Ch 22: Saboteur!

      I sneaked through the hole in the fence and suddenly stood in a different world. It felt good to be on my own again. The road along the fence was illuminated by lights and it was only after I turned into the bush that I noticed it was a dark night. I could see outlines of trees but could only guess my way through the darkness. I came to a section where the trees had been knocked down by a previous twister and the going got rough. I was climbing over fallen trunks, feeling my way around walls of twisted branches, wading through water holes caused by upturned roots, tripping over splintered wood.  “Take it easy, be careful, go slowly and don’t trip! If you break your leg here nobody will find you,” I kept repeating to myself.  

 I was walking around a dark mass when it abruptly bolted, crashing through the bush. BEAR!  Finally, after what seem to be ages the bush thinned out and I came to a logging road leading to the highway. In the distance I could see the glow of a big campfire at the picket line.  A car was coming up from that direction so I flagged it down. It was one of the picketers going home. I was not worried that he would recognized my face in the darkness and told him that I had been fishing, took a short cut through the bush and got lost. I asked him about the strike.

“…Everybody is fed up with the strike. We were told that it would be a short walk-out, maybe two or three days; that the company can’t run the smelter without us. My wife is bitching that we have no money for groceries and had to skip the car payment. It is better to be on the picket line than listening to her nagging me, at least we got free beer…There are maybe fifty hotheads that keep the walkout going, without them the strike would be over…”

 That was a revelation to me. The strikers were not hardcore, militant diehards bent on shutting down the smelter as we insiders were led to believe. They were like us, fed up, wanting to go back to their normal work. At least we got paid working in the smelter; they only got free beer walking the picket line.

  It was way past midnight when I got home. Both the front door and back door were locked. We had no door bell and banging on the door would wake up half of the street. So I picked up pieces of gravel and started to throw them at the bedroom window. Finally I saw the curtain move and waved my hand.  “Everybody is scared,  many hourly workers that are in the smelter had their car tires slashed or  windows broken and their kids were called scabs in school. It is very bad...” my wife explained.

In the morning my boys were surprised at seeing their dad again and I had trouble explaining my sudden appearance.  Later we went shopping and it felt strange, I was half expecting somebody to yell “SCAB!” I saw couple of men I knew from work and pretended I didn’t notice them.

Curious about the picket line, I decided to see it from the other side and went for a drive. I was driving along the familiar road to the smelter when suddenly I saw a tent with chairs and couple of guys hanging around. Another picket line! It scared the hell out of me. I slammed the brakes, turned around and beat a retreat, leaving the picketers looking at a crazy driver.  

 Time went by fast. I bought four cases of beer and reluctantly got ready for my departure. I said good bye to my wife and kids and launched my inflatable.  The boat was floating nicely down Kitimat River when suddenly, close to the outlet, the river was blocked by a logjam. I had to get out and pull my dinghy over many slippery logs. It was tricky and dangerous, the year before somebody had drowned here.          

I got into the yacht club late, snuck through the hole in the fence and hurried into the maintenance office. “Where the hell were you? You are late! We couldn’t find you. I called your office but you didn’t answer the phone. I was going to call the security!” Dave yelled at me.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
“Don’t yell at me, I went home and got delayed on the river.” Dave was dumbfounded.“You went where?”  

“I got tired listening to you crying that you needed a beer so I went home and got some beer”                                                                                        Dave’s jaw dropped. “You went home to get beer?”   Suddenly the office door opened and inside rushed two breathless security men. “We have an emergency. Somebody climbed over the fence and walked into the maintenance building. You have a saboteur   in here!”                                    ” It was me” I admitted reluctantly. The security man grabbed my arm. “You are under arrest!”                                                                              “Take it easy you guys, take it easy. Jerry works here. He ain’t no saboteur, he is one of us. He went home to get us beer!” Dave was chuckling. 

       Well, the news of my “escape” spread like wild fire and people kept coming to me asking what it was like “outside.”  Then it was Dave’s turn to play a big shot. He invited a couple of his beer buddies for supper. After we finished eating, he lit a cigarette and rubbed his stomach. “I feel like beer.” They agreed.    “Hey Jerry, go and get us some beer!” He ordered me imperiously.

