Ray Haynes Interview: Seven Decades in Labour Activism

Interview: Ray Haynes (RH)

Interviewer: Ken Bauder (KB), Bailey Garden (BG) and Al Cornes (AC)

Date: April 3, 2016

Location: BC Labour Heritage Centre, Burnaby B.C.

Transcription: Bailey Garden

 

KB [00:00:04] Which is where and when were you born?

 

RH [00:00:07] Wow. Point Grey, it’s on my birth certificate. It doesn’t say Vancouver, it says Point Grey, and 1928. June 15th.

 

KB [00:00:20] Did you grow up in that area?

 

RH [00:00:23] No, I don’t think so. The first address I remember was 646 East 44th, half a block off Fraser at 44th, and then White Rock.

 

KB [00:00:34] And your dad’s occupation, what was he?

 

RH [00:00:37] Dad, he was a policeman.

 

KB [00:00:38] Okay.

 

RH [00:00:39] Detective on the Vancouver Police force.

 

KB [00:00:42] Okay. Can you tell us about your family and your upbringing?

 

RH [00:00:51] My dad was very strict. My mom was Lebanese. I always say I’m Lebanese, because it gets you great food.

 

KB [00:01:03] References.

 

RH [00:01:04] And so we lived at the Fraser address for my first six years, and then we went to White Rock. I always think of living in White Rock as a kid, until about 1942, I think. In White Rock, when I delivered papers, and I delivered for the whole of White Rock, I think it was 50 papers. The lots were three lots at $50 each.

 

KB [00:01:39] Was your household union? Politically?

 

RH [00:01:42] No, I was really very unknowledgeable about labour and unions. I know that my dad was for peace, and talked — once in a while mentioned the CCF (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation), but that’s all I knew. I never knew anything until I started working in a sawmill.

 

KB [00:02:04] Okay, so you went to school then in?

 

RH [00:02:09] In White Rock. Semiahmoo, and we were there ’til ’42, and then we seemed to move every five years with my dad, and I seem to have done that during my life as well. So we moved to Whalley, and then to Manor Road in Burnaby, and then Rumble Street in Burnaby. All my life in B.C.

 

KB [00:02:37] Any significant experiences in your school?

 

RH [00:02:43] Just that I didn’t like cadets. It interfered with — this was during the War — it interfered with physical ed. and library and all the good, good ones that I liked. Didn’t take away math, so I wasn’t happy about that. I actually quit school in grade nine. My dad didn’t complain or nothing, and helped me get a job.

 

KB [00:03:08] So you went into the sawmill?

 

RH [00:03:10] No. I was the bellhop at the Terminal City Club, and visited it later in life, and they got quite a kick out of it that I had been a bellhop there. Bright red tunic, gold buttons, green stripe pants. My first job.

 

KB [00:03:32] And from there?

 

RH [00:03:33] Unemployment insurance for three years, which was the National Selective Service at that time during the War, and into CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway) Telegraphs, where I worked in the Bookkeeping Office, and then the sawmill. Canadian White Pines, it was called.

 

KB [00:03:59] Yes.

 

RH [00:04:02] That’s where I got my labour education.

 

KB [00:04:04] Yeah. That’s your first encounter.

 

RH [00:04:07] Unbelievable.

 

KB [00:04:09] That was in the IWA (International Woodworkers of America)?

 

RH [00:04:11] IWA 217.

 

KB [00:04:14] 217, excellent. What was that like, that job in the mill? Were you on the chain?

 

RH [00:04:19] I had one of the better ones. I was on the Sizer chain, which is nice, clean lumber. I did work in the (unclear) mill, where it was rough and heavy and stuff, but the other one, you just had to move fast. It was two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, two-by-tens, two-by-twelves, and they spewed out. You had to get them off the chain and piled, because the next one would be coming. No, that’s — it wasn’t bad job, actually. It was — it pretty near sucked me into staying in that industry, because it was so much higher. I forgot to say, before that I worked at Hudson’s Bay wholesale for a short period of time, where I think I made $80 a month. So, here all of a sudden, I got a dollar an hour. I could see people around there, older guys, who obviously liked the money and couldn’t leave what is kind of a boring industry to work in.

 

KB [00:05:23] Yeah.

 

RH [00:05:23] So, I made my mind up. I couldn’t stay around too long.

 

KB [00:05:26] Right. The other workers were kind of complacent, or were they organized?

 

RH [00:05:32] Oh, no. It was a hotbed. That’s where I got my education. I worked with some of the names that, you might know, Tom, Tommy Clark was very prominent there. John Busch was on the executive of 217, Al Busch worked in the plywood, his brother, in the plywood division. A lot of labour guys. Bill Grey was, I guess, one of my mentors there. I jumped around back and forth. I had a wonderful education there. You asked me where I got my labour background, but I’d be — you talk when you’re on the sizer chain pulling lumber. That’s all you do, is talk all day. So, I would talk, and I’d go to Bill Grey, the first-aid guy and I’d say, ‘He says that the Communist Party’s a good idea. I don’t know much about it. What do you know about that?’ So, he said, ‘Oh, no, keep away from the Commies.’ So then, I’d go back to the commie, guy and he’d say, ‘Who the hell were you talking to?’ And I’d say, ‘Bill Grey.’ ‘Oh, that moral rearmament jerk.’ You know? Everybody’s politics was strong, and they let each other know how strong they were. So, by them telling me this stuff, and disagreeing with each other, I got a crash course in my 18 months in the sawmill.

 

KB [00:07:01] Excellent.

 

RH [00:07:03] It was communist Trotskyites. CCF-ers, moral rearmament. Oh, when they said about John Busch, they said, ‘Well, he’s from the Catholic Syndicate. What are you bothering with him for?’ And I’d never heard of any of that stuff. I mean, I really didn’t have a political bone in my body up until then.

 

KB [00:07:23] How long did you work there?

 

RH [00:07:24] 18 months. Crash course, 18 months.

 

KB [00:07:26] Yes.

 

BG [00:07:27] What year did you start at the sawmill?

 

RH [00:07:30] Oh, ’48, I believe. Yeah, ’48. Pretty sure, and that was when Harold Pritchett and those people tried to form a Canadian union, and at that point, we all were against it. At that point. Later on, I had different ideas.

 

BG [00:07:57] What changed your mind on that?

 

RH [00:08:00] I got to know more, that’s all. Why can’t we operate on our own? Then I saw interference from the international in some of the building trades.

 

AC [00:08:15] So Ray, this was in the period when the IWA was splitting because of the Red White?

 

RH [00:08:24] Craig – not Craig. Harold.

 

AC [00:08:26] Harold.

 

RH [00:08:26] Harold Pritchett was heading it up, and they tried to make a move, and I think it failed around ’48. I wasn’t involved very much, but I did stick with the international.

 

KB [00:08:43] Who’s was leading the Canadian?

 

RH [00:08:47] That was Harold, you know.

 

KB [00:08:49] That was Harold, and the — his counterpart in… do you recall?

 

RH [00:08:53]  I can’t remember the names, but I remember the international.

 

KB [00:09:02] Then you had the international come up to speak to you guys?

 

RH [00:09:06] I’m sure we did.

 

AC [00:09:10] So at this stage, Ray, was everybody in the same union? Or were —

 

RH [00:09:18] That was Local 217.

 

AC [00:09:20] That was 217. Everybody was there.

 

RH [00:09:25] Oh yeah.

 

AC [00:09:25] Do we have dues check off, or did everybody wear a monthly pin at this stage?

 

RH [00:09:28] We had dues check off, yeah. I got really initiated then because of two reasons. One, I was a young guy on afternoon shift. Actually, my brother worked graveyard shift in the plywood plant and my other brother worked somewhere in the industry as well; but I got, I was a young guy and I wanted my night, evenings, and I asked, I applied for day shift. Then I saw guys getting, being hired and going straight on the day shift, and I realized there was no system. So, I started a petition, which caused a lot of concern with some of the day shift guys. The afternoon shift guys, well, some of the afternoon shift guys liked their shift. Basically, it stirred up a storm, and I’m just new at all this. I took it to our chief job steward, and he threw it in the wastepaper basked, and I really went berserk-o. Went to the local union and he was criticized for it.

 

KB [00:10:39] Mm hmm.

 

RH [00:10:40] Then another time, we were in a grievance meeting — I got elected on to the Grievance Committee, got the second highest votes. I don’t know how come I got the second highest votes — and the grievance meeting, we had a grievance, and the employer was dealing with it. Finally, Carl Mertz agreed, with the employer, to drop the grievance right there in front of us. I said, ‘Hold it, Carl.’ I said, ‘Can we have a little bit of a caucus?’ He said, ‘No, no, no.’ He says, ‘Shush, shush.’ So, I took that to Local 217, and they reprimanded him again. So, I had a good, kind of interesting start.

 

KB [00:11:23] Yes.

 

RH [00:11:24] Just made common sense that if I wanted an adjournment, why can’t I get one, and it just makes sense that if I want to get on day shift, there should be a system. It was not that popular with a lot of people, but on both cases, the local took a good position.

 

KB [00:11:41] Did they initiate a rotating shift structure?

 

RH [00:11:45] No, no, I left, and I don’t know whether they ever did. Good question. Lloyd Whalen was the president of that local. Stu Hodgson, who I got to meet later. Met all these people later.

