by Mick Lowe
Jake finished his coffee and pushed away from the table. He grabbed his lunch pail as he passed through the kitchen and bussed his mother on the cheek.
“Bye, Mum.”
“Bye, Son,” Alice replied, adding, as she did every day, “Work safe.”
And then Jake was out the back door and into the dark and the cold and snow, which managed to be both slightly slippery and sticky underfoot at the same time.
No time was wasted before the transfer of power at the Mine Mill Hall. That very night, in fact, the newly elected officers were sworn in—insurgents no more.
So important was this ritual that the National Office flew in a high-ranking national official to administer the oath of office. The framed Charter of Local 598 was taken down from the wall upstairs and, one by one, the incoming president, vice-president and treasurer touched the Charter as they pledged on their sacred honour to uphold the Constitution of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers and its duly Chartered Local Union Number 598. The oath was nearly as ancient, and certainly as solemn, as the words that Spike had read at Ben McCool’s funeral, harking back to the earliest days of the old Western Fed, in the early 1890s.
The ceremony, such as it was, was conducted on the elevated stage in the mostly deserted auditorium of the Mine Mill Hall. But a photographer was present to capture a black-and-white image of the historic scene. He was standing on the floor, looking up at the figures on the stage, all of whom were wearing suits and ties. The National Officer, who had just administered the binding oath, is standing behind the wooden lectern which bore the Mine Mill seal on the front and which had, for so many years, been the bully pulpit of Spike Sworski. Immediately to his left stand the insurgents newly come to power. No one is smiling. There is no hint of celebration or relief or triumph. The three newcomers stare out over the big empty room grim-faced, as if they alone can foresee the future.
26
Tightening the Screws
Jake was the first to go—even before Gilpin.
He was summoned to the new president’s office the morning after the inauguration and summarily dismissed as the personal assistant to the president of Local 598. Even to Jake, who had certainly expected this particular axe to fall, it seemed cold: there was no word of thanks, no acknowledgement of his family’s long history of sacrifice for or connection with the history of Local 598. No warm recollection of organizing the union, never even any sense the Local had been organized. His services were no longer required, Jake was told curtly, and he was out the door.
Jake fumed over it all the way home to the Valley. Although he’d never been much of a student of history, even Jake could see the irony: like all rabid anti-Communists the newly elected officials loved to accuse the Stalin-era Soviet Union of rewriting its own history to conveniently suit dogma. Yet here were these exact same critics, now in power, treating Jake as if the past never existed, and certainly didn’t matter now.
“It is ironic,” his father agreed. “Good thing you’ve still got your day job. You’ll get by …”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Jake, still stung by his summary dismissal, agreed half-heartedly. And it was true—he still had a good paying job yielding a rich bonus rate on top of his lucrative hourly rate. It could be worse: he could be like Foley, who would be out of a job altogether.
Gilpin was second on the new president’s hit list.
He was in and out the door just as swiftly as Jake. His writing duties would be handled by someone else, he was told. Someone, Foley surmised, much more loyal to the incoming executive than himself. And that was that. The next thing he knew he was out on Regent Street, facing Queen’s Athletic Field, the December cold and an uncertain future. The bum’s rush if ever there was one.
The following week the new executive took a more sweeping move to consolidate its power by closing all of the Local’s satellite halls in the outlying communities of Garson, Chelmsford, Creighton and Levack. Long a pet project of Sworski’s, the satellites, each of which hosted its own monthly membership meetings in tandem with meetings at the central hall, made it more convenient for members in the far-flung outlying communities to participate in the affairs of the big Local without having to travel into town.
Billed as a cost-cutting measure, the change reduced overhead and labour costs, it was true, but it also allowed for much greater control of decision-making at the centre, a power that was now carefully exercised and controlled by the new executive.
Attendance at the monthly membership meetings—held in the evening and in the morning to accommodate shift workers—now became a matter of the utmost concern. The composition of many committees critical to the big Local’s management—the Elections Committee, delegations to conventions—was decided by a show of hands from the floor. The Local remained highly polarized even after Sworski’s ouster, and so were the membership meetings. The new executive took pains to “outpack” its rival faction at every membership meeting, even if it meant promising free beer to sympathetic attendees, or a coveted spot on a junket as a member of an official convention delegation. Sworski himself stubbornly refused to resort to such blandishments, which he considered underhanded at best, unethical at worst. As a result his supporters found themselves repeatedly outnumbered and outvoted at membership meetings. The upshot was defeatism, and a steady decline in member turnout, along with a consolidation of unchallenged power in the hands of the new executive. It was the beginning of a take-no-prisoners ethos in the Mine Mill Hall that would set the tone in union politics for decades to come: your slate would win power, riding the tiger of the Sudbury rank and file for a term or two, only to be eaten by that tiger when a new contract failed to meet expectations, or when strike leadership faltered and lost its nerve. Then your slate would be swept from office wholesale; there would be no survivors after the new slate had finished purging the executive ranks. It was a revolving-door leadership that boded poorly for any sense of continuity or collegiality within the leadership ranks of the big Local.
