Les Walker Interview: Mine-Mill and Smelter Workers

SP_FC_3803_U54_N_5_1_Side2 Les Walker V2.mp3

Recorded: 1966

Transcript by Donna Sacuta, 2025

Les Walker [00:00:00] The Trail local was organized in August 1938, and we paid our $1.50 a month dues to the local, and the situation there was very, very anti-labour, extremely anti-labour. So much so that the union was organized pretty well underground. It was about that time that O.S. Bro, B-R-O, Blackie Bro, who was business agent for the Structural Iron and Steel Workers on the Grand Coulee Dam, was paying a visit to Trail and in talking to one of the riggers, he found out that at that time, the man was getting paid $4.50 a day, and was working below a swing stage. In other words, they dropped the swing stage as far as they could from the top of a 429-foot stack, putting bands on the stack because there’d been a crack there in the zinc stack. In order to reach the bottom two bands, they had had to hang hook ladders on the bottom of the swing stage. And when he was asked how much he was getting, he was getting paid $4.50 a day, working 426 feet off the ground, and that just horrified him.

Les Walker [00:01:29] He wrote to the American Federation of Labor headquarters and asked for their permission and support to organize the Trail smelter. Well, they wrote back and gave him that permission, but it had to be done at his own expense. So he contacted Ernie Winch in Vancouver, secretary at that time of the provincial CCF [Co-operative Commonwealth Federation] and asked what support he could expect from the CCF party. Winch reminded him that the last secretary of Local 271 at that time in Trail, of the Western Federation of Miners, the day that Ginger Goodwin had been shot. Well, that sort of cooled off Bro’s desire to organize the Trail smelter. In the meantime —

Interviewer [00:02:25] This was around 1938, was it?

Les Walker [00:02:26] That was around 1938, yeah. Meantime, Arthur Evans had come into town and the local had been set up, and was steadily organizing without the benefit of checkoff or recognition, of course, or anything else. Then the war came, and immediately following the war, legislation was passed which gave the worker the right to belong to a trade union of his choice. It also very generously gave the employer his right to belong to an association of his choice, which provided for certification of, and recognition of trade unions. Later on, the provision was made for the checkoff. We’ll say more about that later.

Les Walker [00:03:18] However, Trail felt that they had sufficient members and applied for certification in 1944, 1943, but we lost it because we’d signed up too many shift bosses who were not acceptable as coming under our jurisdiction. So we had to continue to pay our dues to maintain our membership and increase our membership until finally in 1944, while Don Guise, who’s the present business agent for the Civic Workers Outside Employees in Vancouver, he was our international representative there and we secured certification.

Interviewer [00:04:11] When was this?

Les Walker [00:04:12] That was in 1944. The first agreement was signed in January 1945 and of course being under, still under the national war orders, there is no provision in the first agreement for payment of wages of any kind. About all there is is recognition of the union, recognition of management, and seniority, provision for seniority, which the union wanted straight company seniority. Blaylock, who was the managing director, wanted plant seniority so they compromised. Now they had both.

Interviewer [00:04:54] Did they have a checkoff?

Les Walker [00:04:57] The checkoff came later, they didn’t have the checkoff originally. The checkoff also, by the way, has dealt a very severe blow to unions and is possibly the reason for so much disruption amongst the unions in that as soon as the unions got the checkoff, that very fact destroyed the shop stewards’ system. Previously, we depended on our shop stewards to collect the dues, and the system was that every month, as you paid your dues, you got a coloured button which indicated your dues were paid for that month and you put them—

Speaker 4 [00:05:40] Excuse me, Dad.

Les Walker [00:05:41] On your coat.

Interviewer [00:05:46] So, now, without the button, what problem did that cause?

Les Walker [00:05:54] Well, it meant that without the button, you see, there was no concern as to whether your dues were paid because they’re taken off your paycheque. So the shop steward, in that respect, was unnecessary. We have been very particular about maintaining our shop steward system, especially for the processing of grievances, [door slams] but many other unions have relaxed and the shop stewards’ system isn’t as good as it used to be. In fact, even with us it is not as good, the shop steward doesn’t feel that he is important as a union officer as he used to be. It seemed they have lost contact with the men. So that as of today, if the checkoff was suddenly cancelled, and all unions were forced to suddenly revive their shop steward system, there’d be quite a little time before they got back into the swing again.