 

KB [00:12:02] Yes.

 

RH [00:12:03] Lloyd Whalen was not a very great guy and I’ve had troubles with him as well, especially — and later on as well when he went to the Teamsters, and I had more trouble with him. Stu Hodgson, Paddy Neale — not Pat O’Neill, Paddy Neale, who ended up running against me one year at the Federation. I think it was the last guy to run against me. They ran against me five out six years. Then the last year, they gave me a free ride; and then they changed it to every two years.

 

KB [00:12:49] Did you — when you left White Pine, did you — where did you?

 

RH [00:12:52] I went back to Hudson’s Bay Wholesale. I had been there for about a year or so, and I was swimming down in English Bay, and a gal was drowning out in the water. I swam out to her, but another guy beat me to it. It was my old boss at Hudson’s Bay. So, after we got that problem solved out, because we saved the gal — or he saved her. I said, ‘Any job’s your place?’ I said, ‘I’d like to come back.’ And he said, ‘Ray, we’re still paying the same money.’ It was about $80 a month or something. Well, it was a bit more than the Terminal City Club. That’s right. It was about $100, I think, and I said, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And I went back there, and that’s where I organized my first union.

 

KB [00:13:46] Okay. Who was part?

 

RH [00:13:51] Well, what happened. I picked up the paper one day — I mean, we were all unhappy about the low wages — so I picked up the paper one day, and Mc & Mc had just settled, and they got a huge retroactive cheque. At least for those days, but they were probably pretty big. I thought, ‘That sounds like that’s what we should do. If Mc & Mc can have a union, why can’t we have a union here in Hudson Bay?’ So, I phoned up a friend that I knew worked at Mc & Mc, and he couldn’t tell me anything about the union, other than the head guy was Gerry. I finally got the office number, and it was at the corner of Cambie and Hastings. The Steelworkers were there, the Packinghouse Workers were there, and Retail-Wholesale, kind of a combo at that time. Names that you’ll hear later on, Pen Baskin, who jumped ship and went to the Mediation Commission. Bill Symington, who I worked very closely with during my time, he was an officer or a member of our executive from the Packinghouse Workers. I sat down with Gerry, and he gave me some cards. Gerry Emary. He died at age 39. He was a great mentor. He was terrific, and he gave me some cards, I went back to Hudson’s Bay. It was about 30 employees. We signed them up, and the employer never knew about the union coming until he got the application for certification on his desk. Then he was very angry with me. He said that, ‘You should have come to me.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I know if I’d come to you what would happen.’

 

KB [00:15:40] So, the group that actually — the core group, yourself and a couple other guys, started.

 

RH [00:15:46] Myself and young, at that time — I’d love to get in touch with him, I don’t know where he is — Percy Stuart. We both organized the union here. We signed up everybody but one guy. We wouldn’t even go to him. We knew where he had friends, so.

 

KB [00:16:02] Yes.

 

RH [00:16:03] We did it. In fact, when I ended up working in Retail Wholesale, one of the key things that we did — and this was Gerry’s approach — we never called meetings or nothing. We went knocking door-to-door. We organized Surrey Co-op with 100 or so, I don’t know how many people were there, by knocking on doors.

 

KB [00:16:28] Excellent.

 

AC [00:16:33] So, Ray, what year was that, that you signed up?

 

RH [00:16:37] I think I went back to — I’ll figure it out. About ’48, I worked at Hudson’s Bay, and then for 18 months in the sawmill. There might have been a little — I worked for Clarke and Buzza. It was a building supply place at Commercial and 10th or something. So, about ’48 — about, ’51 or ’52. I’m back at Retail Wholesale. Then I got elected on the executive, and then I got hired as a business agent. I think we called it business agents, but the CIO (Congress of Industrial Organizations) guys didn’t use that phrase that much. AFL (American Federation of Labour) did.

 

KB [00:17:25] Yeah. Excellent.

 

RH [00:17:28] We were representatives. Am I talking too low?

 

BG [00:17:32] No, I don’t — I’m just making sure the mic is picking you up.

 

RH [00:17:33] Oh, okay. I do do that, my wife says.

 

BG [00:17:37] We’ve got the mic on your lapel there, so.

 

RH [00:17:42] Okay, great. Yeah. Gerry never even had a car. Gerry Emary. He organized tons of guys who came down to the Marble Arch Hotel on — was it Marble Arch? Anyways, hotel close by our union office. Our union office was at 49 W Hastings, just a half a block away from Woodward’s, above was Miller’s Jewelers — and he organized by streetcar. Yeah.

 

KB [00:18:10] The interurban was still around.

 

RH [00:18:12] Yeah, on the interurban.

 

KB [00:18:15] Were there any influences from the American labour movement that you recognized in Canada, or were you?

 

RH [00:18:25] I attended nearly all the international conventions. First one, being in Atlantic City. I saw all the states. Being in international unions, that was, maybe that’s why they did so good. I remember one big deal when the Vietnam War was on, and my union supported the war, the international. I went to the microphone, and my Canadian director was not very happy that I went. George Barlow. I can’t believe these names are coming to me today. George wasn’t that good, but we palled around, and he liked horses and I liked horses. When we went to conventions, we went to the horse racing. Anyway, he tried to stop me from going to the mic. He urged me not to go, but I went, and I said that I had to disagree with our president, who was a good guy. Great, I liked him. ‘We think the Vietnam War is bad and our Canadian brothers think it’s bad. In fact,’ I said, ‘Tommy Douglas thinks it’s terrible.’ And so, he ran to the microphone. The president was sitting over here, and he ran to the microphone; I thought, ‘Oh boy, am I gonna get holy hell.’ He says, ‘Tommy Douglas, what a great guy. Yes,’ he says, but he didn’t answer the question. He just said he was a great guy, you know, which I’ve always thought how funny it was.

 

KB [00:20:05] Was there any sort of influence from McCarthyism in organized labour?

 

RH [00:20:15] There was. There was even in the BC Fed (BC Federation of Labour), when I became full-time in the BC Fed, and I think I would be oversensitive. I was oversensitive when I first started too. I think we got caught up in it. Not as bad as you hear in a lot of places, but it was kind of there and I ended up fighting with them. They usually opposed me, but I ended up fighting with them on issues that weren’t labour. On labour issues, we all worked close together. Jack Phillips was from the City of Vancouver guys, and Jack and I would work quite, quite close together at the conventions, agreeing to disagree on certain things. We’d meet out in the hallway, and he said, ‘We’re going to take you guys on. We don’t like what you’re saying there.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s our position, Jack, unless you can tell me how we’re wrong. So, we’ll see you on the floor.’ And we’d battle it out on the floor, and sometimes we — I might — I don’t remember if I ever changed his mind, but he changed our mind. Maybe sometimes. But we certainly fought on international issues, you know, going into Poland and all the other things that the Communists were doing just around that time. I did hear once, when I went to the microphone and kicked the hell out of them on Poland or Hungary, one of the countries they’d moved into. I stepped off the podium and went — that’s what you do when you really want to make an impression and go down into the floor.

 

KB [00:22:08] Yeah

 

RH [00:22:08] Yeah, and I tore them up, and not one of them got up and defended their position; and I heard afterwards that — this is strictly rumour — but I heard that one of the top guys, Rose or Tim Buck, I can’t remember the names, gave them hell for letting me speak, and not one of them getting up and taking me on. Now, whether that was true, but Canadian Labour Congress guy Dan Radford, who was pretty good old guy, he told me that he had heard that they did. They were very unhappy.

 

KB [00:22:53] Was it a good time for you at the Fed?

 

RH [00:22:56] I loved the job. I mean, I just — I preach to my grandchildren and children and everybody, get in a job that you like. So many people are in jobs they don’t like. You can take a little less money if it means getting a job you like. Money is important but getting up and bouncing out of work every day. I couldn’t wait to get to work.

 

KB [00:23:23] Now, there was a vehicle that the employers were using. Ex-parte injunctions, instead of dealing with collective agreements.

 

RH [00:23:33] Yes.

 

KB [00:23:34] What’s your thought on that?

 

RH [00:23:35] Well, we were in that battle. That was the battle. John Squire, who was from my union, and took over after I left Retail Wholesale; but the real guy who pulled it off for us was Pat O’Neill. There’s, as I say, there’s a Paddy Neil who was hopeless, and there’s a Pat O’Neill who was Secretary-Treasurer before I was. He stepped down and went back to the Pulp and Paperworkers. So, that’s how I came. I took over — and what was your question?

 

KB [00:24:19] Yes, we were talking about ex-parte injunctions.

 

RH [00:24:20] Oh, ex-parte injunctions.

 

KB [00:24:22] Versus collective agreement bargaining.

 

RH [00:24:22] Yeah. Yeah. How? Pat O’Neill picked that up, and that’s the guy who plastered his office with these injunctions, you know about that, do you?

 

KB [00:24:35] No.

