The Struggle against Wage Controls: The Saint John Story, 1975–1976 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Struggle against Wage Controls: The Saint John Story, 1975–1976 Greg Marquis The Struggle against Wage Controls: The Saint John Story, 1975–1976. George Vair. St John’s: Canadian Committee on Labour History, 2006, introduction by David Frank. Pp 136, $19.95 This memoir, which has a foreword by Bob White, former president of the Canadian Labour Congress (clc), is a vivid insider’s account of the labour movement’s struggle against Canada’s national wage and price control program of the 1970s. The volume was edited by David Frank, head of the New Brunswick Labour History Project. At the time, George Vair was a young labour activist who recently had become president of the local labour council. He had been president of two local union branches, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the United Auto Workers. The demonstration that took place in Saint John in October 1976 was part of the clc’s national protest against the Trudeau government’s economic policies. In 1974 Prime Minister Trudeau had mocked the suggestions of the Progressive Conservative opposition that inflation be countered by a ninety-day wage and price freeze. According to Trudeau, mandatory controls would be unworkable and would create a massive bureaucracy. A year later the Liberal government changed its mind and announced an income and price policy based on the Anti-Inflation Board (aib). The aib had the power to limit wage increases to 8 per cent annually in companies and organizations employing 500 or more workers. It also had the job of selling the program, whose appeal process was confusing, to the public. Employers and unions that did not abide by aib orders faced fines and jail time. Canadian workers had been enjoying regular wage increases since the late 1960s, and the labour movement viewed the aib as a money grab that benefited corporations at the expense of workers. The clc also denounced the controls as a threat to free collective bargaining. [End Page 269] Vair provides, in a clear and concise fashion, a unionized worker’s point of view on the aib program and the details of labour’s response to the policy in a mid-sized industrial city, Saint John. Major employers in the private sector included an oil refinery, a dry dock, two pulp mills, two breweries, a box plant, and a sugar refinery. Unions also represented public sector employees, port workers, and the building trades. At the time, Saint John was experiencing a boom, and the union movement was relatively strong, with two labour representatives on the city council. As Vair notes, the area’s building boom meant an extremely low unemployment rate, which factored in to local industrial relations. Employers, as the book details, often sympathized with specific union wage demands, usually for the pragmatic goal of labour peace, but unions usually faced the combined resistance of the federal and provincial governments, business organizations, and elements of the media. The last were particularly noticeable in New Brunswick, where the Irving industrial interests owned both Saint John newspapers. Vair provides a valuable record of how the Saint John and District Labour Council planned, organized, and staged a day of action that was part of the clc’s campaign to force the withdrawal of the aib legislation. The National Day of Protest, which involved more than 1 million Canadian workers, in essence was a general strike. The Liberal government and its allies resorted to tactics to oppose, minimize, and discredit labour resistance, including asserting that the leadership did not represent the rank and file. In Saint John, public transit, the port, most industries, and many stores and government offices closed, and the action was denounced by local business organizations. Despite Vair’s expectations at the time, the national protest turned out to be an isolated event. In his analysis, this was because the protest had the effect of weakening Trudeau’s resolve (the restraint program ended in 1978). The details of these local events, personalities, and disagreements over tactics remind researchers of the human side to historical events, and how protest movements face powerful obstacles, including the mainstream political parties, the media, and big business. Having recently attended three rallies...