Les Walker [00:06:52] However, we were particularly warned against that and we’ve made it our business to maintain the shop stewards’ system as fully and as completely as possible, under the circumstances. And of course also our safety, because under the Metalliferous Mines Act, there is no provision for a joint safety inspection, that is by company and management. Section 18 of the Metalliferous Mines Act says that wherever there are more than 25 men employed, the workmen themselves will make an inspection of the mine once each month, and make their report, and send a copy of the report to the owner, agent, or manager and a copy to the mines inspector.

Interviewer [00:07:40] And this is today.

Les Walker [00:07:41] This is today, that’s in existence today. So the companies of course they operate under the Workmen’s Compensation Board provision for joint safety inspection and they don’t like this independent inspection of the workers. So in order to avoid a head-on collision on the question I advise our men to go ahead with the joint, go along on the joint safety inspection, but any time anything is talked down at the joint meeting, to sit down separately after they’ve met with the company, hold their own meeting, make out their own report on items that the company did not want included, put it in your report, send it to the company, to the Workmen’s Compensation Board and to the mines inspector. In that way we are fulfilling our obligation under the Act. We have been requested by companies not to do that. I guess they don’t like it, but we consider it’s damned important from our angle.

Les Walker [00:08:49] Well, conditions in Trail, after we were certified and got the checkoff, conditions gradually improved. The wages increased. We gradually got the shift differentials, the statutory holidays, the vacation with pay provisions, and increased wages. The labour rate at the time of certification was $2.75 a day plus a bonus.

Interviewer [00:09:19] That’s the basic.

Les Walker [00:09:20] That’s right. But the bonus went up or down as the, according to the will of the company practically, no one else could figure it out.  I’ll say this for the Trail workers, that when it finally was put to a vote that we do away with the bonus, the bonus for some strange reason, in that month was higher than it had ever been in history. But they still voted it down.

Interviewer [00:09:51] When was this?

[00:09:52] That would be about 1946 or 1947 or 1948. And then after that, for a year or two, we had what they called an ‘interim adjustment’. The company would not let loose of the old bonus system. They agreed on a wage rate and then there was plus an interim adjustment of 50 cents a day, and then around 1949, we finally got rid of the interim adjustment. That went down the drain. But since the plant has been organized, the number of men has been reduced drastically. The amount of machinery used to replace men, that is the introduction of the ‘bull moose’, as they call it, the big mobile crane, to do the heavy lifting, the half-ton trucks, the payloaders and the paymasters and the forklift trucks, they have all been introduced, and the working force has gradually gone down. More particularly in the zinc melting room.

Les Walker [00:10:56] The zinc melting room previously, they had about 50 men a shift, which is four shifts allowing for a swing, that’s 200 men. They poured the zinc by hand, they dipped into a furnace with a ladle that was hung on a portable trolley that ran on rails. They ran down the line and then they poured the zinc into the zinc mold and the partner came along behind them and skimmed it. Then after the pour they turned the water on underneath to cool it and then they went along and flipped over all the molds and stacked the zinc and set the molds back and got ready for another pour. It took them ten years to get a machine that would do the same work but they finally got it and now that machine is operated by nine men per shift.

Interviewer [00:11:51] When did that come in?

Les Walker [00:11:53] That machine was introduced about 1956 or 1957, they finally got it operating. The same thing in the lead refinery. They used to have four crews pouring, making lead sheets. That is, they had an inclined steel table, and the trick was to pour a ladle full of lead in the top trough, which was movable. Then they spilled it down the sheet so that it flowed down the steel plate in an even flow, and then it formed a sheet about an eighth of an inch thick, which was wrapped around a copper bar and became a cathode when it was put into the lead tank and was the counterpart of the anode which comes up from the smelter. Now they have a machine which makes the lead sheets. So that’s a further reduction of manpower.

Interviewer [00:13:00] What happened to these men?