 

RH [00:24:35] It’s a big story. It’s been printed in books and articles. It was one of the key things that — I mean, it caught fire a bit. He put all these injunctions and plastered them on his office wall. He was a darling with the press. They loved him. I mean, he was the right guy at the right time. People had criticisms for him, but he did tremendous. He one of my key things that I wanted to do when I went to the Fed, and it was really why I was so wired up, was how unions didn’t work together when they had a strike. And I got paid on here, I would take a lot of credit for. I got paid on you to grab hold. And just like the X Party in the ocean, he took a hold of that, won it, and we passed a policy that nobody could go on strike until we met with the federation. We worked out the strategy, and that was one of the biggest things there. US, you know, the Teamsters were crossing picket lines and that. They weren’t in the Fed, but that had encouraged other unions to sort of relax. If we did anything, those two issues were the big issues that I thought we did a great job. I give Pat O’Neill tremendous credit.

 

KB [00:26:06] Subsequent to that, a lot of collective agreements had that wording in their contract. I know —

 

KB [00:26:12] What part?

 

KB [00:26:15] Where you can’t cross the picket line.

 

AC [00:26:17] You have the right to refence across the picket line.

 

RH [00:26:19] Yes, that’s right.

 

KB [00:26:20] That came out of that kind of era.

 

RH [00:26:22] And a little later, another big one from last year has been your contract. So that had a wonderful way with the press. We got tremendous coverage. But in those days, of course, we all got pretty good coverage. Even I got good coverage afterwards, because they were interested in. We had four or three or four labour reporters. Now we have nobody.

 

KB [00:26:56] Lenkurt Do you recall that?

 

RH [00:26:58] Yeah. I should have been in jail on that one, but I was too busy with my own strike. I had a strike at Dominion Motors, a car outfit. You know, we organized the car salesmen. Couldn’t believe it. That was Retail Wholesale. So, every day, instead of stopping at Lenkurt– I would stop and say hi — and then I’d go down to Seymour and Robson or wherever that was down there, and be with my own strike. Otherwise, I might have been — I think I would be involved in that one, when everybody went to jail.

 

KB [00:27:38] Zellers. Do you remember the Zellers event in 1962?

 

RH [00:27:47] I don’t remember that one. It’s bad, it was in my time. I was there ‘tll ’60 — no, wait a second. ’62. Yeah, it was before I went to the Fed, but I’d be at Retail Wholesale, I remember something with Zellers, but I can’t remember any details.

 

AC [00:28:05] So, just to back up, Ray, when you and Paddy and others were taking on the injunction issues —

 

RH [00:28:12] It was Pat, not Paddy.

 

AC [00:28:14] Sorry, Pat O’Neill.

 

RH [00:28:15] Yeah.

 

AC [00:28:15] We’re taking on the injunction issue. It was pretty common that the employers would just run off and get an injunction.

 

RH [00:28:22] Oh, it was terrible.

 

AC [00:28:23] So, the workers would go on strike, and they’d have a picket line.

 

RH [00:28:26] All of a sudden, at a picket line you had an injunction, and you never heard it until it was issued. I mean, we weren’t even called in or weren’t notified first, and the judge saw fit to issue it without even telling the employer to go and advise the union. We had an injunction at Grinnell.

 

KB [00:28:57] Electric?

 

RH [00:28:58] Plumbing. I asked that my ashes be thrown there, but the place isn’t there anymore, so I have to change my will. It’s Grinnell and Raymur Avenue, which is appropriate, because my name is Ray as well. A lot of coincidences there. They issued an ex-parte injunction. I’m pretty sure it was ex-parte, I could be corrected, but it prohibited picketing 100%. We couldn’t even have one picket. Of course, the strike was bust. We got the plumbers to hold off for a while, but eventually they caved in, and it was a bad one. Some of our guys snuck in at night and a little damage inside the plant. Nothing really major, but they did piddle around. That’s why it was so stupid, because they did nothing really. If they blew the place up, it might have been a bit better, but they didn’t. They just did a little damage. So, they issued a full injunction prohibiting picketing, and bust the strike. Yeah, it interfered. Doesn’t make sense. I mean, you should at least let us continue the strike and put some restrictions on us for what we did.

 

AC [00:30:23] So, that was a pretty common practice.

 

RH [00:30:27] Pretty common.

 

AC [00:30:28] Pretty common, and the courts stood behind it

 

RH [00:30:30] How common it was to take the whole picket line off, I’m not, I can’t quite remember, but certainly limit it so you couldn’t sneeze or blow your nose at the picket line.

 

AC [00:30:44] So then, carrying forward, just you mentioned the picket coordination policy or the strike coordination policy that the Fed adopted, and that required that all the unions that were going to be potentially affected would have a meeting ahead of time. Then the union responsible for the strike would say, ‘This is what we’re doing.’ And everybody had an idea of what was going to be happening before the dispute started.

 

RH [00:31:09] Involved, I think the biggest thing, it involved everybody. For example, we had a strike, and I can’t remember the name of the place, Retail Wholesale again. I would be involved a little more than usual, because it was my union as well, but I was Secretary of the Fed, and they got an injunction there and stopped the picketing. We got in touch with the IWA, and they sent down — this sounds pretty near racial, but they sent down about 50 Chinese fellas, all Chinese, and they all picketed. Every time they tried to ask them something, ‘No, no, no savvy.’ I’m sure they could, there were lots that could savvy, but they didn’t. We eventually lost the place. They talked them into a company union, but that’s how good the unions worked together. Another one that will shock you was on Canada Way, from about Renfrew all the way to Boundary, we organized — my union organized pretty near everything there. Simmons Mattress had a strike. B.F. Goodridge, Crane, Malkin’s, all from —

 

KB [00:32:29] Wire Rope.

 

RH [00:32:31] Wire Rope was not my union. That was the Steelworkers. Very funny one. The Steelworkers were trying to organize the office workers as well as having people in the plant, and the office workers weren’t interested in the Steelworkers. They went and joined the Office workers Local 15, and then the Office workers couldn’t get a settlement, and so they went out on strike. The Steelworkers continued to work. Went through the picket line, continued to work. We did everything we could to convince Steelworkers to respect the picket line. I think we eventually convinced the leadership, but they couldn’t convince their members. They probably had piddled it up too much already. So then, we didn’t know what to do, but we did the craziest thing you can imagine. We declared the products hot, and a few people said, ‘Well, aren’t they produced by union people?’ ‘Yeah, but they’re hot.’ So, I remember, and we were lucky then too, Bill Apps was on my executive. You’re shaking your head. You know him?

 

AC [00:34:00] Got him on our list to interview, we’re hoping to.

 

KB [00:34:02]  You gave me a list and I gave it to Bailey.

 

RH [00:34:04] Oh, okay, I think he’s slipping real bad. He didn’t even know me the other day when I went to George Derby.

 

AC [00:34:11] That’s too bad.

 

RH [00:34:12] Yeah, but try. Maybe he has good days. Anyway, his son worked at C.P.R., right there, or CN (Canadian Northern rail), and he phoned and said, ‘Ray, we got stuff here from Canadian Wire.’ I think that’s the name of it, isn’t it?

 

KB [00:34:30] British Wire Rope.

 

RH [00:34:30] Have I got the name right? Anyway, he says, ‘Is this hot?’ I said, ‘Yes, it is.’ He said, ‘I thought the Steelworkers were there.’ I said, ‘We declared it hot.’ ‘Okay, Ray.’ I mean, that’s the attitude we had in those days. I mean, if the Fed said that’s the policy, everybody loved it.

 

KB [00:34:50] Yes.

 

AC [00:34:55] So, were there any — that was obviously in a period when the state is against you, because they’re going to get injunctions or they’re using the power of the state to keep the plant open or the factory, the warehouse. What were the other tactics? I mean, we had the hot edicts.

 

RH [00:35:11] Let me go back to this other one, because I think there’s a very important one, and it was written up when John Squire from Retail Wholesale died. We were on strike at Marshal Wells, and we found out that they were operating out of the boxcar down at Abbott and Cordova — Abbott and Pender, great big either C.P. or C.N. complex there. So, we went down there, and we found the box car, and there they were. They were operating out of the box car. Box cars just coming in and pouring the stuff, and they were delivering it all over. So, we started picketing the box car, me and about five or six other guys, and the security guy come over and he says, ‘You got to move off.’ I said, ‘No, we’re not moving.’ Which is what we did in those days. I mean, we just said no. So, then he brought over six or eight more, and I said, ‘You guys are making a mistake, because if you knock us off of here,’ because they were going to forcefully take us off, ‘we’re going to go and picket the front entrance. We have the right to picket the employer’s premises. This is now the employer’s premises.’ I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but it made sense to me, so I said it; and sure enough, we went to court, and we won. That was, the box car was there, and they were operating, it was the employers’ premises. That was a big one in the injunction fight as well, one of the big ones. Now, I don’t know if I answered.

 

AC [00:36:53] No, we were just looking for other tactics.

 

RH [00:36:55] Yeah. Oh, yeah.

 

AC [00:36:59] What you had to do to kind of hold the whole thing together.

 

RH [00:37:00] Hot stuff. You have hot product. We took (unclear), an article was hot, that was nearly as good as having a picket line. The grape one was a terrific one too. We were probably the only state or province in North America that not only declared grapes hot, we refused to handle them, and I think it was quite helpful. We didn’t have that many. Only our Safeway drivers were the only ones that really — I’m trying to think of Slade & Stewart. No, Slade & Stewart was Teamsters, we didn’t have the trucks.

 

KB [00:37:43] They came in through the docks, though. They came by ship.

