Harry Woodside Interview: Miner, electrician, fire dispatcher

SP FC 3803 U54 N_5-8-trk1_2_Harry Woodside.mp3

Recorded c. 1964

Transcribed by Donna Sacuta

Interviewer [00:00:00] An interview with Mr. Harry Woodside, yes, Harry Woodside, who was active in the Firefighters and in the Western Federation of Miners, and the Electrical Workers. How about telling us something about the Western Federation of Miners, please.

Harry Woodside [00:00:26] Well, my first experience with the Western Federation of Miners I, Britannia Beach. In 1909 I got a job in the— and I’d had some experience previous to that with the BC Electric at Lake Buntzen where they were enlarging the tunnel. The BC Electric engineers decided about 1908 to go ahead and enlarge this tunnel between Lake Coquitlam and Lake Buntzen, to bring more wires through to feed the more machines. So they started in on their own, under their own engineering department, to devise ways and means of enlarging the tunnel to increase the capacity of the tunnel.

Harry Woodside [00:01:29] So, that’s when I went up there to work in the winter of 1908 and spring of 1909. We worked there for several months and we were not making very much progress, so as they had to stop the operation of taking out rock and enlarging the tunnels, so many days a week were to allow more water to come through to feed the penstocks from Buntzen. So they decided to go ahead with a tunnel instead of enlarging the present one that they would go ahead and timber up platform and cut out the same size of the tunnel over the present one so they could let the water run through underneath and work on this upper level.

Harry Woodside [00:02:35] So that’s when they decided to put on two shifts, so they, the foreman picked on me, as a young fella, to operate a little locomotive. So I was operating this locomotive and we were not making very much progress, so they let a contract to an outside. [recording repeats] Locomotive and… We were not making very much progress, so they led a contract to an outside [end of repeat] firm of contractors known as Naylor Brothers, and they came here from doing a, just completed a big job in South Africa. I think their headquarters was in London, England. So, we were working there and this came out in dry time in the summertime so we were not able to work very much in the tunnel. We were getting the top rate for miners in those days, 45 cents an hour, and they’d special dispensation from the government under working this one shift to allow them to work 10 hours, which made the miners were able to make $4.50 a day. They also, while the company was operating the tunnel, the days that the miners couldn’t work underground, they had them cutting what we would call props for the timber-up the work and they were getting the same rate of pay for those days as they were if they were working underground.

Harry Woodside [00:04:25] So after the contractor took over, they continued the same scheme for one month and then in the second month when payday came about, without any conferring with anybody they decided that they would cut the wages for the days that they were not able to work in the tunnel, they cut it to $3.50 a day instead of $4.50. So several of us were working the late shift and we were sleeping in a bunkhouse away from the main bunkhouse, so we got up late in the afternoon and when we got up on this payday, everybody had left the job.

Harry Woodside [00:05:05] The bunch that was on day shift went in and got their pay on the 15th of the month, they decided to come to town. So that was the end of that. So as soon as we found out what the trouble was, we also come to town, so that shut her down. To deal with that further, eventually this contractor couldn’t make a success of it and they got another contractor that came here from Butte, Montana that was really an experienced tunnel man and they eventually got the job through complete.

Harry Woodside [00:05:38] But those of us that had left, we were on the labour market again, and that’s when I went up to Britannia, and I’d had this experience at Buntzen, of running a mine locomotive, so that’s what I went, took on up in Britannia at first. As things grew there, I eventually got incorporated into the electrical gang, you know. We found conditions seemed to be very, very good. The very fine superintendent there, general manager, a very, a very congenial bunch to work with, and things seemed to going along very smoothly. But Britannia began to have been shut down previous to 1908. They’d been shut down. They shut down about 1907 at a period in North America that was known as ‘The Panic’ and nearly all these mines in the West were shut down, especially the metalliferous ones.

Harry Woodside [00:06:51] So we were just feeling our way and getting going and working in a small way and expanding as things improved a bit. So there’s quite lot of miners drifted back to this part of the country, from Butte and various places, and they were members of the union, the Western Federation of Miners. So, over about three years from that, three or four years from that, they practically had everybody that was working around the place carrying a card, but they never openly had any negotiations as an organized body with the company.

Harry Woodside [00:07:37] So on their first introduction of trying to have a conference with the company, they got turned down and they would not be recognized. So I would say they made a mistake. Instead of continuing to try to get negotiations going, the first thing that they did was to threaten strike, a week previous to when it really took place. The company was adamant about not having anything to do with the Western Federation of Miners. So on the 19th day of February, they went on strike. But us fellows at the beach, we didn’t have anything, know anything about it. This took place up at the mine. But however, when they came down, we soon realized what it was all about. So practically with the exception of the office staff, and a very few of the various heads of departments. In fact, one head of a department who had been an old-time union man from Butte, Montana, and he was in charge of all the outside work from between the beach and the mine. He joined the group and he eventually came down.