Les Walker [00:13:02] Well, for a long time the company did no hiring and there were about 54 to 56 men a year retiring and they didn’t hire any replacements. The jobs were simply consolidated and changed around. The last job I had on the hill before I left to go to work for the union was on the white dust train which took the white zinc oxide from the economizer building and from the furnaces and hauled it up to the zinc oxide for further processing. There’s no more white dust train now, they blow it up there. The same way with the slimes from the zinc sulphate plant. The slimes were hauled out to the dump by a train or out to the dryer where they were dried and sent back down to be mixed with the incoming ore in the furnaces. It took them about three years to get the pumps working to do away with the train.

Les Walker [00:14:05] That’s where it started with pumping about a quarter of a mile with only one relay and after blowing out enough pipes they finally got in enough relays so that the system works perfectly. It’s the same thing all the way through the plant. It’s being automated. I was through there with the Honourable A.C. DesBrisay on the Royal Commission two years ago. It was a Friday afternoon, and I thought it was more like going through a graveyard than anything else. There was no one around, there was no one working, there didn’t seem to be. Machinery running and plants in operation but nobody apparently in control. Some fellow sitting in a little office or something. There were a few men working on the pig-wheel in the lead refinery. When we first looked in the silver refinery, there were two or three men sitting down at one end. When we looked in again on the way back, they got up and they were rabbling one of the silver furnaces, as you call it, but there used to be a great host of men all around, everywhere you looked there were men working, lifting, heaving, and shoveling. That’s all disappeared.

Les Walker [00:15:27] Then about 1947 or 1948, the Moral Re-Armament organization made its appearance in Trail, and one of the chief exponents was a man by the name of Lawrence Hamilton who had been a reporter with the Rossland Miner, and he went to work down on the hill, as they call it, and was very interested in this Moral Re-Armament where the theory is, you see, that the boss comes into your home and the union agreement is signed on the kitchen table with the family standing around. That is what they pretend to expound, that is their theory, you see, “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” They’re also violently opposed to communism or any union that they feel is dominated by communists. Well, of course, our regional director at that time, Harvey Murphy, was an admitted communist and that was all the lever that they needed, you see, for their propaganda. So they were very busy within the union and managed to get officers elected who were either also members of the Moral Re-Armament or were sympathetic. Then it got to the point where if you attended a union meeting and if you brought up anything that hadn’t been duly processed through the executive, Hamilton or someone would get up and move that the meeting adjourn and you were stymied to such an extent that there wasn’t much point in attending a union meeting. However, they also were working very closely with company officials, and I know that Hamilton arranged a trip to Vancouver with two or three company officials and the vice-president of the union, Rene Morin, at that time, and drove down to Vancouver and saw this Moral Re-Armament play. That is the basis of their attitude, you see, brotherly love all over the place, regardless as to whether you’re president of a company or a president of a union.

Interviewer [00:17:55] What’s their real purpose? You said that their apparent theory was all this brotherhood. What’s their real purpose, to maintain the capitalists?

Les Walker [00:18:03] Well, oh yes, definitely. Frank Buchman, the head of the Moral Re-Armament, was a very close friend of Adolf Hitler and Goering, and visited them several times before the war.

Interviewer [00:18:19] They’re kind of like the John Birch Society, aren’t they?

Les Walker [00:18:22] Very much, very much like the John Birch.

Interviewer [00:18:25] Well, tell me, was this just in your union, or did they, did they work for an organization?

Les Walker [00:18:29] Oh no, they were quite apparent in other unions, but Trail, of course, was a real opportunity. As they got these people who supported their theories into office, then even the company took a hand in that, and Bill Kirkpatrick, who was the assistant manager at that time, went on the air over CJAT-Trail and urged all of the members to, “Join Mine-Mill.”  Which is startling at first, until you hear the conclusion of the sentence. That was, “And get rid of the communists who are dominating it.”

Les Walker [00:19:17] So then, in February 1950, there was a full-page advertisement appeared in the Trail Times, and the heading was, “We are staying with CIO-CCL.” On January 17, 18, and 19 at an executive meeting of the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL), Mine-Mill and the Electrical Workers had been suspended.

Interviewer [00:19:49] What year was that?

Les Walker [00:19:50] 1949. No, January 1950. We had been suspended at the second executive meeting. The jurisdiction formerly held by Mine-Mill had been sold to the United Steelworkers.

Interviewer [00:20:11] Tell me, what was the grounds for your suspension, communist control?

