The IWA Strike

Stirling Thomas

Everyone in Grand Falls and Windsor, Newfoundland knows Stirling Thomas. He has been on the town council for many years and is a member of most of the service clubs. As a union man he had a front row seat to one of the most famous labour strikes in Newfoundland.

THE IWA (INTERNATIONAL WOODWORKERS OF AMERICA) came in here with the feeling they were going to organize everyone in the province.

One of their leaders even told me himself that he was a communist. "Carried a commie card." They were his words.

"Well," I said, "we don't go for that around here." At the time I was a vice-president of the Newfoundland Federation of Labour and I was president of the Trades and Labour Council.

He told me, "We're going to organize everything in Newfoundland. Even the domestic workers. And we're going to bring the government to their knees."

They came in here and went around to the camps and offered the loggers everything. There would be more money, better living conditions, more time off, and they fell for it, like they would. There was nothing wrong with what they were saying. The only thing was, their attitudes and their tactics were unbecoming to us people.

I was working with the finishing department in the mill. I was in the core room at the time, and none of the men wanted anything to do with a strike with violence. They didn't see any need of it.

The labour activities and the labour policies the IWA had didn't belong to us. They didn't belong to us at all. They were throwing people out of the camps, and throwing company property out of the camps, taking over everything.