 

RH [00:37:47] Oh, yeah, yeah, but we took the position that Safeway guys wouldn’t handle it. Safeway went crazy at first, but then they backed off, and our Safeway guys never handled grapes during that strike. While nobody else was eating them.

 

KB [00:38:12] Why did you get involved in the Fed? Was that a natural calling for you to put yourself forward, or did your local put you forward?

 

RH [00:38:20] Oh, you’re going back there now? I loved Gerry Emary. He was a great guy. He died at 39, and he was great. I always think of him singing it — he drank a little bit too much, and he would sing, ‘You can’t scare me, I’m sticking with the union.’ And I always remember that. I want that song played at my wake.

 

KB [00:38:43] Yes.

 

RH [00:38:45] But Gerry was dancing with my wife at one time, and said to her, he says, ‘You know, I’m going to hire Ray one day.’ And she said, ‘Well, you better not joke about it because he’ll be heartbroken.’ A few months later he hired me, and he was on the Fed, but he didn’t like that stuff. He said, ‘Ray, I want you to take my spot on the Fed, and you can run at the next convention.’ And quite frankly, I said, ‘What about Bud? Bud’s been here longer than me.’ He says, ‘No, we leave Bud at the Labour Council.’ That was Bud Hodgins, and so, he should have moved to the Fed, and I should have gone to the Labour Council, but I went to the Fed. I moved up to fourth Vice President. Then when Pat O’Neill went back to the Pulp Workers, they had nobody else to get, so they got me.

 

KB [00:39:49] Excellent.

 

RH [00:39:49] I gave them the list of guys they should get, but they didn’t like the list. They said some of them won’t take it because they’re making more money than that now. They never had much money at that time. So, there was a few good guys that they would have liked to hire but couldn’t hire.

 

KB [00:40:12] What do you attribute your voting base to, for you?

 

RH [00:40:17] Small unions. When I was head of the Federation, think of this. I was from Retail Wholesale, which was about 2500 members. The Vice President was George John — no, the President was Carpenters at one time, and then — well, first of it was Bob Smeal, another wonderful mentor of mine who died young. But then —

 

AC [00:40:49] George Johnson,

 

KB [00:40:50] Ah. Yeah, but it was a carpenter as well, at one time. Then George Johnson, small union. Vice President Len Guy, small union. I think they changed the Constitution after I left.

 

KB [00:41:05] Okay.

 

RH [00:41:06] I heard something, that they made it more difficult for small unions to… It really was.

 

KB [00:41:14] Were you there when Kinnaird was there and negotiating Pennyfarthing?

 

KB [00:41:18] No, he was my Vice President. We picked him and got him on as Vice President, and I was very pleased with him and was glad that he got the presidency. We pushed for Len Guy, and Len Guy got it; and then when Len stepped down, I think it Kinnaird.

 

KB [00:41:39] And during those days, were you there when Pennyfarthing was going on?

 

RH [00:41:46] The name rings a bell, but I mean, think about — what was that again?

 

AC [00:41:50] That was the construction of the B.C. Central Credit Union site, down over by —

 

RH [00:41:56] All that was — oh, the Pennyfarthing, yeah.

 

AC [00:41:59] Granville Island construction.

 

RH [00:42:00] Building trades was put out of business, pretty near.

 

AC [00:42:02] Building trades are put out of business, and they’re using —

 

RH [00:42:04] No, I wasn’t involved.

 

AC [00:42:06] That was a bit later, I guess.

 

RH [00:42:07] I might have been at the Nurses by that that time, and we didn’t think — they weren’t in the Fed. I pushed them and pushed the teachers both to join the Fed and they all joined after I left. Yeah. Pennyfarthing. I know that. What you’re talking about now, that was that was the turning point for the building trades. I think. It was a calamity for them, but there was one big fight we had with Bennett, and we were all holed up in a hotel for a long time. Finally, we got out. We worked out a deal and I forget what, that was a strike within the construction industry, but was that earlier? It must’ve been earlier or something.

 

KB [00:43:00] That W.A.C. Or Bill?

 

RH [00:43:03] I think it was Bill.

 

AC [00:43:06] Was just thinking about that.

 

RH [00:43:08] I dealt with WAC I was Secretary-Treasurer, which was the top job, and I always think of old Wacky when we made our presentation to him after he’d just won the election and as we were leaving, he said, ‘Mr. Haynes’, he says, ‘I would like you to thank your members for supporting us.’ I smiled.

 

KB [00:43:33] When they —

 

AC [00:43:34] So Ray, that would have been, he won the election in 1969. Right? Then he lost the election in ’72.

 

RH [00:43:42] That’s right. It was the one, I think, before he lost.

 

AC [00:43:46] Yeah, yeah.

 

RH [00:43:47] We thought we might make it, but we didn’t.

 

AC [00:43:49] Yeah.

 

AC [00:43:52] Could you tell us a little bit more about that change over to the new government? With the New Democratic Party?

 

RH [00:43:58] Barrett?

 

AC [00:43:59] Yeah, yeah. The Barrett government.

 

RH [00:43:59]  Well, you probably heard there was bad feelings, usually, with Dave Barrett; and I give him a lot of credit for things that he did in a few years in the one term that he was in. Can’t ever forgive him for calling an election. The proper timing and everything, but we clashed because I supported Berger quite early. When Berger beat him at the hotel, you probably heard the story. He did come to me and told me and Berger at the hotel that they should contrive, and I think that was the word he used, to contrive a fight between labour. This is very bad, that labour is controlling the NDP.

 

KB [00:45:03] Any other issues with the Labour Code in the NDP government that you recall?

 

RH [00:45:07] No, just this attitude that they didn’t want to be associated with labour. They didn’t mind us working like dogs all over the province. I signed up tons of locals into the party.

 

AC [00:45:26] The party.

 

KB [00:45:27] The ranks.

 

RH [00:45:27] Yeah, and they liked it, but Dave had that attitude. A couple more did as well, that they didn’t want — I mean, I understand they don’t want it to be a Labour Party. We were at the convention when it was formed, and we didn’t want it to be called the Labour Party, but we didn’t expect that they would be embarrassed that we were close together.

 

AC [00:46:03] So did that affect Barrett’s choice of who got certain jobs like the Minister of Labour, or was there a fight over who got it?

 

RH [00:46:11] I was kind of on my way moving out at that time. ’73 is when he got elected and I left in about June, I think, of ’73.

 

KB [00:46:28] During your time at the Fed, were you involved in apartheid and the issues in South Africa, or any international?

 

RH [00:46:40] I don’t remember if I did. Yeah, I tell you, we did have a good honour going back to the Vietnam thing. It’s kind of a funny honour, but here’s what happened. We shut down the province for 5 minutes or something. I forget what it was. We had a five-minute break at noon or something. You have to look it up, because I’m very vague about it, but it got a tremendous amount of talking and publicity that we really didn’t deserve. I don’t even know how much we shut down or nothing, but we got a quick call from a big rally in San Francisco, that they wanted us to come down there. So, I took it to the officers meeting, which was a couple of days later, and the meeting’s coming that weekend and nobody was available, so I said I’d go. I was speaker number 48 or something, about quarter to five at night, started at 1:00, but they gave us recognition for whatever we did, which wasn’t very much. We did speak out on Vietnam continually. That one and the grapes, I think, but maybe we were involved in the apartheid one. It’s funny that I don’t quite remember.

 

KB [00:48:08] When you finished your tenure at the Fed, where did you go?

 

RH [00:48:12]  I was bushed. I mean, I was just dead tired, and I always wanted to either, as I said to you, have a restaurant or a resort. A friend of ours was selling, knew a guy who was selling a resort at Quadra Island. I, despite another friend who said that the two worst businesses in the world is resorts and restaurants, I bought the restaurant. My wife and I bought the restaurant — sorry, we bought the resort. Beautiful place, not nothing fancy, but a nice, beautiful site on Quadra Island, but I couldn’t make it. I still loved the labour movement, so it was easy. I got a call from Berger, actually, to come and see him. He wanted somebody to help him with the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. So, I went to work for him. He saved me, because I was in financial difficulties right then, and he hired me as a consultant to get labour on board for native jobs and stuff up at, if the Mackenzie Valley Pipe — he had a program if it went through, as well as recommending against it. So, I played a role in the labour part of it.

 

KB [00:49:31] Okay.

 

RH [00:49:32] And I got all of the labour guys to come up, all the Building Trades guys, and all declaring they would work with the natives. So, that was about two years I was with him. About ’75 to ’77 or ’78.

 

AC [00:49:58] So Ray, just on one area, on the piece in global ed. thing. I mean, the Vietnam War was there too, but the Federation of Labour played an active role in the peace movement as well, right?

 

RH [00:50:09] Oh yeah, we were at the rally at Peace Arch a couple of times.

 

AC [00:50:14] Peace Arch marches. Peace marches. Yeah.

 

RH [00:50:18] Yeah. No, no. It was pretty progressive, and I don’t take a lot of the credit for it. I just had great people around me. I really go by that saying that you have to have good people around you who will disagree with you, and I had that. I had that, probably with the Teachers, not that much because I wasn’t — other than helping out in that particular time, but the nurses, I had Debbie Cameron, who you all know, who ended up a top mediator in Vancouver and Deborah Service-Brewster, who is now heading up the negotiations for the part of the Newspaper Guild, I think in Victoria. They had no trouble telling me, ‘Ray, you’re crazy. Don’t do that, Ray.’ I mean, they — I had people that would — Colin Gabelmann, Clive Lytle, John McNevin, George Johnson, all those guys were all great guys to keep me out of trouble. I was quite young, and I could get in trouble.