Les Walker [00:20:15] No.

Interviewer [00:20:16] What was the ground that they gave you?

Les Walker [00:20:18] There was non-payment of dues, and also failure to carry out a direction of the Canadian Congress. You see, we were in the Kirkland Lake area organizing, Steel (United Steel Workers of America) was in there organizing, and one claimed to be raiding the other, and the CLC said, “Well look, both of you withdraw and we will organize Kirkland Lake.” Well we refused to withdraw because we felt that as Steel had members on their executive board, we would withdraw, all right, and leave the whole field to Steel. We refused to do it. So refusing to obey an order of the Congress and non-payment of dues, we were suspended.

Interviewer [00:21:08] Did you stop paying dues because of this?

Les Walker [00:21:11] Yes.

Interviewer [00:21:12] I see.

Les Walker [00:21:16] It’s been said that we were thrown out for being a communist-dominated union, but I have photocopies of the reports taken from the Canadian Unionist, and you can get them yourself down at the public library. You’ve got them, and you won’t find in them any mention of communist, communism or communist domination. There is no such mention. However, while the officers of the Trail local were attending the district convention in Vancouver in January of 1950, they were meeting secretly with Steel organizers and making arrangements to have the Steel membership cards printed and picking up their supply. So it was all well thought out, well thought and well arranged, you see, until this announcement comes out in the paper. My reaction when I saw it was, “Well, thank God they’ve gone. Now maybe we can get somewhere.” There were 86 signatures on that full-page ad. The only one that wasn’t there was Danny Dosan, who was our number one member and chief steward, and he was the only contact between the union and the company. Until two days later, an emergency membership meeting was called, and I was on contract at the time and said to my partner, I said, “Afternoon shift, you know?” I said, “Let’s hurry up and get through tonight because I want to go to that membership meeting and see what’s doing.” And Al said, “I’m right with you.” He said, “And I want go too.” So we went down to the membership meeting at 7 o’clock and I wondered if there’d be anybody there, you know, but we went down for a coffee first, and boy, we passed group after group heading for the Legion Hall. When we finally got in there, there was 1,500, and when I left the meeting, I was vice-president. I completed that term as vice-president and then the following Jack MacDonald was the financial-secretary and the following year, I was elected financial-secretary and remained in office until in October 1952. They asked me to come down and take over as District secretary because the former District secretary had been sick for about six months and just simply wasn’t acting at all.

Interviewer [00:24:00] So this announcement came out in February in the paper, and what else went on at the meeting besides you becoming the vice-president? Was there some resolutions passed?

Les Walker [00:24:15] Uh, not particularly. The International Rep in charge, John Gordon said, “Call for nominations for president,” and there were five or six nominated, you see. Well it had to be done in a hurry, so he said, “Okay all of you guys nominated for president go out in the washroom and agree upon one amongst yourselves.” So we went out in the washroom and I said to Al King, I said, “Look,” I said, “You ran against Bill and was defeated, the last election. I’d say, you should be the president.” “No, no, God, I don’t have the time.” The rest of the guys agreed with me, though, and we said, “Okay, we agreed on Al. Yes, we’re agreed on Al.” So we went back in and said, “Al King is nominated.” The rest of us automatically withdrew. So then vice-president, same thing, back out to the washroom. They picked on me. “Okay, I’m vice-president,” and each office in turn. See, if there was more than one nomination, “Go on out and sort yourselves out and then come back in,” which speeded things up considerably. So then we were elected to office.

Les Walker [00:25:32] We held our executive meeting at midnight and drafted a letter to the company advising on the change of officers of Local 480. The other officers had gone to Steel. Later on, of course, motions were passed that the former officers be prosecuted for breaking their oath and for playing fast and loose with some of the funds. I don’t remember, there was some question of taking their holiday pay before the year got well underway, and there was a lot of expense accounts. In other words, they pretty well cleaned out the treasury and they took everything at least that was due them before they left.

Interviewer [00:26:21] Like the IWA?

Les Walker [00:26:22] Yeah.

Interviewer [00:26:23] Well, what happened with the CCL after that?

