The IWA in Canada: The Life and Times of an Industrial Union

Glenn Haill is an Ottawa-based freelance writer who specializes in labor
issues.

The International Woodworkers of America was formed as a North American
Union in 1937. Reflecting the spread of the union from British Columbia
across the country, the union became a national union in 1987 and was
renamed the Industrial, Wood and Allied Workers of Canada (IWA Canada)
in 1994.

From their origins at the turn of the last century, woodworkers’
unions were always militant and multi-ethnic, pay equity among ethnic
groups being as important to organized workers as high wages and good
benefits. The union also believed in organizing all workers,
irrespective of degree of skill or craft, reflected in today’s move to
organize workers outside wood-related production and processing.

Forest work is, and always has been, dangerous. Between 1917 and 1937,
1228 workers were killed in the B.C. industry, prompting the union to
focus attention on health and safety and conditions of work; this
attention led to the pioneer work of the union in employee assistance
programs from the 1980s to the present day. Women, too, asserted
themselves, adding employment equity to the union’s political agenda,
almost from its beginning as a national union.

Though the union has always had progressive resource and environmental
policies, it has clashed with elements of the environmental movement
over forest policies in British Columbia. There are now strong signs of
a revitalization of the union against the forces of social conservatism,
in the environmental area, under the banner of “sustainable
employment.”

Neufeld and Parnaby have produced a fair and informative social history
of a justly proud union. Their book succeeds in combining an objective
account with obvious sympathy and political support for the labor
movement. But it is surely superficial and partial to regard the IWA’s
conflict with the environmental movement as a battle between the working
class and middle-class do-gooders; as experts on B.C. politics, the
authors must know better.