This decline into dysfunction was almost imperceptible at first, although it would, in hindsight, long outlast the end of the Cold War which had engendered it. The advent of slate politics in the big Local, and with it the winner-take-all ethos that fostered both cronyism and favouritism, would become the norm for later generations of leaders who had long since forgotten what had engendered the system in the first place.
This legacy of the raids infested even the workplace itself, as Jake discovered on a shift shortly after the elections.
Always a man of few words, Bob Jesperson seemed even more subdued than usual, even bordering at times on the downright surly.
Finally Jake became so irritated at his partner’s uncharacteristic pouting that he broke down and asked Bob if he was all right as they were repositioning the jumbo.
“Oh yeah, I’m okay,” Jesperson smiled wanly. “Lost my badge, is all …”
“Your badge?” It took Jake a minute to process this information. “Oh, your steward’s badge! How did that happen?”
Jesperson shrugged. “Oh, new president called me in, told me I was being replaced.”
“Replaced! By who?”
“Harry Hoople, from what I hear.”
“Hoople! But that’s ridiculous!” And more than a little worrisome, Jake realized. His old nemesis, who was now in tight with the Union Hall, had gained considerable sway over Jake’s well-being in the workplace. A front-line shop steward decided which grievances to prosecute, and how aggressively. If Jake were ever fired, it would be up to Hoople to fight to get his job back. Such an event seemed unlikely at the moment, but all it took was one shift boss with an agenda, or a change in shifters, and the arrival of a real asshole who just didn’t like Jake’s face, or who’d had a run-in with Big Bill or his Uncle Walt or his Uncle Bud before Jake was even born and who was still looking for payback these many years later. He’d have to watch his step now more than ever, Jake realized as Bob’s news sank in.
“How many other stewards did he shitcan?”
Bob shrugged again, disconsolately. “I dunno. But from what I hear, he’s shakin’ up the whole stewards’ body.”
“Hmm, no shit. Now why ain’t I surprised?”
As they both knew the stewards’ body was the sinews—in many ways the heart and soul—of the big Local. Shop stewards policed the Collective Agreement in the workplace. Any industrial union worth its salt was only as good as its stewards’ body.
Quite apart from the tightening of the screws by the new executive, work proceeded apace for Jake and his partner in their heading in the Middle Country of Frood Mine.
The trial of the new jumbo drill was proving to be an all-out success, as even Jake had to admit.
A steady stream of Frood miners passed through the heading weekly, curious to see the new contraption in operation. Reactions varied widely. Widespread doubts were expressed, especially about the floodlights attached to the jumbo.
“They’re too bright—too much glare,” complained one of the old guys. “I wouldn’t be able to see what I was doing.”
Only later did the full absurdity of the remark entirely sink in with Jake. The oldtimer had toiled in utter darkness for so long that he had, in some weird way, adapted to living without that foremost of human senses, eye-sight. The remark was some kind of backhanded tribute to the adaptability of the human species, Jake reflected, even as it demonstrated the natural tendency to resist all change.
But there were times when the jumbo had its drawbacks, especially when a drill steel became “stuck” in the breast. The same thing happened with a jackleg, of course, but the solution was more straightforward: grab for the heaviest hammer you could find and whale away on the protruding end of the steel. Give it a few shots, then get the longest-handled wrench available, and reef clockwise on it with all your might until the steel loosened up. But with the jumbo, it all seemed so much harder—Jake never understood exactly why.
Of course there were three drills turning at once, instead of just one, so the chances of one getting stuck were that much greater. Or maybe the jumbo turned with more torque, and so buried the steel that much deeper.
Breakdowns were a headache, too. The jumbos were a much more sophisticated device than the old jacklegs, with many more moving parts, and so that much more prone to break down. There wasn’t much on a jackleg the old guys couldn’t fix themselves in a pinch. But the jumbo, with its complex hydraulics—a new form of motive power, basically oil under immense pressure—was beyond the ken of the average miner.
And so began a subtle tilt in skill sets underground. The days of the self-reliant miner repairing his own machinery right in the stope or drift began to wane, and the number of highly skilled underground mechanics began to proliferate. Instead of bashing or patching your own jackleg into submission, you “walked” your jumbo into the nearest underground service bay, and their numbers were beginning to proliferate, too.
All of this was lost on most of the old guys who drifted into the heading to stand speechless before this marvel of modern technology, with its maze of hoses, fearsome roar, and dazzling floodlights.
“How much one ’a these set the company back?” one of them asked Bob as the drills fell silent while they repositioned the machine.
“Oh, ’bout a quarter million, I’m told,” came the reply.
Only stunned silence greeted the rejoinder. Now this was serious business.
27
Job Interview
“I’m afraid you’re damaged goods then, my friend …”
Foley Gilpin’s heart sank even as the scratchy words arrived over the static of the long distance telephone line.
The speaker was Mike O’Neill, Ontario desk editor of the Globe and Mail, where Foley had just pitched his services on a cold, totally shot-in-the-dark call early in the New Year of 1964, a changing of the calendar he’d hoped would bring him luck in ushering in this abrupt, desperately needed career change.
