When pacifists built warships

Ya, I know that ain't a warship.

But here's my point; I spent a couple years at Irving Shipbuilding back in the early '90s, working on the Frigate Program.

It was a good gig. Strong union, sensible management, fair wages.

I was a welder/steel-fitter with pacifist inclinations. As a shop floor guy who needed to feed his family, my attitude to the big questions has always been; if I didn't do that job somebody else would.

I realize at some level that's a cop-out. Any Nazi death camp commandant could make the same argument.

But back to the picture above.

That's a "megaload" making its way from Idaho to the tar sands developments in Alberta. Every Teamster, Ironworker, etc. on this job is approaching it in the same way I approached my shipyard gig; if I didn't drive this truck somebody else would, and I've got a family to feed.

I don't think we need to judge those folks for making that decision.

Many years ago I used to work for one of the biggest megaload contractors in eastern Canada, Lackie Brothers.



They had a lot of work taking big loads up to the Bruce Nuclear development.

I don't have any use for nuclear power. I think it's stupid to pursue energy sources when you haven't figured out how to deal with the waste from your energy-producing process. But again, me refusing to work on anything to do with nuclear energy is hardly going to slow down the development of the Bruce.

The theoretical socialists would of course point out at this juncture that if none of the overalls crew went to work, nothing would happen.

That's true in the long run. In the short run, the kids you feed need three meals a day whether daddy has a job or not.

So you fold up your principles and stuff them in the back pocket of your Big Bill coveralls, and you go to work.

I'd like to say that Lackie Bros. was a good gig but I'm not so sure. I came along at a time when the elder Lackie who had started the company was giving way to his offspring. I never saw any evidence that the offspring had any interest in the business other than storing their boats in the fenced yard of the shop on Centennial Ave. in Kitchener.

That's the shop where I worked.

Lackie Bros was what's known as a closed shop. You had the Ironworkers Union representing the outside guys, the Ironworkers Shopmens local representing the shop guys, and if I'm not mistaken, the Teamsters representing the drivers.

The shop was located in Kitchener, and had a lot of folks of German descent on the floor. There is something about the German attitude that looks askance at questioning authority. They just want to follow orders.

I'll never forget the day this German guy asked if he could leave early for his daughter's fourth birthday party. Most guys would just have left without bothering to ask. This guy asked, and the weasel who was our shop floor boss told him "no".

I saw that middle-aged man cry because his boss told him he couldn't go to his daughter's birthday party.

This was a completely closed union shop where one would presume that the union called the shots.

It doesn't work like that.

The machinery of intimidation works across union lines. The same kind of anti-authoritarian attitude will challenge authority in either environment; the difference is that in the union shop he will likely keep his job after that challenge.

My quibble in the shop was that the stewards had pretty much become management bumboys. They'd be writing their own overtime tickets and look the other way when that management weasel was pushing around some of the meeker guys.

I remember going at it with the shop steward over an issue that touched me personally. The outside guys were a bit slow, and some of them were brought into the shop just to keep them busy. I found myself welding flanges onto the end of a pipe while an outside Ironworker was welding the same flanges onto the other end of the same pipe.

At the time the Shopworkers rate was twelve bucks an hour, while the outside guys were making $20. That didn't work for me.

I took it up with the shop steward, an affable enough guy who spent 100% of his time building Lackie their own custom-spec floats. He was accustomed to writing as much time and a half and double time work for himself as he felt like doing.

Like I said, nice enough guy, but he could not see my problem. At the end of the day his concluding remark was, "well, we're not going to tell the boss how to run the business."

Well, that was enough for me. Remember, this was back in the day where if you could read a blueprint and run a bead you were pretty much golden to a lot of employers, so instead of staying and fighting the good fight I left for a job at Dick Cheney's Dresser Industries for a bit more money.

That's what you do when you have a family to feed.

How I got fired from Dick Cheney's war profiteering empire of evil

OK, I have to admit I'm stretching things a bit here.

But that's a time-honored tradition amongst headline writers in the mainstream press. If a bit of confabulation is good enough for the New York Times, what the hell, it's good enough for The View From Falling Downs.

I got fired from Dresser Industries about 10 years before Cheney became CEO of Halliburton and 15 years before Halliburton bought Dresser. But hang in there; it's a good story.

Before I'd been at Dresser I did a spell at an outfit called Kearney National. The president of Kearney National was a guy named Freeman Spracklin.

This was an era when manufacturing plants in Southern Ontario adhered to what might be called a traditional stratification. The plant manager was usually some guy who had done military service and was discharged with some middling rank. He was invariably British or a first or second generation spawn of Brit immigrants.

The office folks were white and Anglo.

The shop floor was an assortment of Pollocks and Wops, Squareheads and Jamaicans, with an occasional working class Canadian thrown in for good measure.

I spent an entire summer of my employment at Kearney National, a manufacturer of electrical switch-gear, painting Freeman Spracklin's house. I was a welder. I guess this is one of the fringe benefits you don't have to declare when you're a big dog.

Get the niggers to paint your house on the company's dime.

Anyway, one of my fellow painters called up to the big house was a guy named Cheech Contini. Me and Cheech were like brothers. We both liked to toss back a few. We both had illustrious family connections.

Me, well I've told you about the connection to the Von Trapp Family Singers. It's in the blog. Look it up. Let's just say the Captain wasn't quite what he's made out to be in the movie.

In Cheech's case, the family connections were reputed to be to that other "family" of Italian folklore. You know the ones.

So all good things come to an end and the welding/painting the CEO's house gig did too.

Couple years later, I land a gig at Dresser, and holy shit, there's Cheech!

Cheech is raving about the place. He's got himself a sweet spot in shipping. Writes his own overtime ticket! He's also a shop steward! Not only that, but his brother Tony is President of the Steelworkers Local that represents the workforce!

So, I'm thinking, happy days are here for good. Stay tight with my Italian friends and this could be my dream of early retirement come true!

Little did I realize that uncontrollable forces were working behind the scenes. The Dresser plant built overhead cranes and oil rigs. Business was booming. The company had actually gone to England to recruit Brit steelworkers from Glasgow and Sheffield by the dozens with promises of ten years of work. Guaranteed!

Then the commie-symp Trudeau brings in his National Energy Policy and the entire oil rig side goes for a shit literally overnight.

The Brits got lay-off notices and eventually launched a class action lawsuit.

I got called into the office on the last day of my 90 days probation and was told my services were no longer required. One more day and I could have been part of the class action.

So here's the good part. Under union rules the shop stewards are the last to get the lay-off. The Dresser plant hobbled along for a couple of years with a skeleton crew of half a dozen workers to finish off outstanding contracts - at which point shop stewards outnumbered workers by a ratio of 3:1!

Tony was the very last to go.

Rumor has it that he managed to hang on for a couple of years as Local President even after there were absolutely no workers left in the plant for him to represent, and Dresser eventually offered him a generous buyout just to get him the hell out of there.

Good for him!