Les Walker [00:26:28] That was the end of it, as far as we were concerned. The CCL had given our jurisdiction to the Steelworkers, and the CCF, Harold Winch, Grant McNeil, they were all seen in Trail and they were all supporting Steel. They were all on this holy crusade against the communist-dominated Mine-Mill Union. The battle went on, the Steelworkers spent money, radio broadcasts and full-page ads in the paper. Leaflets given out at the gate, practically every shift, we did the same thing. At this time, we did not have what was known as the ‘Sloan Formula’, but during negotiations in 1950— In 1950 we held a national conference of all the locals across Canada as an evidence of support to Mine-Mill in Trail, and there were lots of them, and out of that the conference decided that, made a motion that instead of agreeing to continue with the present agreement that the best defence was a vigorous offensive. We re-opened the agreement and went up and bargained with the company, even though at that time we actually didn’t have a clear majority of the employees, but we still had the certification. We came out with six-and-a-half cents increase, which I think was tremendous. During the negotiations, Harley had raised the question with the company of men who are not members of the union paying their fair share of the bargaining costs and they should pay dues to the union. So we, the company and the union, agreed to submit the question to a mediator and we agreed on Gordon McGregor Sloan, former Attorney General and Chief Justice at that time. So we attended the hearings in the Victoria courthouse, made our presentation and the company made their presentation, and Gordon Sloan awarded what is known as the Sloan formula. That is, it’s similar to the Roach (Rand?) Formula, that every man should pay his fair share of the bargaining costs and should pay dues to the union, but it would be an infringement on his liberty to make him both become a member of the union, so he doesn’t have to join the union. However, Sloan felt that to force a man to pay dues to the union and yet not belong to the union would be taxation without representation. So the Sloan formula provides that on the question of election of officers, all those paying dues have a right to vote, which gives them their representation as well as the taxation. And so we came up with the Sloan formula. Well, as financial-secretary at that time, I remember very distinctly that our cheque from the hill before had been about $1,800. The first cheque after the Sloan formula was for $7,988, which made a very, very big difference to me as financial-secretary because I had some money to pay the bills with. As I told King when we were flying down to Victoria to attend the hearings, “If we don’t get this award, you and I might just as well keep on going because we owed so much money that there was no opening ahead at all. There didn’t seem to be any future ahead.

Interviewer [00:30:36] So these people that didn’t become members, it might as well have been a closed shop, because they were actually in fact members, they were paying dues.

Les Walker [00:30:46] They were paying dues. They were everything but members.

Interviewer [00:30:50] But I mean, there was nothing a member could do that they couldn’t do.

Les Walker [00:30:57] Except vote on financial questions and referendum votes and strike issues.

Interviewer [00:31:05] Did they pay as much?

Les Walker [00:31:05] Exactly the same. They pay, it’s in the agreement, they pay an amount of local union dues as set by the local union. We used to have the amount in there, but then you want elasticity, you want to increase your dues from time to time, and every time you increase your dues, you don’t want to have to run to the company to change that section of the agreement.

Interviewer [00:31:32] So all of these people that weren’t members should have become members.

Les Walker [00:31:36] They might just as well, they’re only robbing themselves by not becoming members.

Interviewer [00:31:41] How about the Steelworkers? Did they get a benefit from the Sloan formula?

Les Walker [00:31:47] Oh, they do if any place that they have it in any of the operations where they are.

Interviewer [00:31:51] I mean, at that [unclear] in Trail.

Les Walker [00:31:54] They all had to pay dues to Mine-Mill. They were members of Steel, they were paying dues in cash to Steel, but they had to also pay dues to Mine-Mill, which made it kind of tough being a Steel Worker. So finally after a lot of hurrah—

Interviewer [00:32:16] Well, tell me, why would you have priority if at the time you didn’t represent a majority of the workers?

Les Walker [00:32:26] Because we had the certification.

Interviewer [00:32:27] And they didn’t?

Les Walker [00:32:28] They didn’t.

Interviewer [00:32:29] I see. So it wasn’t really a—

Les Walker [00:32:31] We never lost the certification.

Interviewer [00:32:33] So it wasn’t really a dual union at all.