He’d found O’Neill brusque, abrupt, and short of time; pretty much par for the course for any editor at any major metropolitan daily. O’Neill had wasted no time grilling Gilpin: had he worked for either of the big mining companies in Sudbury, taken money from them for doing PR?
“No.”
What about the Mine Mill Union?
Here Foley was forced to pause, a moment of crackling long distance silence that did not go unnoticed, even in the clamour of the Globe’s newsroom.
He was tempted, momentarily, to lie. But the risk of exposure by the new Mine Mill in-crowd was too great.
Yes, Foley confessed, he had done some freelance work for the union.
And then came the “damaged goods” comment.
“Oh. Well then, I’m sorry. Thanks for your time, anyway.”
“Unless …”
”Yes?” Foley could sense the door opening just a crack.
“Unless we took the time to debastardize you—it would mean a few months of assignments unrelated to mining up there. Small stories mostly, just to see how you’d work out …”
“Sure,” Foley assented quickly, eager to get his foot in that door that had been left, ever so slightly, ajar.
It would take years for Foley to fully appreciate that, as much as he needed an income, O’Neill was, if anything, just as eager not to lose this fish on the line—Sudbury was, after all, a sizeable northern metropolis where the Globe badly needed cover, and experienced reporters with Gilpin’s bona fides did not pop up every day up there.
O’Neill was careful to ask Foley’s phone number before the conversation ended, and the matter was left entirely in the air.
Or so it seemed to Foley until O’Neill himself called with an assignment a few weeks later. It wasn’t much—a court case involving a large, state-owned French oil company that was being sentenced in Sudbury District Court on charges of price-fixing. After accepting the assignment with alacrity Gilpin asked about his deadline.
“Oh, better make it six p.m. … to make the bulldog.” O’Neill rasped.
Gilpin scanned the courtroom, to see if any of the city’s local newsrooms were represented, but he discovered to his surprise that he had the story all to himself. That, coupled with the realization that someone in the Globe’s newsroom three hundred miles to the south had been aware of a newsworthy event that had escaped the notice of every local editor and reporter, made a definite impression on Foley: the big Toronto daily was playing on a whole different level than the local Sudbury news media.
Foley gave the story what he thought it was worth, filing only four brief paragraphs over the phone to a rewrite man in Toronto.
He eagerly scanned the paper the next morning to learn the fate of his story—the bulldog, or early edition, was the one trucked into town, making the four-hour highway trip to Sudbury overnight. He found it buried deep inside the front news section. His four ’graphs had been chopped back to two—the top two. But, Foley noted with quiet satisfaction, those two paragraphs were, word for word, exactly what he had written.
The pattern was repeated a few times over the next nine months until, Foley hoped, he had been sufficiently ‘debastardized.’ As a test, he pitched O’Neill what he considered would be the biggest breaking national news story Sudbury had produced during his freelance tenure: Local 598’s membership meeting the next night was expected to deliberate suspending its dues check-off to the Mine Mill National Office. If the insurgent-led move carried, Gilpin explained, it would be a major body-blow to Mine Mill’s Canadian wing, perhaps even resulting in its collapse—the financial support of the big Sudbury Local was that large a part of the national organization’s overall budget. And the demise of such an historic, reputedly Communist-led labour organization would be an event of clearly national significance.
Silence greeted his pitch as O’Neill weighed the angles, but there was no mistaking the Globe editor’s interest. This time, Foley sensed, it was he who had the big fish on the line. Foley paused. He wanted this st
ory, wanted to be in the Mine Mill Hall on this historic night.
Finally, he could hear O’Neill drawing a deep breath. “All right, Gilpin, I’ll take it … But if you fuck this up, it’ll mean my ass first, and then yours second. Got that?”
Foley’s heart leapt at the response, but he was careful to conceal his elation.
“Right. Sure.”
Monthly membership meetings of Sudbury’s big mining locals are, to this very day, routinely closed to reporters, and this one was no exception. As a result, Gilpin found himself cooling his heels in the Hall lobby outside the heavy wooden doors that concealed the union’s business from the handful of reporters waiting outside. Already, Foley sensed, his presence was noticed by his colleagues. It meant The Globe and Mail was interested in a story, which in itself lent an event greater significance.
Feeling more than slightly foolish, Foley took his turn attempting to peer through the gap between the doors, which were joined tightly enough that not even the slightest tantalizing glimpse was possible. And the doors themselves were solid enough to muffle all sound.
How times had changed! Where, only a few months before, he had enjoyed unquestioned admission to the Union’s executive offices and its innermost thoughts, now here he was on the outside looking in. He might be ‘debastardized’ in the newsroom of The Globe and Mail, Gilpin reflected, but he was now an outlying bastard in the Mine Mill Hall.
Suddenly Gilpin felt a heavy hand on his shoulder, jerking on him, spinning him around. Before he could quite come to his senses the newsman found himself pushed back to the wall on the far side of the lobby, breathing the sour whiskey breath and seeing—in far too close a detail—the chin stubble of some union bully boy he’d never met before, but who seemed about to take a poke at him.