Harry Woodside [00:09:03] So it practically cleaned the place out, shut it down. It was a very bad time to find yourself on strike and trying to enforce any union regulations. It was one of the most serious times in the labour market here as far as the workers was concerned that I’ve ever experienced. It was the time that the miners on Vancouver Island had been really forced to go on strike for they had objected to the company refusing to appoint inspectors in the coal mines. There’d been several explosions over there from firedamp around Nanaimo and various mines around there.

Harry Woodside [00:09:54] The experienced miners blamed it on the fact that there was no precautions taken regarding the safety of the miners, so they were on strike which didn’t help the labour market at that, and unfortunately, they prosecuted those men over there. Some of them were put in the jail. You’ve got that story. Well, but that all was on the doorstep of the miners’ case and the Western Federation of Miners when they left Britannia.

Harry Woodside [00:10:31] They never made any headway, and the company eventually got men in, they brought some men in from various places, and were able to carry on at a very much reduced efficiency, but they were building up after a period of about eight or nine months. They were building up and getting up to an efficiency of 50 to 60 or 70 percent of their former efficiency. The original bunch that had come down on the 19th of February, the treasury became depleted in a short time. In fact, they didn’t have much treasury and the officers left town and there was really nobody, no head left to it.

Harry Woodside [00:11:31] I knew that there was quite a number of good men that would appreciate a job up there, but under the circumstances of the stigma still being on it that the place was unfair to labour and against the union to go up there.  I talked this over With Parm Pettipiece who was a very active man in the Trades and Labor Council in those days, and I think he was associated with The Province, the paper. I’m not sure whether he was working for them or not. But however, I explained the situation to him, and I explained that there was quite a number of men around the city that would appreciate the opportunity to go up there if it was right and fair to do so. So he, a man of experience, he said that he would— figured it was quite ethical to do something, try to do something for them, and there was no way of approaching the company, so he just put an article in the paper. As far as the men was concerned that the strike was called off.

Harry Woodside [00:12:40] So however, that was the end of it, that was in October. So that was the end of my association with the mines. So I went to work in the City of Vancouver at electrical work with the experience that I’d gained there in the four years, you see, and joined 213, Local 213. Immediately I started to work here in town. I had the misfortune to be elected an officer in 19— beginning of 1919, I think it was. Well, that was the year of the  General Strike in Winnipeg. That was a very hot question out here in the West, I don’t know whether it extended East or not, but however, we had visitors from Winnipeg and they talked to various labour bodies here in Vancouver. We were also—

Interviewer [00:13:46] Men like Bill Pritchard?

Harry Woodside [00:13:52] Yeah, and we were very closely associated, on account of the tie-in employees of the BC Electric and the BC Electric car men, motormen.  When we got into the strike, when this walkout happened here in Vancouver, as a result of this Winnipeg strike, I can remember of meetings on Sundays and so forth, there was practically the same representation from the car men as there was of us with the Electrical Workers.  But however—

Interviewer [00:14:29] This was the Street Railwaymen?

Harry Woodside [00:14:32] Street Railwaymen, that’s the name.  But in our particular case, as far as the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) was concerned, we did not go on strike officially. Some of our men attended a mass meeting of labour in the old hall at English Bay, which is what we call the old roller rink. Quite a seating capacity, quite a number there, which apparently accommodated, practically, everybody back in them days that wanted to attend a mass meeting.

Harry Woodside [00:15:10] They passed a resolution down there that all those present agreed that workers should quit work until this situation was cleared up, and of course, I’m not going to go into what the situation was. There’s others that knows a great deal more about it than I do, and their recollection is better too. I had nothing to do with that. Yet this mass meeting happened to take place on a Monday night, the same night as officially the Electrical Workers’ regular weekly meeting, when we used to meet on Pender Street, in the 400-block of Pender Street. We had completed our meeting and were just closing a meeting when some of those men, members of Local 213, came back from this mass meeting. Bounced into the hall and loudly announced that, “No more work.”

Harry Woodside [00:16:08] But however, the meeting was closed and their word was quite effective. The next morning the men didn’t report for work, linemen and various branches of the electrical trades. So that created quite a serious situation. They had to get busy and make provisions for to induce certain people to work, to maintain certain facilities in the city, for the hospital and various places like that. So otherwise, ordinary construction and all that was closed down.