 Soon gossip that we were drinking beer circulated in the smelter and some employees started to complain, demanding beer as well.   

      The plant manager came to investigate. “Yes, we’ve got beer here. We work hard and we deserve it. Nobody gets drunk. Don’t bother to send security here, they wouldn’t find it. And if they did and took it away, I wouldn’t be here, you would find me on the other side of the picket line with couple of my buddies.” cautioned Dave the manager.  

Two days later management gave in and the helicopter landed loaded with beer. But many complainers were disappointed. One bottle of beer was served with supper, uncapped, to people coming off shift. Somehow the union found out and we heard on the radio reports that the scabs had mutinied and were refusing to work. The company was bribing them with beer and many were going to work drunk.                                                                                                                                                                 There were other rumors flying around. “They” were going to blow up the power line to Kitimat.” Alcan hired Pinkerton Security to patrol the line.

“We know how to get you, we will smash the pumping station” a few strikers from behind the picket line yelled. Alcan’s pumping station was located outside the fence, not far from the picket line, guarded by couple of “volunteers”. The company answered this threat with a counter threat: A big front-end loader with its engine idling and driver in the cab was parked across from the picket line. “If you assault the pumping station the loader is going to clear the picket line and everything behind it. You are on Alcan’s property.” It was not a threat to be taken lightly, picketers’ cars were parked behind.   So the war of nerves went on.

In the meantime the lawyers were busy. The court declared out-of- province picketing unlawful and ordered the pickets to be removed. The Union appealed the decision and lost. It appealed again and the Supreme Court of British Columbia was going to pass the final ruling. 

      The situation escalated when an RCMP riot squad arrived, set up a camp at Terrace Airport and started to practise riot control.                 

“Let them try to remove the picket line. We will have a thousand members on site within one hour” threatened the union leadership.
      Then one day a tragedy took place on the pot line, an employee had a heart attack. The picketers first refused to let the ambulance through and when they did, it was too late, the man was dead. It was a big blunder; the union lost whatever sympathy it had had, inside and outside the smelter. Some co-workers wanted to go to the funeral and after negotiations with the company the union agreed to let a busload go through the picket line. The situation reached a boiling point when they would not let the returning bus go back into the smelter.

      Next morning we were in Dave’s office waiting for him to show up for the daily work meeting. He came late and made a short announcement. “The strike is over. Pack your bags and go home. Everybody gets two days off.” It came as a complete surprise. Last night two busloads of the RCMP riot squad had descended on the picket lines. There was no fight or arguments, picketers went home, happy the strike is over. Some even helped to clear up the barricade.

      The strike was over but bitterness lingered on and the union’s wrath turned on the scabs. They were not really scabs, just a couple dozens of union members caught in the war between the union and the company. Many were asked to stay on when the picket line went up and their replacement didn’t show up. This was not unusual and some stayed, they had worked double shifts many times before.

      But this time they had had an incentive to stay, they would be paid full day according to the collective agreement: straight time for the first eight hours, double time for the next eight and triple time for the next eight hours. Some made a blunder and started to brag about their paychecks to less fortunate mates that only got free beer on the picket line. They were branded SCABS and ostracized for a long time.

The company was not as generous with the staff. We were paid straight time, time and half and double time. I was not complaining, my friend Otto (chapter 19) was getting ready for another trip to Mexico and wanted to sell his sailboat. By now I had saved enough money to buy it.

      

       My annual job review came up. One of the questions my boss asked was whether I would be interested in work at other Alcans’ locations. He named Toronto, Kingston, Arvida and a few other places. “I would like to work in Kemano, are there any jobs there?” I asked. He shook his head and wrote it on my evaluation sheet. A couple of months went by and then one day he called me to his office. “Are you still interested in going to Kemano?” I was. “OK, I will book you and your wife on the next chopper flight to Kemano.”

With my strike money I bought Otto's  sailboat, here shown tied up in Butedale on  our trip to Kitimat