest pretence. If unionized tree-planters thought the nursery stock smelled funny, our local would take immediate action to protect us from fungicides (although paying juvenile-spacers a $3/hr saw rate was rejected by our committee which was composed entirely of fallers who rather wanted their own special rate to apply to falling trees less than 8-inches diameter). Of course that party ended in ‘81 when, after striking all summer, settling for 15% over three (can you imagine!), then picketed out by pulp mill unions for another month, 4,000 M&B employees were laid off immediately the pulp union settled (all the car dealerships left within a week, some the very same day as the layoff notices; within four years the fire marshal ordered abandoned chain stores torn down, giving the once vibrant downtown a toothless boxer look). I, naturally, resorted to my usual sojourn to Alberta to find work.

Are there flying pickets in Alberta? That grocery would be a no-brainer—I mean, ‘back in my day’… (union membership in the BC forest is now less than a quarter what it was, and I don’t think there’s been anything but low, single-digit or zero raises ever since ‘81! I was cruising timber in a mid-Coast camp a few decades later, in my forties, and, looking around the cook shack, realized I was the youngest guy there. The IWA was in full decline (it eventually rolled in with the Steelworkers).

I was also a member of the Northern Alberta Brotherhood of Dairy Workers in the decrepit Palm Dairy plant in Edmonton during one of my sojourns, late 70s. We made ice cream, popsicles and whipped cream pressurized with laughing gas—and thus, were considered essential service, not permitted to strike but always happy. I had to earn acceptance as the only male on the production line to wear a hairnet —I more than doubled production of the dogger I replaced (he had a bad back), something that the IWA would never approve of (and let you know, in no uncertain terms, by unofficial communique). Most of the workers on the line were elder Ukraine women who’d worked loyally at the plant since they immigrated many years before. They explained to me that we were ‘essential workers’ because babies need their milk—and, presumably, the sugary junk food this plant was 100% devoted to, as well. The ladies brooked no criticism of the spineless union situation. One day I saw a new woman in the lunchroom: she looked out of place but sat with me because I was generally shunned with my long hair n all. She was curious, educated—and Jewish. And I thought, what on earth is she doing here in this bastion of scarcely-veiled bigotry and matronly conservatism? ‘Bout a month later the Teamsters raided the loading dock to sign up the all-male NABDW employees there—which caused quite a commotion in the lunchroom, a spiteful, ethno-gender-ideological cult-war—but my interesting lunch partner had suddenly quit. I always wondered if she was a mole staking the joint out for the JimmyHoffians (my romantic streak showing). Or if any of my erstwhile “Brothers” in dairy ever did a real job action, Teamster or otherwise. I never stuck around to find out. Riding the city bus home after my last shift (the nice little Babas served me a cupcake at last coffee break for the occasion), guy sitting next to me says: “You must be a butter-maker—you smell like butter.” And I said: “I was.” Essential worker for the babies.

Other sojourns, these times instead to the now-cosmopolitan arch-corporatocracy of the Bow, taught me that Alberta is well-practiced at labour relations. My acquaintances, sprinkler-fitters, high-steel workers, and sundry heavy construction labourers in a very busy town related manys the tale of their unions getting slapped down and kicked backwards, decertified or raided by, essentially, fake “unions.” Meanwhile, out in the bush (I was a faller, mostly), it was a matter of tricky negotiation and pseudo-union-card trickery to figure out what union you were supposed to belong to in which camp. “This’d never happen in BC!” I’d pronounce, posing with a caulk boot up on a freshly cut stump. To a couple other work refugees from BC. They’d concur in typical, expletive fashion.

Since then, I’d often wondered if a pervasive sort of incessant, anti-union dog whistle was playing in Alberta like undifferentiated background noise and eroding collective subconsciousness. I mean, one that only unionized British Columbians could hear in contrast with the more discernible moose-call of unionism back in BC. Both, apparently, had their charms. At least back in the day.

Yes, things a sure changed since the good old days. I felt it coming on when I started seeing Alberta Report appearing in the toilet stalls in logging camps up and down the Coast—then it’s near-twin brother, BC Report. I watched the gun registry gin tens of thousands of once loyal Dippers into voting Reform and Socred. And an era of ambivalence about trade unionism ensued, usually only appearing as Judy to the profiteers’ Punch. My take-away, in my dotage, is that sometimes—used to be all the time, back in my day, sonny—job action is essential, and if it doesn’t want to look like partisan political posturing, it has to at least show up when workers’ lives are being put directly in the path of danger.

Thnx for the reminder. I really hope unions show up more in this Covid crisis. It won’t be over soon and I still believe we need them to. If I were a unionized grocery worker threatened by scofflaw Covidiots, I know I’d expect them to. My experiences have been somewhat mixed over the years, but I still think trade unionism is needed—especially when it comes to worker safety, for heaven’s sake!

Be safe!