Wintersong. The Nickel Range Trilogy • Volume 3

by Mick Lowe

  There was a period of silence and the shuffling of feet as the stewards paused to digest the terms of the proposed agreement. Finally someone who Jake, standing at the back of the crowded room, could not see, rose to ask a question. Even craning his neck and standing on his tiptoes the six-foot tall Jake could not quite see the speaker, but his voice carried to the back of the room, loud and clear.

  “Well, youse guys have put us in a helluva fix! You want us to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, (Jake surmised he was pointing at the bargaining committee members who were opposed to the contract and wanted to prolong the strike and who were on the take). And you want us to help you sell a goddamned sell-out agreement to the membership! Because that’s all this is! And we all know better! We know this strike is just starting to hurt the company! We can’t give up now! I say we vote this piece of shit down and send all of youse back to Toronto to get what’s been left on the table and to bring back the agreement this membership deserves, goddamnit!”

  As the speaker gathered steam Jake could tell the other stewards, listening intently, had swung in support of his impassioned peroration, which was greeted with cheers, whistles, and the stamping of heavy winter boots.

  “Who was that?” Jake asked the steward standing beside him.

  “Jordan Nelson, Frood Mine,” came the reply.

  “Huh,” Jake nodded. He was impressed, despite Nelson’s evidently diminutive stature.

  The firebrand Frood Mine steward’s argument carried the day in the end, and the stewards’ body voted against the contract, which was nevertheless ratified by the full membership by the narrowest of margins. The failure to fully prosecute the strike of ’69 was considered the greatest missed opportunity in the history of unionization at Inco, and many a member—and many a steward—vowed never to let the company off the hook so easily ever again.

  When the time for Local Union elections rolled around six months after that debacle, Jake was approached by a short, bespectacled figure whom he did not at first recognize. It turned out to be Nelson, who recognized Jake, doubtless because of the exposure he’d received in the fairly recent battle to clean up the Copper Cliff smelter. Nelson was assembling a slate of candidates to run against the old guard currently in power in the Steel Hall. He was pretty sure of his support in the mines, but he was looking to shore up his support in the vote-rich surface plants—there were a thousand votes in the smelter alone, where Jake was well known. Nelson offered Jake a plum spot—Vice President—on the slate, which was heavily weighted with “young guys”—children of the Sixties who tended to be better educated, and a deal scruffier, than the older generation at Inco, many of whom were Second World War vets and “getting up there.” Jake asked who else Nelson was considering for his slate before responding to the young miner’s offer. Richard d’Aquire’s name came up, and that decided the issue for Jake. Once a leader in the smelter cleanup fight, the burly, baldheaded outlaw biker had been fired by the company on a trumped-up charge of threatening a security guard. The union was fighting to have him re-instated, but it was a long, slow process—three stages of grievances before the matter was assigned to an arbitration panel convened by the Ontario Labour Relations Board or OLRB, which had been known to take nearly a year to render its decisions.

  “Haywire!” Jake smiled at the memory as he blurted out d’Aquire’s nickname. Nelson’s choice of d’Aquire for the slate spoke worlds about the young Frood miner. First of all, d’Aquire was still off the job, pending the resolution of his case; his inclusion sent a definite “in your face” message to the company, but to Jake it showed how serious Nelson was—only solid guys need apply. Jake was honoured to be considered for such a group.

  “Sure, count me in,” Jake told Nelson, and they shook hands, sealing the deal.

  Nelson’s slate—he’d dubbed his ‘Dream Team’ the ‘Workers’ Team’—had come close, but it suffered a narrow defeat to the Old Guard, a group that had a stranglehold on power in the big Local, which was led by literally older men and included Jake’s old nemesis Henry Hoople. Hoople had parlayed his position as a shop steward at Garson mine, along with slyly opportunistic support for the Steelworkers in the bitter union infighting of the McCarthy era in the raids against the old Mine Mill, into a slow but steady rise through the union hierarchy.