 

KB [00:51:37] Excellent.

 

RH [00:51:40] Did I answer the question, or did I go sideways?

 

KB [00:51:44] No. That’s — memory is sideways, actually. So, when you worked for the Nurses’ Union, what was your role there?

 

RH [00:51:53] Well, that was a terrific challenge. When I came back after Berger, I thought, ‘Well, this consulting business isn’t bad. Maybe that’s what I should do.’ So, an American friend that came up here to avoid the Vietnam War with his son, his son was getting ready to be called up. He heard of me through Phyllis Young, who worked in our Federation office. So, I met with him, and the family came up. So, we went into consulting, him and I, West Coast Labour Bureau, and from there I got a job. I did a job with Nora Payton, who was head of the Nurses’ Union, and she then wanted to hire me. I’d probably had enough of the consulting business and wanted to be back in the fold. It was a challenge because there was the long-time care… is it the long-time care? No.

 

AC [00:53:09] Long-term care. Long-term care.

 

RH [00:53:13] Gee, whiz. Long-term care people weren’t organized in the province and so that was the specific job that she wanted me to do. She let me and the rest of our group in the office hire two nurses to work with me. So, we had a department of three, Debbie Cameron was one. Debbie came and got interviewed and we just fell in love with her right off the bat. Deborah, the same. Both tough gals and they had no labour background. Shops stewards in different hospitals. That was the long-term care department, and we organized a thousand nurses in the ten years I was there, and when I say a thousand nurses, there’s only about an average of ten in each facility. You know, we reorganized a ton of facilities. Some had more than that, but the average was about ten. All over the province. You know, there was a few long-term care facilities under the hospital contract, and they kind of stayed there, but that may have changed afterwards; but we organized tons. Private ones and Kinsmen ones and volunteer groups as well, and they were paid awful for looking after the toughest job in nursing that you could have. We demanded the same rates as the nurses, but we also wanted the benefits that the nurses didn’t have. We got things that — and sometimes we had them and we just included them or made them better, and eventually they all kind of stabilized.

 

KB [00:55:10] You’re talking about medical extended health.

 

RH [00:55:12] All the benefits. Yes, those kinds of things, because sometimes in the private places they had them, but they didn’t have any money. It was terrible. Nora Payton, to her credit, she’s the gal, the lady who took them out of the Registered Nurses Association and formed the union, and she’s the one that pushed for this long-term care organizing. I always think, she’s gone back east, I’d like to see her again.

 

KB [00:55:42] Right. That was provincially you were working on that?

 

RH [00:55:45] Yeah.

 

KB [00:55:47] So you were on the road a fair bit?

 

RH [00:55:48] Oh, yeah.

 

AC [00:55:50] So what was the —

 

RH [00:55:51] Same with Retail Wholesale. Yeah, I was, you name it. I was all over B.C.

 

AC [00:55:56] So Ray, what was the challenge then in organizing with small groups of nurses? Lots of employers?

 

RH [00:56:05] Pardon?

 

AC [00:56:05] Lots of employers?

 

RH [00:56:06] Yeah. They formed an organization eventually and bargained with us as a group, but they were kind of waiting to be organized, in a way. I mean, it was still tough organizing, and we did it clandestine sometimes. Very rarely did I ever — I thought it was kind of stupid to call a meeting and let the employer know that you’re organizing. I remember when we organized Simmons Mattress, the Teamsters had gone in there and called a meeting of all the members, and they didn’t like the Teamsters that much. So, then we — oh, the Teamsters never forgave us, we went out and organized knocking on doors. That’s how we have — that’s what I learnt in Retail Wholesale, and we used it to advantage in the Nurses as well.

 

AC [00:57:00] Just door to door and find out where they live. Knock on the door, introduce yourself.

 

RH [00:57:04] I remember knocking on doors and the person would look up and down the street and then say, ‘Come on in.’ That’s how bad it was, and unions didn’t recognize that really weren’t able to organize. The Surrey Co-op was one of the toughest ones we ever had, and boy, oh, boy, I bet you half a dozen times people looked up and down the street before they invited us in.

 

KB [00:57:32] So, when you get them signed up, when it came vote time, did a lot of the times that change?

 

RH [00:57:37] We didn’t have to vote then. At one point, if you had…

 

KB [00:57:42] Over 50.

 

RH [00:57:43] A certain.

 

AC [00:57:45] 51%.

 

RH [00:57:45] Yeah, you have 51%, I think it was no vote. It may have changed. I think there has been some changes, but no, you got automatic cert. I mean, that drove the employer bananas. You couldn’t, didn’t give them any chance to horse around. Hudson’s Bay Wholesale, I mean, all of a sudden I’m waiting to hear from the Labour Board. We put our application in and I get, I hear the loudspeaker, Al Foster, my foreman. ‘Come on up, Mr. Ship’ That was his name, so you can imagine what we did to that. George Ship was the head guy. ‘Mr. Ship would like to talk to you.’ So I go up there. He said, ‘Ray, what have you done? What is this here?’ He had the letter of application for certification in his hand, and I said, ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘We’re going to have a union.’ And he said, ‘Why didn’t you come to see me?’ I said, ‘Well, you know why I didn’t come see you.’ And that’s the way we did it. Clandestine. You know, we got one-on-one all the time. Once in a while, somebody says, ‘Well, I’ll bring so-and-so. He’s really for that.’

 

KB [00:58:56] Now you, after or during your period.

 

RH [00:58:59] I was a tea blender there.

 

KB [00:59:01] A tea blender at –.

 

RH [00:59:02] Hudson’s Bay.

 

KB [00:59:03] At Hudson’s Bay. Excellent.

 

RH [00:59:05] Fort Gary.

 

AC [00:59:08] That was your tea blend?

 

RH [00:59:09] That was the Hudson’s Bay brand.

 

AC [00:59:14] Okay, what did that consist of? When you say you’re a tea blender, what were you doing?

 

RH [00:59:19] I used four or five big chests of tea, and you rip them open and a certain percentage of different kinds of tea go into the big round blender about six, seven feet in diameter and blend it all up. Then it goes down and the people put it in the bags. It was getting automated more and more as I worked there, and then they sold to Lion’s Tea, and that was on Terminal Avenue. Just as you’re going up towards Clarke Drive, but it’s gone now.

 

KB [01:00:03] Yes. During your period at the Nurses, you were seconded over to the TF (BC Teachers’ Federation) for a bit.

 

RH [01:00:09] Yeah. When they had the right to strike rather than continue with the arbitration. I had — nobody I think had — Sharon Yandle was probably the only one that had any experience in bargaining under a strike situation. So, her and I worked together and put out a few fires, and it was a terrific experience. I enjoyed it.

 

KB [01:00:41] Who was the president at that time?

 

RH [01:00:45] Al, help me.

 

AC [01:00:45] No.

 

KB [01:00:46] Larry Kuehn?

 

AC [01:00:47] No, it was Elsie McMurphy during the time Ray was there.

 

RH [01:00:51] I think it was Elsie.

 

AC [01:00:52] And he was, she was replaced by Ken Novakowski, actually, right after that. So, Ray was there when Elsie was coming to the end of her term. I think Ray was there in 1988.

 

RH [01:01:02] I can’t remember. That sounds about right. I was there ’til 1990 with the Nurses.

 

AC [01:01:09] Yeah.

 

RH [01:01:12] Great, great experience. Nobody can say anything against nurses or teachers when I’m out.

 

AC [01:01:29] Oh sorry, the Vancouver Municipal and Regional Employees’ Union (VMREU). You worked with VMREU, right?

 

RH [01:01:35] Yeah. I had a falling out at the Nurses right towards the end. We had an idiot who was in charge of the staff. Absolute hopeless guy, but we all did our own thing and Nora let us do our own thing. Then, I guess Nora moved on and Glen — oh, this was the story and I’m sticking to it. Roy Richmond was, I don’t even know what his job was at the Nurses, but he was the guy who kept Glen sane. I mean, he was the one who, when Glenn would want to do stupid stuff, Roy would talk him out of it. Roy died of galloping cancer. All of a sudden, within two or three weeks, he was gone, and Glen was on his own. Actually went crazy and drove everybody nuts, and I didn’t — he fired the guy who went to HEU.

 

AC [01:02:52] He’s the Business Agent.

 

RH [01:02:53] Yeah.

 

KB [01:02:54] Fred?

 

AC [01:02:58] No, no, Fred was the President.

 

RH [01:03:01] Younger guy and I didn’t –.

 

KB [01:03:06] Before Carmella.

 

RH [01:03:06] Yeah, that’s right. I didn’t want to work there any longer. So, all of a sudden I heard about VMREU and I knew Bob Donnelly. He lied to me. He told me it was a great job, and I accepted that. It was not. It was — I didn’t really enjoy my last two years, although I met some great people. Joey Hartman, Steve Baker.

 

KB [01:03:36] That’s right.

 

RH [01:03:36] And a couple others, but the union —

 

KB [01:03:42] Was it just —

 

RH [01:03:43] They talk good, but they —

 

KB [01:03:45] They didn’t have the wherewithal to.