Les Walker [00:32:38] No. They were in there, they were organizing, they had men who had paid dues, and as I say, those men were paying double dues, but they weren’t getting any benefit from the Steel end of it. Then in 1950 Harvey got the brainwave of applying for a joint certification. So we applied also for a joint certification between Trail and Kimberley, so that we were, in effect, one unit. Which meant that Steel, in order to take Trail, had to also take Kimberley, which made it a little tougher. We got the joint certification. This year, 1966, we’ve gone two or three steps further. Now we have certification of all CM&S (Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada) properties in British Columbia. That just came through last month. We have a combined certification of Trail, Kimberley, the Bluebell mine at Riondel, the HB mine at Salmo, and the Coast Copper mine up at Benson Lake. That’s all now one certification, and eventually it will mean parity and pay in all of those operations too.

Interviewer [00:33:53] What happened in 1952 when the vote was taken and you overthrew Steel?

Les Walker [00:34:01] In 1952, as you said, we had the vote and they had been clamouring for a vote. We finally got a government-supervised strike vote. Not strike vote, we finally got a government-supervised vote under Bill Fraser, who at that time was chief Conciliation Officer. Practically all of the Conciliation Service in Trail supervising the vote. I think we got about 1,600 votes, Steel got 1,300, and it was a three-way ballot. Those who wanted no union at all, there were 48 votes cast. Benson, the labour supervisor for CM&S, had to sign for those 48 votes. You see, Murphy signed for Mine-Mill, Gargrave signed for Steel, somebody had to sign for the men who wanted no union, so Benson had to sign for 48 votes.

Les Walker [00:35:05] One of the biggest things to us was the hearing before the Labour Relations Board in Victoria, when the Steelworkers brought a man by the name of Harris from Washington, DC to present their case. Our case was presented by the union officers, and Mr. Harris got up and made a tremendous speech to the Labour Relation Board. Mr. Hogg was the chairman at that time. After a very learned speech he sat down, and one of our men, Major Trenaman, his son, by the way, is mine superintendent up at Benson Lake now, but the Major was a strong Mine-Mill Union man, and he walked over to Mr. Harris, put his arm around his shoulder, congratulated him on a very masterful presentation, and said, “You know Mr.Harris, you remind me of a little piece of poetry.” Said, “It goes like this. ‘Here’s to the eagle of America, that grand and noble bird, that over the United States flaps its wings, and on Canada drops its turd. We don’t want the turd from your noble bird, you American son of a bitch.’ And behold, the bird.”.

Les Walker [00:36:19] Everybody, they couldn’t contain themselves. They laid back and roared. Mr. Harris hasn’t been back since. In other words, Trenaman killed every damn word he said by just making him look ridiculous in front of the board. Of course, the chairman rapped for order and became very dignified all of a sudden, with his handkerchief stuck up in front his face, he couldn’t help himself. We won before the board hearing, our certification wasn’t upset. Then, as we’ve said, we had the vote, and Steel lost out, and after the vote was taken a lot of the Steelworkers came down to the office that night and joined Mine-Mill. The fact that a couple of days later we heard that Charlie Millard was in town and had continued to rent, had signed another lease on the Steelworkers’ offices. Our executive went over to see him, and he swore up and down that he had not come in to renew the lease, and that he was closing the office, and was leaving town. We advised him that that was a very good idea on his part, because if he came back to Trail again, we’d throw him in the river. He hasn’t been back to Trail, you know, for some strange reason.

Les Walker [00:37:50] Gargraves grabbed the telephone and phoned the police, but Mark Walchuk, one of our executives, had his finger on the trigger, you see, and finally when we got through telling him what to do and where to go, he took his finger off the trigger and said, “Okay, Garg, you can phone the police now.” However, they had a very, very long time getting there because we walked the three blocks back to the union office before we heard the police sirens going. However, they did close up the Steel office and they left town as they had agreed to do. This year, of course, they reopened an office in town and it doesn’t do them any good because I understand nobody’s seen going into it anyhow.

Interviewer [00:38:40] Now, what did the CCL do?

Les Walker [00:38:43] They haven’t done anything, they haven’t taken any active part, they haven’t interfered in any way. They do support the Steelworkers, of course, and everything they do, and we’re outlaws so there’s nothing they can do as far as we’re concerned anyhow.

Interviewer [00:39:01] Are you anxious to affiliate?