  There were whispers that the election—which was close—had been rigged somehow, rumours that were commonplace in most elections in big, powerful, Steelworker Local Union elections where prize, full-time union jobs were at stake. The victors were rewarded with full-time office jobs that kept them off the job for years, maybe even forever, should they be rewarded with plum, full-time jobs as staff representatives by the United Steelworkers’ Pittsburgh head office.

  Ballot boxes had a way of disappearing during the crucial over night hours between election day and the actual ballot counting, and there were persistent rumours of irregularities at the polling places, which were located in every mine, mill, smelter division, and refinery across Inco’s widely scattered Sudbury operations.

  At last, it turned out that there was one honest observer courageous enough to report repeated voting irregularities at the far-flung Levack Mine voting location, and Nelson had seized on the lone whistle-blower’s allegations, obtained a sworn affidavit, and parlayed the matter into a full-blown cause célèbre within the big International, even carrying his appeal to the giant organization’s biannual International Convention in Atlantic City. The Executive Board, anxious to quash even the slightest taint of impropriety at its largest Canadian local, intervened, and ordered a second election in the Sudbury Local, held under strict supervision of the International Union. The result was a narrow victory for Nelson, which sent a tremor through all of Inco’s workplaces throughout the sprawling Sudbury operations. Rank-and-file activism surged, and there was, suddenly, a rush of volunteers eager to join the stewards’ body in the newly galvanized organization. Resistance to high-handed supervision in all its forms stiffened on the job, and the number of grievances filed soared.

  It was as if some huge, terrible, angry beast had just woken up, and Jake and Jordan were riding on the back of the hungry leviathan, hanging on for dear life, lest they be eaten themselves.

  At last, Jordan rapped his knuckles on the boardroom table. “All right. It’s nine o’clock. Let’s get started.”

  Jake looked around the table, curious to see who else Nelson had invited to the meeting.

  “All right,” the union president began, gazing at the twenty or so people seated around him, “let’s get one thing straight: we’re in a war! And you’re my War Council, my consiglieri.”

  This was pure Nelson, the reference to the movie The Godfather. Jordan always had had a flair for drama. But often, it seemed to Jake, Nelson’s apocalyptic premonitions had a way of coming true. It wasn’t so much that Nelson was clairvoyant as it was he had some sort of gift of realizing self-fulfilling prophesy, and of making his own gloomy predictions come true. “You’re my go-to guys, and I’m gonna be leaning and relying on everybody in this room in the months ahead, is that clear?” A murmur of assent followed, and heads bobbed up and down around the table.

  Jake scanned the faces around the room, and found the line-up instructive. Nelson had handpicked only about half the members of the bargaining committee for inclusion in this select group—the ones he trusted, Jake assumed. One face especially stood out: that of Molly Carruth, the only woman at the table. A few years earlier the company had hired a handful of women to serve as production and maintenance employees, Carruth among them. Bright, brassy and quick-witted, Molly had soon become a thorn in the side—for the union, as well as the company—because of her tireless advocacy on behalf of the tiny minority of women in production jobs at Inco, and at the Steelworkers’ Hall. For whatever reason, Nelson had taken a shine to her, and now here she was, among the inner circle.

  Nelson paused, and glanced down
at the handwritten list in front of him. This, too, was a characteristic of the union leader, as Jake would soon come to appreciate: he worried constantly, dwelling on the myriad problems at hand, striving always to stay ahead of the curve, learning to anticipate the next bump in the road.

  “I’ve got this list here, of jobs we’re gonna need to get done, and I’m counting on someone from among this group to step up and take them on. First, I need a scrounge, someone who can get us anything we need, and in a hurry, if need be.

  “JC, how ’bout you?” Nelson directed the question to Jean Claude Parisé, a little-known but easy-going steward from the smelter, who nodded affably.

  “Now this next one is especially tricky: we need someone to take charge of strike pay.” It was, they all knew, an especially ticklish issue; even though the amount, twenty-five dollars per week per striker, plus an additional ten per spouse and for each dependent child in the house, was a mere pittance, strike pay occupied a place of great symbolic, psychological, even historic importance, due to the way the old Mine Mill had simply exhausted its treasury back in the strike of ’58, and the total amount transferred from Pittsburgh to Sudbury would soon run into millions of dollars.