 

RH [01:03:49] Well, I always remember when they interviewed me, I was interviewed by the whole executive and they would ask me — everybody was asking questions and they told me, ‘What would you do in this thing?’ And I’d say, ‘Well, I would get tough and blah, blah, blah.’ ‘What about this?’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I think we would shut them down if they tried that kind of stuff.’ And they loved it. I mean, they talked a great deal, but when it came to doing any of those things when I started working there, it was just the opposite. You know, it wasn’t a happy time. But as I say, I’m — Steve’s up on the Sunshine Coast. We golf together now, and Joey, I drop in once in a while and see Joey. They were great, great people.

 

AC [01:04:35] So, with VMREU, who was the employer, Ray, in that situation?

 

RH [01:04:39] Oh, quite a few. The big one was to the City of Vancouver.

 

AC [01:04:41] City of Vancouver, yeah.

 

RH [01:04:42]  But the Parks Board, the Museum. Couple of other handicap and housing stuff, the art gallery, city police. When we settled the Vancouver Police, the City of Vancouver, the police all insisted on more negotiations. We just tried to take the position that the settlements there. It’s the city of Vancouver, you guys are the city of Vancouver. Everything you got there, you must give to the city, to the — when I’m talking about the police it’s police office staff.

 

AC [01:05:23] Clerical.

 

RH [01:05:23] Yeah. No, it was a couple of people in there I had trouble working with.

 

KB [01:05:34] Looking back at your history and your life in general. How would you counsel a young person?

 

RH [01:05:45] Well, as I said, get a job that you really love and you’re willing to jump out of bed and rush to in the morning. You don’t surround yourself with yes men, because that saved me. I could have been in deep trouble, especially when I was sort of still learning. Nothing could be better than working for the labour movement, really. A good friend of mine, Al Pearson, who was with Retail Wholesale, died short time ago. One of my poker players.

 

KB [01:06:28] I was there when Al was there.

 

RH [01:06:29] Yeah, wonderful guy, but he used to say, ‘You have to have it in your gut.’ He said, ‘Oh,’ he says, NDP guy hasn’t got it in his gut, that union guy hasn’t got it in his gut.’ It’s the most accurate thing I think you can say, and you can tell by the way they conduct themselves or their policies that it’s sort of a job rather than a dedication to what you believe in.

 

KB [01:06:58] Principle. So you’re still active, in a way.

 

RH [01:07:04] Yeah, I just got hooked by the BC Labour FORUM (Federation of Retired Union Members). It’s a seniors group within the BC Fed. So, I attended my first meeting in Vancouver just recently. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, that’s the only trouble. I can’t quite get at the seniors that are our way, and I’m already in the COSCO (Council of Senior Citizen Organizations of BC), part of COSCO, but they do a lot and they get a lot of material from the Canadian Labour Congress on pensions, the fight for CPP (Canadian Pension Plan) and all that stuff. So, I’ll give it a try for a while.

 

KB [01:07:44] Did you have an issue with a train? A coal train?

 

RH [01:07:50] Yeah. My close friend that I met, let’s see when it was, while I was with the Nurses, a group was started and we toured the province. It was called the People’s Commission, and they issued a report somewhere. Cliff Stainsby was kind of the organizer for it and there was an Anglican minister lady on it. I’ll be embarrassed here, but a ‘Waffle’ guy. Who would that be now? a good guy. Do you know what I’m talking about?

 

AC [01:08:39] Not Novakowski?

 

RH [01:08:40] No.

 

AC [01:08:40] He was a ‘Waffle’ guy, but I know, yeah. I know.

 

RH [01:08:45] But we were overly sensitive to the ‘Waffle’ guys when I was in the NDP, but I found they all were great guys. Anyway, was it Laxer?

 

AC [01:09:00] Yeah. Yeah. Guy from Toronto. Okay, yeah. Political science prof, York University.

 

RH [01:09:04] I was on it. We worked together great. I mean, the Anglican Minister and all of us worked together great. Went around the province and I bumped, and that way I met Cliff Stainsby, and got to keep a friendship with him. I drop off at Mill Bay and visit him when I’m over visiting my grandchildren on the island, and we still send e-mails back and forth. He is into environment 110%. He just has solarized his whole house, everything. The whole thing, and he’s got a garden and greenhouse and everything, and he lives off the land. He is doing everything he’s supposed to do, but he was heavy into stopping the coal shipments, and that’s how I got involved with him, and with that great environmentalist that you hear about. On an international scene, what’s his name?

 

AC [01:10:09] David Suzuki?

 

RH [01:10:11] Pardon?

 

AC [01:10:12] David Suzuki?

 

RH [01:10:12] No, Bill. Bill somebody.

 

BG [01:10:19] I’m not sure about Bill.

 

AC [01:10:21] I was thinking about Lambert, or Barnett.

 

RH [01:10:21] Kennedy or something like that.

 

BG [01:10:24] Oh, yeah. Is it the local MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) you’re referring to?

 

RH [01:10:27] No, no.

 

KB [01:10:29] International.

 

RH [01:10:29] Yeah. Anyway, he spoke a couple of times at the Pacific Inn, down at Pacific Centre right down at the water there. You know, that’s the trouble with names. I did pretty good today.

 

KB [01:10:45] You’ve done excellent.

 

RH [01:10:45] It’s about time we get in trouble. Anyway, they were fighting coal, and we went and picketed at White Rock on the railroad tracks. We all agreed we made a mistake. We got arrested and we paid the fines, and I’ve talked to nearly half of them now, and we all agree we shouldn’t have paid the fines. It died. We could have kept it going. Might have had to go to jail, but we could have kept it going.

 

BG [01:11:19] Was environment an issue at all in your previous organizing in the labour movement?

 

RH [01:11:26] The story I tell, it’s a nice one and again, we’re going to grope for names here. There was a guy in the union, in the Federation, came from the Street Railwaymen’s union, and he talked about environment all the time. Drove us nuts. I mean, we weren’t talking about environment in those days. Rachel Carson — is that her name? — Wrote the book Silent Spring. Okay, I can remember all those names, but I can’t remember his. He kept getting up at the Fed convention, going on and on about the environment, and it wasn’t time for it yet, if you know what I mean. It was time for it, but we didn’t think so. We didn’t. So finally, we said, let’s set up an Environmental Committee and put ‘blah, blah, blah’ as the chair, and he woke us all up. He just kept pushing and pushing, and we had Environmental Committee reports and studies and stuff, and he pushed more and more. Then, of course, we all moved into it. He was the guy that did it, and it was time.

 

KB [01:12:41] In your opinion, what’s the most important issue facing workers today?

 

RH [01:12:49] Well, we haven’t — The mistake we always make in a lot of things is we don’t look at what happened elsewhere and say, ‘Hey, that’s happening there. Why? How come it isn’t, we aren’t doing something about it?’ We should learn from what’s happening. If we ever had a better example than what’s happened to the labour movement in the United States, it’s decimated, and we’re going to be next if we’re not careful. I sort of preach that a bit. Easier said than done, of course.

 

KB [01:13:26] How would you present that topic to new, emerging people coming into the labour movement?

 

RH [01:13:39] Well, it’s like global warming. You can’t believe that there are still people that don’t agree yet, and it’s still the same in unions, I guess. There are people who don’t — they look at some of the uncomfortable things that happen with a union. I mean, you get regimented a bit, and you aren’t able to do everything you want to do sometimes, but without the labour movement, it’s a disaster. Now, I have to be awful careful at this stage because it’s different times. I know that. We’ve got all the free trade, and I’m talking about environment, and people are talking about jobs. We know what all that’s about; but without unions, I mean, what the hell? It’s hopeless.

 

AC [01:14:39] Does it make you think differently about international unions, Ray? I mean, we ended up with international unions in the old days because the Americans were further ahead, and they were organized. Many of the organizers came to British Columbia? But — sorry — but now we’ve got globalization, right. We’ve got the global economy.

 

RH [01:15:04] I know. So, I have to be careful. It’s hard to preach, you know, things are so different, and I say, ‘What is the labour movement doing?’ I think I made a statement to the Sunshine Coast Labour Council. I think I annoyed a couple of them. I said, ‘If you’re in the Canadian Labour Congress, would you not be wondering what you’re paying your dues for?’ Which is a little unfair, because number one, we don’t hear all the things they are doing. Number two, there is stuff comes out that we don’t hear about, and I’m finding that out now since I’ve been in BC FORUM, that there is stuff that they’re putting out and everything. But they’re not — I still think — I don’t know enough, but they don’t seem to be mobilizing workers to work together and beat the hell out of the boss. I’ll give you a good example. I went to pay my BCAA (BC Automobile Association) dues, and I was just going to send a cheque and I heard that there was a strike on at BCAA, and it’d been on for quite a while. I didn’t know it was on. Now, that’s a number of reasons. The first one being no labour reporters.

 

KB [01:16:24] Yes, that’s right.

 

RH [01:16:24] Secondly, I don’t get the paper every day like I used to do. I tried to get the Globe and Mail up there. They won’t even deliver it to Halfmoon Bay. So, there’s a lot of different reasons, but I solved the problem. I wrote them a letter and said I will not be paying my dues or renewing until you get settled in the strike, and they settled right away.

 

KB [01:16:47] Right.

 

AC [01:16:50] There you have it.