Harry Woodside [00:16:55] We didn’t have any point to be—it was a serious situation. We didn’t have any other [unclear] the stoppage of work, and they didn’t have any points to take up with the employers. It was a very, very awkward situation, but eventually, eventually it petered out, and with another joint mass meeting, several weeks hence, decided to go back to work. It was about six weeks, I think.

Interviewer [00:17:26] So you didn’t, when these guys came to your union meeting, you made all an effort to contradict or anything, you just said —

Harry Woodside [00:17:40] Well, it was a pretty noisy situation. It was a pretty noisy situation when they came back there. We couldn’t get anywhere. The noise was — they’d come back filled up with this resolution, backing up this resolution that they had, and it was this meeting. They were not appointed delegates to go there. They just went on their own, you see. Everybody had a right to their own opinion, like we do. There was possibly more, as many of our members down at the mass meeting as there was attending our own meeting, no one doubt about that. There was not that particular night, there was no, there’s nothing, it was such a surprise that you couldn’t get down to anything and formulate any plans at all. We had a immediately get, when they seen it, they had the seriousness of this thing. The executive board got busy and made arrangements so that certain absolutely necessary services for the sake of the health and welfare of the community, certain services had to be carried on which was always to make sure there was fire protection and police protection and all that sort of thing.  Hospitals.

Harry Woodside [00:19:05] So, however, the following week, we had a regular meeting and we had to go all over this situation. We had to all over the situation which wasn’t pleasant to go through. Then I think it was on two weeks from this night that they had this mass meeting, the International Vice-President, I think his office was in Toronto, Canadian Vice President, he attended our meeting and after the meeting got underway, he got up on the floor and informed us that our charter was cancelled. So then we were in a worse fix than ever, so we had to get busy and we formed a more or less of a local organization to protect ourselves and look after dues and carry on. Eventually the strike was settled and everybody went back to work. But  we did not have our charter.

Harry Woodside [00:20:32] So our most efficient business agent, E.H. Morrison, he was delegated by the executive board to take steps to see that we could not have our charter reinstated. So we engaged a lawyer, Mr. Rabinovitch, and he handled a case for us. It dragged along for a long time and didn’t come up in court until the following February, I think it was. It came up in the Supreme Court before Judge Aulay Morrison, and after several days of taking evidence, he handed down a decision within a few days and ordering the International Union to reinstate our charter. That was the, as far as the IBEW is concerned, that was end of that more or less for all those. It created, it didn’t help the organzation at all. There was a lot of friction after that. The telephone men were most dissatisfied and the majority of them decided that it was better for their interest to withdraw from this Local 213 and they did so and they formed their own organization which I think was called the Telephone Men’s Protective Associatiion. To the best of my knowledge this group, Vancouver, the employees of the BC Telephone Company, never have gone back. Well, some of them, some of the old-timers kept up the cards in the IBEW, still kept them up as long as they lived. However the [unclear] and I understand at the present time I belong to the International Telephone Employees’ Association, but not IBEW, never did go back.

Interviewer [00:22:53] Was this dissatisfaction? Dissatisfaction with the interference of the international?

Harry Woodside [00:23:00] No—

Interviewer [00:23:00] Or with the general strike?

Harry Woodside [00:23:01] About the general strike, and figuring that, figuring that maybe they didn’t have, they didn’t, they were more or less dominated by other interests in the local, like the employers of bigger companies and the independent wiremen and the contractors’ employees and so forth, so they figured that they could do better on their own than they could working with these other groups. [break in interview]

Harry Woodside [00:23:27] A very, very sincere, active and intelligent man, and I do know that they would be quite critical of certain ones that are leading politicians here, and there’s a lot of politicians in those days that —I wouldn’t say directly anti-union, but they certainly, certainly, they certainly weren’t with us. Very few politicians in the old parties in those days was favourable to unionism, in fact. Anyway, that’s really the ordinary man today after, nowadays, we don’t think of a man being a radical, a man that — a man that’s being unusual or radical, they call them socialists, they call them, they call them worse than that,  they call him —

Interviewer [00:24:37] Bolsheviks?

Harry Woodside [00:24:37] They call him worse than that if the man was standing up and he would be really critical, critical of an injustice as far as labour is concerned and those fellas that probably that they denounce, I’ve got a lot of respect for them. I can see where they did a lot good for us. We’ve all benefited from their actions, you see. I know that. But, of course, I do know that they also — the result of some of their actions, of course, they were not so good, but their batting average was pretty good. The more conservative ones, they inculcated a spirit of thinking, made them think, and some of them began to think that, “We should be, unions should be respected and should be heard”.