  “And how are we gonna get it to our members?” Nelson concluded. “Brother d’Aquire, are you up for this?”

  Jake was taken aback at this selection at first, until he remembered that the outlaw biker held the post of treasurer in the Coffin Wheelers, the local one-percenter’s club.

  The burly biker nodded his bald head. “Sure. Can do. But who all’s getting’ paid?” he growled.

  Nelson shrugged. “Why not the way we’ve always done it? By who’s on the lines and who isn’t?”

  There was general assent around the table. Fact was, as they all knew, they might start with eleven thousand-plus members on strike, but that number would soon dwindle as strikers drifted away to take other jobs. Their skills were in wide demand in heavy industry across Canada, after all, and no one begrudged a man who moved away to support his family through what threatened to be a long and nasty winter. This side effect, little understood by outsiders, would hamstring the company over the long haul even more than during the strike itself—many of the decamping strikers would discover greener pastures elsewhere and never return to Sudbury, leaving the company scrambling to fill critical skilled labour shortages in the workplace long after the strike itself had ended.

  “Sure,” d’Aquire agreed. He turned to face Jake. “But that means you gotta get your captains to take careful attendance.” A brief discussion followed as to precisely how many picket line absences would be permitted before strike pay would be disallowed.

  Nelson at last cleared his throat, “Speaking of the lines . . .” Here it comes, Jake thought.

  “We’ve gotta get some protocols established on the lines,” Nelson insisted.

  “Now here’s the thing: the company has maintenance it wants to get done while we’re out. Re-lining furnaces in the smelter, for one thing, and we’ve agreed to let those contractors through the lines.”

  An audible wave of dismay swept across the room. They had just sealed off every mine, mill and refinery behind strong lines, and the picketers would take a dim view of letting anyone through their lines.

  “The guys are gonna hate that, Jordan,” d’Aquire growled.

  Molly Carruth nodded. “It’s gonna be hard on the morale out there, and it’s sky-high right now, by the way.”

  Nelson nodded wearily at the dissenting outburst. He knew there was nothing more discouraging on a picket line than opening it up to allow traffic to pass through into a strike-bound plant. Strikers soon began to wonder, sensibly enough, what was the point of their presence. Morale might quickly plummet, and with it, attendance on picket duty. Failure to maintain a strong presence around-the-clock at each of the dozen or so strike-bound operations would be seen as a highly visible sign of flagging support for the strike, a vulnerability the strike leaders could ill afford. Hopefully tying strike pay, measly though it was, to picket duty attendance would help to offset this, but …

  Nelson held up both hands to quiet the dissenting murmur that continued to ripple around the table. “Okay, okay, I get it! But let’s be clear about one thing: it’s in our own interest to get those furnaces re- lined.”

  He thought about the gigantic twin furnaces that were at the heart of the Copper Cliff smelter. Each the size of a high school gymnasium, they were lined with special ceramic bricks, known as refractory brick, capable of absorbing the otherworldly heat required to melt nickel concentrate and turn it into a purer form. The brick was constantly exposed to extreme heat, before being cooled back down. The resulting expansion and contraction of the lining naturally caused the brick to crack and chip and degrade over time, necessitating annual re-lines with new, fresh refractories. It was a spooky, filthy job few of his members wanted, Nelson knew, and for once the union relented in its usual opposition to “contracting out” work on company property to workers who were not Steelworkers. Re-lines also meant furnace shutdowns, resulting in a paucity of work for Local 6500 members in the smelter.

  “We’ve agreed to a protocol for this: nobody in or out unless they’re performing routine maintenance in the plants.”

  “Yeah, and how do we prove they’re not going in to start up production?” scowled d’Aquire.

  Nelson nodded, as if he’d anticipated just such a question. “We’re allowed to stop each vehicle at the lines for three minutes. To talk to the driver, to inspect the vehicle, see what’s in it. Three minutes!” He held up three fingers to emphasize his point. “Three minutes. And if our guys see it’s copacetic then, and only then, do we wave ’em through.” The dissenting buzz around the table subsided to a murmur, before disappearing entirely.