 

KB [01:16:54] Very simple.

 

AC [01:16:54] If they would’ve known, they would’ve phoned you right away, right?

 

AC [01:16:56] So, just one minute here. We just need to switch out the battery.

 

RH [01:17:00] Two or three of them got fired.

 

AC [01:17:02] Yeah.

 

KB [01:17:05] So, if you were looking at a moment in time, in your time that you remember, what’s the proudest moment for you?

 

RH [01:17:14] Holy cow.

 

KB [01:17:16] If you had to pick one item that speaks to your heart.

 

RH [01:17:30] Oh, I think the policy of unions working together in a strike, in a strike or labour dispute. Yeah. That’s so important. I mean.

 

KB [01:17:44] Truly.

 

RH [01:17:44] They’re out, you know, they’re out there and they’re hard to get — now, again, a little bit easier when I was there, because sometimes we’d say, ‘Okay, we only need four or five pickets, you guys go and work.’ Go to work and they got jobs. There’s lots of jobs around. So, you know, that’s another factor that I sort of overlook sometimes. When I think of the strike at Simmons Mattress, the women saved the strike. I’m not saying that cause you guys are here, but the guys were moaning and whining and everything, and the women just were terrific. They, management called a big meeting of the workers, and it was mostly the guys, and we came to the house. We found out where it was. We came in and raised holy hell with the guys and chased the management people out. They were leaving about then, I guess, and the women saved that strike. I remember the UFAWU (United Fishermen and Allied Workers Union) coming down and bringing salmon to all our strikers. I mean, it just — I guess they still do stuff like this, but it was the times. I mean, it was…

 

AC [01:19:01] Solidarity between unions.

 

RH [01:19:03] Yeah, and if I did anything, if I was involved in anything — I don’t want to take credit for it — but that was what we worked at. I mean, that’s why I wanted to be involved in the Federation. When you asked me about that, and when Gerry asked me, he told my wife, I actually thought, ‘I want to get’ — Oh, I’ve missed a big point. Yeah, I missed a big point. When we had a strike, and we had a number of them, because we’re in a tough industry in the Retail Wholesale. It was just — we never did much in retail, but wholesale, we had a number of strikes. They were all, nine out of ten were recognition strikes. They were the first contract. They decided that they would fight you then. Why fight you afterwards? Fight you then and it’s all over. So, when they fought us and those recognition strikes. They were brutal because, I mean, you were going to — you lost everything, and I was very unhappy that we couldn’t get support from other unions. For example, we’d have to go to the Labour Council, didn’t go to the Fed in those days. You went to the Labour Council, and they would thank us and tell us that we’ll see them next week and they’ll have some answers for us. Come back next week, and we still say, ‘Well, why can’t we get these other unions to do this, and do this, and do that for us?’ ‘Well, we’re working on it, but we’ll –‘ and so I just said to Gerry, ‘This is terrible, Gerry.’ I said, ‘And why are we going to the Labour Council? Shouldn’t we go to the Federation?’ And so that was it. That’s how we started going to the BC Federation of Labour, and I guess that was my real push and interest in the Federation is that, how we can help unions to work together.

 

KB [01:21:09] Excellent.

 

AC [01:21:15] It’s such an important point, Ray. I know this is your interview, but I just want to underscore, you’re absolutely right. You only have to look at other places that don’t have that kind of policy where it is a constant effort to make sure you have a ‘no crossing picket line’ right of the workers within the collective agreement, but also that the Fed is working together to coordinate what the workers are doing. So, labour disputes we have in British Columbia, we took schools, for example, schools close. So, when one union goes on strike, the schools are closed. You know, in other jurisdictions, that doesn’t happen, and that’s because of the BC Federation of Labour.

 

RH [01:22:06] And is it slipping now? Am I correct about this, it’s slipping a bit?

 

AC [01:22:12] Well, I don’t hear it. I think the bigger problem is we’re dropping union density in the private sector. So now, you’ve got new employers, new situations, new suppliers, employers, the ability of big corporations to move their business around.

 

RH [01:22:31] This is what’s happened in Retail Wholesale.

 

AC [01:22:34] So now, it’s tougher to kind of actually get a strike.

 

RH [01:22:37] That’s why I have to be very careful what I say, because it is different times.

 

AC [01:22:41] It’s different, but that doesn’t mean —

 

RH [01:22:42] But then you’ve got to sort of say, well, if it’s different, we’ve got to think of what can we do? It’s changed. You can’t just sit there and not do anything.

 

AC [01:22:55] Yeah. So, I mean, there’s lots of big challenges, but the work of our pioneers really helps.

 

KB [01:23:03] To that. Then if we’re looking forward, if we’re fortunate to have a government change, is it time to rework the legislation? Labour code?

 

RH [01:23:16] Well, before you get to that one, let me tell you that I think, while I work like a dog for NDP affiliation and support of the NDP, I think it has a downside as well. I think that the labour movement now, a little bit — this may be unfair, but it’s my feeling, I have to say — I think they now think all we got to do is elect a government and they’ll solve our problems. So, picket line policies and all this other working together with the unions is not quite as essential as they thought it was, because they’ve got — and you hear the talk. ‘We’ll get elected government, and they will change this.’ The trouble is that doesn’t — those changes don’t solve the problem 100%. But when they get in there, they’re a little bit leery about changing. I mean, a phrase I used to get after they got elected was, ‘Yeah, Ray, but you know, we got to get elected the next time, too. We better take it a little bit slower.’ I’m telling all my friends now, I say, ‘Why don’t you get Bernie Sanders up here and get this NDP moving?’ I gave that to McNevin this morning.

 

KB [01:24:45] Now, we do have —

 

RH [01:24:47] Sorry, you know that John’s wife was NDP all her life. Worked for Broadbent. For free. Not for free, but no pensions. They both financially got problems.

 

KB [01:25:02] Now, we have your clippings. I had a look at them last night.

 

RH [01:25:09] They’re unbelievable, aren’t they?

 

KB [01:25:11] They are truly, and they’re all collected.

 

RH [01:25:13] Like I told my three kids, I said, ‘Look, we might get a few clippings.’ Because there was a lot about the Fed in those days. So, I says, ‘If you guys put them together and put them in a scrapbook for me, I’ll pay you.’ I don’t even know what I paid them, and didn’t realize how much coverage we had, you know. Didn’t visualize it until they started putting it in scrapbooks. Unreal.

 

KB [01:25:39] Would you be comfortable if they were here and scanned and the originals.

 

RH [01:25:44] Sure.

 

AC [01:25:45] Then returned to you, of course.

 

RH [01:25:46] Oh, do whatever you want, sure. I had lent them to Rod Mickleburgh, and I had to go and pick them up the other day. He’s not in a hurry for them but would like them back when we’re finished. When you’re finished, I’ll take him back to Rod.

 

AC [01:26:02] Wonderful.

 

KB [01:26:02] Right. Well, if they’re scanned here, maybe they can be sent as an electronic file to Rod?

 

RH [01:26:07] Maybe he’d like that, I don’t know.

 

AC [01:26:08] If he’s interested in that, absolutely. Something we can discuss for sure.

 

RH [01:26:11] You know Claudia? Somebody Claudia?

 

AC [01:26:15] I don’t know Claudia, but I do know Rod, yeah.

 

AC [01:26:18] Okay. Claudia does work for different unions and stuff, and she’s a close partner of Steve Baker on the Sunshine Coast, and that’s how I got to know her. She came over and did a bunch of stuff with those scrapbooks as well. I should give you.

 

AC [01:26:42] If you have her contact info.

 

RH [01:26:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can do that before I leave, actually.

 

AC [01:26:49] So, is there anything about your time in the labour movement that we didn’t get a chance to talk about today, that you feel like we should have talked about?

 

RH [01:26:57] Yeah, because a couple of times on the tip of my tongue and then I lost it. Oh yeah. There’s tons.

 

AC [01:27:04] Yeah, yeah, it is endless. I know.

 

RH [01:27:08] There is tons. It was exciting times.

 

KB [01:27:13] You have been.

 

RH [01:27:16] I don’t know whether you want to hear, this was a crazy story.

 

AC [01:27:19] Sure.

 

RH [01:27:20] We had organized — see, I can’t remember the name of the outfit, but we had organized an outfit and the Machinists and Teamsters kept going through our picket line, and so we raised holy hell with them. The Federation policy, I guess, wasn’t in place because I was still with Retail Wholesale. I think we backed off the Machinists, but we couldn’t back off the Teamsters. Teamsters were terrible in those days. I mean, they’re quite good now, but they were terrible. I mean, I was at Slade & Stewart, and he told the guy to drive across the picket line at Slade & Stewart. I said to the driver, I said, ‘Tell him to drive the truck. If he wants the truck to go across, let the Teamster guy drive it.’ Anyway, this story I was going to tell you and got sidetracked again was the Teamsters wouldn’t stop. So we, it’s interesting, we’re kiddy-corner. We’re at the 500 block and they’re at the 600 block on Broadway, and so we started picking the Teamsters. They got in touch with our lawyer, because we used the same lawyers on occasion, and they said, ‘Ray, they’re going to go and get an injunction. No, no, they want you to stop this picket.’ I said, ‘No, no. They respect our picket lines and quit handling stuff and we’ll stop.’ And they said, ‘Well, they’re going to have to get an injunction.’ I said, ‘Let them get an injunction. That’s great.’ So anyway, to make a long story short, because this is an unbelievable story. About the second day, I guess — oh, first of all, I should say John Squire, who was quite, I was the head guy, so John was looking after it, always wore a light-coloured raincoat. That next day a guy came out of the building, out of the Teamsters office, came over to a guy who had a light raincoat on which wasn’t John, and bashed him and knocked him on to the ground. Then he ran up the alley, up the street and down the alley, jumped in a car and drove away. I spotted him running and I chased after him. I got the license number of the car, and it was a Teamster rep from the Okanagan. Al Barnes was his name. Funny how I remember the name.