Harry Woodside [00:25:29] In early days they were not allowed to be heard, you know, we weren’t heard at all, you know. For instance, a fellow that I worked for, a foreman on the job where I was working for years, he was working for the telephone company here in early days, and I think they had a strike in 1906, and he was a foreman, a very good, very good union man. He repeated this to me, that the general manager, I won’t mention his name, he’s gone years and years ago, he said, “So-and-so, he says, ‘as long as I’m manager of this company, you will never —'” That was this fellow, a member of the union. He said, “You’ll never work for this company again.”

Harry Woodside [00:26:12] That was my friend. My friend that I was following on the job when I first went working for  the city. So he couldn’t work for this company anymore and that was his business. He  put in years to learn this business and he’s locked out. It was quite a common thing, quite a common thing to be locked out. To revert back just for a moment, all those men that walked off the job at Britannia, they were put on a list. Their names was put on a list then they never got a job at Britannia again. That’s the way things were in those days. Those men that left in that particular strike, they never worked at Britannia. That’s kind of going back over my story, but when this question has come up, I wanted to mention it to you, they were locked out. My name was in among the rest of them, the same as all the employees that left. Couldn’t work for them. In fact, it went further than that, I can tell you how much further than that. With jobs going where you were in demand and would like to have you, but you’re on the book and you couldn’t go. That’s how I’ve experienced it myself.

Interviewer [00:27:28] You were president of the IBEW—

Harry Woodside [00:27:32] 213.

Interviewer [00:27:32] Local 213, at the time the OBU (One Big Union) was really making headway here, right? So I was wondering what could be asked of how the AFL unions continued to operate when most of the men were really active in the OBU.

Harry Woodside [00:27:58] The OBU did not have any, make any material difference with the operation of the IBEW, except that there might have been some influence that had something to do with his walkout. At that particular time, the time of the General Winnipeg Strike, and then after our charter had been lifted by the international, it did not make any difference, with none of the agreements in existence was cancelled during the time that our charter was null and void. So, as soon as we were reinstated again by order of the court, things carried on as per usual. But during this time, during this interval, that we did not have our international charter, we functioned on our own, just the same as if we had a charter. We functioned. We met regularly and transacted our business, but we were transacted on an independently worked. I think the name that we organized, we were working under, we called it the Protective Association, just to keep things together and I’ll say this, that we had good attendance at our meetings for all that time, good interest and good attendance. No dissention. Everything was very, very good.

Interviewer [00:29:34] I was wondering, was there any, to me, what would be logical for the officers of various Trades and Labour Congress unions to meet together and discuss what they were going to do about the OBU  and perhaps informally.

Harry Woodside [00:29:57] Oh, we had nothing to do officially. Officially, to my recollection, I was not a member of the OBU. Mr. Morrison, the secretary was not a member the OBU, or our vice-president was not a member of the OBU, or our recording secretary was not a member. There’s none of the officials at all. The OBU, I can’t officially say or recollect. In my recollection, I don’t think that— I wouldn’t want to name any one of our members, I’d surmise that quite a number joined the OBU.

Interviewer [00:30:41] What I meant was, it seems a lot of the officers of the unions were opposed to the OBU. Now, it seems to me they would  get together and decide what they were going to do about that, to stay with their own union. Was there any of that?

Harry Woodside [00:31:03] Well, as far as our organization was concerned, the Electrical Workers, we probably had that influence working, but they weren’t out at all to destroy the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Never. Never. There was nothing like that to destroy our organization. That never came up, never had to combat that at all. To my recollection, there may have been underneath but no —

Interviewer [00:31:43] No caucus that you knew of against the OBU for instance?

Harry Woodside [00:31:45] Not that I know of, but I never experienced it and never had to combat it any way. That was  my experience.

Interviewer [00:31:53] You don’t know of anything?

Harry Woodside [00:31:55] No, except that they certainly went against the laws laid down in the constitution to call a general strike. You have to have the permission of the international union, but what can you do if a man says he’s not going to work tomorrow? You can’t do nothing about that.

Interviewer [00:32:19] So what I’m trying to get at is, what about the international sending? I think the international must have sent in organizers. They didn’t like the OBU, certainly.

Interviewer [00:32:32] Oh, they didn’t need any organizers. There was nobody quit our union. There was nobody quit our union. They held together. We held together with our membership with the hope. You see, as long as, when we took action, when we took legal action, asking for restoration of our charter so we could function as usual, there was no underhand action taken by our membership as far as from the OBU, or anybody else.