  Nelson turned to Carruth. “Molly, I agree morale is a constant worry. I’m glad it’s high right now, and we’ve got to keep it that way. But we’ve got to explain to our guys out there it’s in their interest, too, to let the company get this maintenance done while we’re outta the plants, anyways.” Nelson held up his hand and wagged a forefinger. “Ain’t nobody’s doing our guys’ jobs here, and that’s guaranteed. It’s up to us to communicate that to the membership.”

  But the lone woman at the table frowned. She was stubborn, and militant, Jake reflected, little inclined to bow down to authority, even when that authority was the leader who most all of them loved, and respected.

  Sensing her demurral, Nelson hastened on to address another point in his list. “I know by letting the contractors through we risk losing support on the lines. Guys are gonna naturally wonder why they should bust their humps to show up for picket duty if we’re just letting vehicles through, anyway. So we need the captains to keep careful attendance records to determine who gets strike pay and who doesn’t. Which brings me to another subject: how are we going to actually distribute strike pay? We’ve got over eleven thousand members out there, scattered from Sturgeon Falls to Espanola. How do we make sure the ones who’ve earned it get their pay?”

  Nelson had a point, and they all knew it. It was an exceedingly complex logistical challenge, given the sprawling nature of the Sudbury Basin. If everyone had to report to the Union Hall for their strike pay they’d have a mob scene.

  “De-centralize it.” The voice came from somewhere down the table. Jake was surprised to hear it was d’Aquire’s.

  “Let’s organize distribution centres in all the outlying communities. Give me a week to organize a committee. We’ll get ’er done.”

  “All right, Brother d’Aquire, you’re in charge of the voucher distribution committee,” Nelson readily agreed.

  He paused, looking down at the list in front of him. “We’ve got another problem I wanted to discuss with everyone: prescription drugs. Obviously the company’s canceling the drug plan for our members while we’re out on strike, even though they still need t
hose drugs. These things are expensive as hell. No way our people can still afford them on strike pay. I was thinking of asking the International Union if Pittsburgh might foot the bill ’til we get back on the job. But this could get tricky, deciding which drugs to cover or not cover, who qualifies and who doesn’t, and all that …”

  Finally, Jake raised his hand. “Why not appoint someone from the membership to oversee this? Sounds like it could become a full time job.”

  Nelson’s head bobbed in agreement. “Sure does. And speaking of full-time jobs, we need to get some ‘guys’ together to form a flying squad to go out on the road and go to plant gates, make speeches, attend rallies, raise money to augment strike pay, keep our name out there …”

  Molly Carruth grinned at Nelson. “Hell, Jordy, why so few guys? We’ve got over eleven thousand members out there, and not all of them are guys, with all kinds of time on their hands. Why not send anyone who’s willing to go?”

  Nelson agreed with a weary sigh. “Sure, why not? But it’s gonna take a lot of organizing—travel, logistics, booking, that sort of thing—to pull this together, that’s all. Sounds like another committee.”

  “I’ll help you find someone.”

  “Good.” Nelson sighed again and checked his watch. “Okay, we need to find someone for the Drug Committee, and a Road Trip Coordinator. That’s all I have. Anything else? Anyone? No, well that’s it then. Thanks for coming, everyone.”

  And with that they filed out of the boardroom to face a future that was far more parlous than even the saturnine Nelson had ever imagined.

  4

  “Every Miner Had a Mother”

  Molly Carruth drove straight from the Steel Hall to another meeting—this one of all women—that Jake McCool’s wife Jo Ann had called to brainstorm how the women of Sudbury could best support the strike their menfolk were just beginning. Molly supposed she’d been invited due to her high-profile role as an outspoken member of the Local 6500 Women’s Committee, but she’d no idea who else had been invited to the meeting at Jake’s and Jo Ann’s home on Summerhill Crescent, just off Falconbridge Highway, several miles east of the Union Hall.