 

KB [01:30:00] Yeah.

 

RH [01:30:01] And so this guy, whose name was Stratton, I think you’ll find the clipping in those books. Stratton was arrested and then got out on bail, and that was on a probably a Thursday or Friday or something. On Sunday night, George Dobie phoned me. Vancouver Sun, labour reporter. Ray — I think his name was Gil Stratton, was the guy who — he was an SIU (Seafarers’ International Union) goon. You know, they had a name for them, but we call them goons. There was a special name they had down on the waterfront in Seattle, he was up from Seattle. Was just shot to death. I said, ‘Holy cow.’ He said, ‘Ray, Ray, relax. It wasn’t one of your guys that killed him.’ I thought — he knew what I was thinking. I thought, ‘Oh my God, what’s happening? One of our guys tried to retaliate?’ Anyway, the story is that he had broken into an old apartment down in the mainland area before it was a whole nice rich area and went to rob this guy. This is the story. The guy resisted, and he tried to beat him with his gun, but he held the barrel. I mean, it all sounds weird. So, the guy reached out and pulled the trigger and killed him. Now, I guess that’s the true story. Never heard anything more about it. That was the finish. This guy obviously was, came up here on the request of the Teamsters to beat up one of our guys — John Squire, we think — on the picket line. He gets shot and there’s no more story after that. That was the Teamsters in those days. Now, they did get better.

 

KB [01:31:56] Did you have any dealings with the SIU?

 

RH [01:31:59] Oh, yeah, we had. Well, the biggest — you just mentioned, see, I could go on for hours. We just mentioned the biggest fight we had was at Northland Navigation.

 

KB [01:32:09] Yes.

 

RH [01:32:10] That’s a big story.

 

KB [01:32:11] Longshore.

 

RH [01:32:12] And we picketed around the clock. Hundreds and hundreds of guys came down there and picketed.

 

KB [01:32:21] Was that the battle for the CSU (Canadian Seamen’s Union)?

 

RH [01:32:23] Yeah.

 

KB [01:32:24] Yeah, and the SIU.

 

AC [01:32:26] What year would that have been?

 

KB [01:32:27] Sorry?

 

AC [01:32:27] What year would that have been around?

 

KB [01:32:29] Oh, back in the sixties.

 

RH [01:32:32] Yeah. During my time as Federation.

 

KB [01:32:34] Because the — how the story went was Diefenbaker didn’t want the Communist union operating, so he brought Hal Banks up to Ottawa.

 

RH [01:32:43] Hal Banks, yeah.

 

KB [01:32:44] And Ottawa hired or had in the SIU, a member called Norm Cunningham who was a thug, and he would go on the vessels and D.N.S., Do Not Ship these guys, because they were Canadian Seamen’s Union. The long and the short was he was a goon for that. He ended up leaving the Seafarers’ International and became the President of the B.C. Maritime Employers Association when I was still working as a longshoreman.

 

RH [01:33:14] Who did?

 

KB [01:33:16] Norm Cunningham.

 

RH [01:33:17] Okay. There was another older guy there, too, that I worked with.

 

KB [01:33:23] In Longshore?

 

RH [01:33:25] With the Maritime Union, with the —

 

KB [01:33:28] Frank Kennedy?

 

RH [01:33:29] What was the other unions?

 

AC [01:33:30] Canadian Seamen’s Union.

 

RH [01:33:31] No, but there was a third.

 

KB [01:33:33] SIU?

 

RH [01:33:34] No.

 

KB [01:33:36] Well, Longshore there was —

 

RH [01:33:37] Yeah, but there was Canadian Merchant Service Guild.

 

KB [01:33:41] Oh the CMSG. Yes, that’s right. Yeah.

 

RH [01:33:46] Funny little story there. They moved for injunction, and we were to go into court on Monday. Bob Smeal, who was the president of the Federation, Alex McDonald, who was our lawyer — not all the time, because I wasn’t crazy about him, but — and me, hung out in a hotel down on Robson Street to decide what to do on Monday morning. So, we told Alec, Alec said, ‘Well, I’ll be there and I’ll be able to tell them that you’ve removed the picket line.’ We said, ‘No, the picket line will still be there.’ And Alec went berserk. He said, ‘You think I’m going in before the judge and you are still defying the injunction?’ We said, Yeah, Alec. We’re not moving the picket line.’ Somehow, it got settled, and I can’t remember. You’d have to check it out. Everybody came to their senses, I guess, but we never moved the picket line and Alex McDonald, he accepted that, but his first reaction was unreal. That was one of the biggest fights we had, and my last one was a great one. I was picketing, a number of us were picketing a Save On or a Super Valu out Davie Street or Robson Street. I’m sure giving you good information, don’t I? They got an injunction against us, and then I left the Federation. I only mentioned this one because it’s funny. My wife couldn’t handle it, because every year they would renew the injunction, and they never let me off the hook for about two or three years. Then one year I was able to tell her, well, the guys from Victory Square Law office got in touch with me and said, ‘Ray, they didn’t renew it this year.’ And she was quite relieved. There was no worry about it, but you know.

 

KB [01:35:40] Who was the council? Was it Dave Morgan?

 

RH [01:35:44] No, I used them all down there. Yeah. John Baigent, I think he was there at one time.

 

AC [01:35:57] John Rogers.

 

RH [01:35:58] His lady friend. They were married for a while.

 

AC [01:36:02] Marguerite Jackson.

 

RH [01:36:03] Marguerite Jackson, wonderful person. John Rogers.

 

AC [01:36:09] John Rogers, Catherine Wedge.

 

RH [01:36:11] I actually got the — I got the Nurses’ Union to throw out their lawyers and get a different firm. They had an awful lawyer there, but they allowed him to run the union. This is another mistake unions make, is that they get so wrong about what the role of the lawyer is. They let the lawyer, and he nearly was running the union. His speech at the party when we said goodbye to him was quite entertaining, he said, because there was another great lady there, Heather Leighton. He said, as we were having drinks, goodbye, whoever it was. I can’t even remember his name now. And he said, ‘I knew I was finished when Ray Hayes and Heather Leighton came.’ Yeah, that’s what, if Nora made a mistake, that was one of her mistakes. But she was a pretty good lady.

 

AC [01:37:08] Mm hmm.

 

RH [01:37:10] Unions tend to do that, and not just listen to the advice and then make their decision.

 

KB [01:37:16] Did you ever have any dealings with the Trade Union Research Bureau?

 

RH [01:37:20] Oh, yeah, sure.

 

KB [01:37:24] With Emil Bjarnason and David Fairey.

 

RH [01:37:25] Tell you stories there too, because I dealt with them when I was freelancing for a couple of years before I went to the Nurses. I had, there was a meeting of the railway guys somewhere, and Emil Bjarnason said, ‘Yes, I know you were at a meeting there.’ I forget how he was involved somehow. Now, yeah. You know, great stories. I’m forgetting them all, slowly but surely. I’m always going to write a book. You know, I got tons and tons of these little stories, but I’ll never get at it.

 

AC [01:38:19] But, you know, one thing that would not be a bad suggestion, Ray, is if we go through the clippings, we might be able to identify some stories and bring you back.

 

RH [01:38:30] Okay.

 

AC [01:38:30] Because some of the stories are really good. I mean, we didn’t get into George North stories, or we didn’t get into ‘injunctions won’t build bridges or catch fish’. Lots of stories there.

 

RH [01:38:42] Oh, there’s tons.

 

AC [01:38:43] There’s lots, but I’m sure because you know so much about those, and you do have a good memory like it’s.

 

KB [01:38:49] It’s fantastic.

 

RH [01:38:50] Except for names, that hurts me.

 

AC [01:38:53] Yeah, but you remember the event and you can describe what happened.

 

RH [01:38:56] Lenkurt Electric, we went out and visited Paddy Neale, and there was three or four went to jail. Boilermakers. Two guys from Boilermakers, and Paddy Neale. Paddy, one of the reasons they voted for me instead of Paddy was they said, ‘We don’t like some of the things you do, Ray, but at least you work at the job. Paddy plays golf all the time.’ Paddy asked for putter when he was out at Mt. Thurston. Is it Mt. Thurston out there? A putter and some dye for his hair. They gave him a putter, but he wasn’t getting the dye, and his hair went grey.

 

RH [01:39:38] We all had a big laugh about that one.

 

KB [01:39:42] Forever, yes, and any material that you think is historical that you’d like to share, I’m sure this —

 

RH [01:39:51] Yeah, I’m sure we missed some ones that we shouldn’t miss.

 

AC [01:39:55] Yeah. So, let’s go back and just do a systematic job of pulling those together, then we’ll get you on the record about those different ones that you think are important.