Les Walker [00:39:03] Not particularly, not so long as they can remain on their present ineffectual course. The idea of supporting American-dominated and controlled unions, which is completely ridiculous for Canadian citizens. If we aren’t men enough to have our own unions and stand on our own feet, then there’s something wrong with us. The question of a man in Washington depriving a Canadian of a job under an American union constitution as was done with George Gee, and then again was done with his successor O’Keefe and the Electrical Workers, just as one instance. But I think they’re slowly getting the message. The Pulp and Sulphite Workers have broken away. Around 1953, our District 8 member under the old International set-up, the member for District 7, which covered British Columbia, was Chase Powers, headquartered in San Francisco. The executive board member for District 8, which covered Eastern Canada, was Nels Thibault, who was a Canadian. Now, when Thibault went down to attend the sessions of the executive board in Denver, he found he had to take a Taft-Hartley oath. It was generally agreed that when a Canadian has to take an oath to a foreign country before he can hold office in the union, things are getting a bit thick. So we put that up to the Spokane convention in 1954, and a resolution was passed that our Canadian members be given complete autonomy. So in 1955, in July, we held our first Canadian convention in the old original Miners’ Union Hall in Rossland and we drew up our own Canadian constitution. We elected our own Canadian officers and we set up our International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers  (Canada). Under that system, I can attend, I can be elected and attend a convention in the United States, but no member of the union of the United States can be elected or attend as a delegate any of our conventions. The president of the International and the officers attend all our conventions, and they’re very welcome. There’s a very close affiliation, but there’s no control, and that, in our opinion, is the ideal situation.

Interviewer [00:42:14] What’s your purpose in going to the conventions [unclear] the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) instead?

Les Walker [00:42:22] No, no, we’re not in the CIO, we got thrown out there too.

Interviewer [00:42:25] At the same time?

Les Walker [00:42:27] Pretty well at the same time.

Interviewer [00:42:29] The same week?

Les Walker [00:42:33] Well, I’ve read the brief, that is the account of the hearings which were held in Chicago, and the chairman stated at the outset that he knew that he couldn’t secure a conviction against Mine-Mill, but in effect they thought they might as well go ahead with the hearings and sling a little mud while they were at it, and that was just about what happened. But we were suspended from the CIO.

Interviewer [00:43:03] They didn’t give a reason?

Les Walker [00:43:03] No, but the basic reason, of course, is our constitution. It’s too democratic. You see, none of our national officers can— Our executive board can’t go through a convention and put through a motion increasing their salaries. The convention might pass a motion that the salaries be increased or that a referendum vote be held proposing that the salaries be increased. But every member in the union has to vote on that. Well, that doesn’t suit their book, you see, because with their conventions, they pack them with staff. The staff has the right to vote. Now, as a member of the staff, I attended our convention in Trail in January under orders, because we held a leadership conference before the convention. I remained and attended the convention and the following District convention. I had a voice, but I had no vote, because I hadn’t been elected by my own local union. So I had no vote in the convention, whereas with the Steel and the other unions, all of their staff go to the conventions and they all have votes. Well if you’re the President and you’re signing my paycheque, am I going to vote for an increase in your wages? You betcha, because you’re gonna also give me a little bit too, and that’s the way it’s worked.

Interviewer [00:44:37] You don’t know the exact date, but was the suspension from the CIO, in the same year?

Les Walker [00:44:46] Yes, it was in 1949. Jacob Potofsky of the Clothing Workers was the chairman.

Interviewer [00:44:55] So one suspension falled right on the other. It was done first, I presume, by the CIO.

Les Walker [00:45:01] Yes, with the hope that they’d completely break the Western Federation or Mine-Mill and get us out of the picture, because as I said, we’re too democratic. For instance, no national officer can go into any local union and tell them what to do. He doesn’t do that. They will invite him in, they’ll ask his assistance and his guidance in negotiations or anything like that, but he does not go in and tell that local what to do. He has no standing in that local, he can sit in a meeting while a motion is made but he can’t make a motion.

Interviewer [00:45:38] Not like the IWA?

Les Walker [00:45:40] No. Absolutely not, no. And right there lies our strength, because the local unions know it and they realize that they’re under no dictation from anyone. Whereas when we invited the Steel, the officers of the Steel local at the Western Steel plant here, that had been [recording ends]