Early Beginnings

UA Local 170 celebrated its first hundred years of serving its members and the people of BC on November 18, 1998.

On November 18, 1898, 17 plumbers from Vancouver were awarded a charter and became the founding members of the United Association of Plumbing, Gasfitters, Steamfitters and Steamfitter Helpers, Local 170. They were H. Burkholder, A Shead, A. Paton, N.H. Walpole, C. Weeks, A. Green, M.A. Thompson, H . McLuorrie, W.D. Archibald, EJ. McIntyre, P. Moran, J. McLugan, Chas. Paul, B. Weeks, D.A. McDonal, J. Hunt and J. McMurphy. Nothing remains in the record to tell us anything about these men, not even their first names.

The International Association was formed in 1888, just ten years before Local 170 received its charter. In July of 1893 a charter was issued to Vancouver UA Local 67, but that local disappeared from the records of the international in July, 1896. The records are sparse from those days, so we can only guess at this fledgling union local's demise, though it coincides with a depression in BC which particularly affected the construction industry. (The UA local in Brantford, Ontario was subsequently chartered as Local 67.)

The only insight to that period comes from a letter written by Richard E Swalwell of that original Local 67, which was published in the UA Journal in April, 1894. It said in part: "The first week in January witnessed the initiation of the only plumber in our city who had hitherto held aloof We have inaugurated a system whereby the number of jobbers in a shop are regulated by the number of journeymen employed, and also fixed the rate of wages for men and jobbers.

We are also endeavouring to organize Victoria, B. C. Enclosed you will find names of plumbers in principal shops, and I think it would be well to add your efforts to ours in getting Victoria organized. As it is at present it is a refuge for black sheep. We have two members in that city who will aid in getting things into shape, but they are strangers and Victoria is a conservative city.

The trouble in this province is that there are so many small shops and so many without the semblance of a shop who pose as master plumbers and compete not only on work that they can handle, but on work that they cannot possibly

This photo looking north into Stanley Park 'rom Georgia shows the water main on a tresle (behind tree) which carries fresh water from the Capilano River.

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'''''p'/ ' tJ.93, handle, yet dog-in-the-manger like they keep the prices down and it is safe to say that today there is not one plumber in British Columbia making a legitimate profit on his work.

Considering the general depression in trade Vancouver has done fairly by its plumbers. They have been kept fairly well employed up to the present. The new year though I am afraid will allow not a few to take a rather prolonged holiday. Prospects of buildings going up during the rainy season are poor, and as far as I can learn outside of a few small dwellings the architects have no work in their offices. The plumbing on the new Parliament Buildings in Victoria has been let to a Victoria firm, but the work is away in the distance yet.

In Vancouver we have a plumbing bylaw, a plumbing inspector, a board of examiners who examines all journeymen as to theoretical and practical proficiency in the craft, and who issue certificates to those who obtain not less than seventy per cent of correct answers . .. ,"

Swalwell's letter goes on to describe the written and practical exams of the period, and ends with an offer to provide any service or information that would help the union. But his observations on the work situation in 1894 bear a scary number of similarities to the situation of the current day, particularly the wholesale price-cutting and under-skilled and unlicensed people practicing the trade . Curiously, Swalwell's name does not appear

UA Local 170's Charter, issued November 18, 1898.

A streetcar rolls past the original post office on Hastings Street around 1910.

among the list of 17 men who founded Local 170 just four years later.

Aside from the chartering of UA Local 170, 1898 was the year of the Klondike Gold Rush, and the CPR was busy operating two steamships carrying prospectors to Skagway from Vancouver and Victoria. The Boer War was raging and the city was about to give a solemn send-off to a contingent of 17 men to fight on Britain's side.

Fully 80 per cent of the city's 20,000 people still lived within a mile of the CPR station. The streets west of Cambie were all roughgraded by the CPR, which owned most of the land on the west side of the city. The city boasted six miles of planked sidewalk, so going downtown was at most a 20-minute walk. One of the attractions was the Hudson's Bay store, built three years earlier at the corner of Granville and Georgia. Earlier in the year the Vancouver Province newspaper was established.

Vancouver was on the move. The economy was recovering nicely, the electric streetcar was running along Vanness to New Westminster, and the first -ever passenger train pulled into the CPR station two years earlier to much celebration and fanfare. A pipe was laid across the first narrows, bringing fresh water to the city from the Capilano River. At first, the water lines simply ran to a tap at the street in front of houses, but plumbers were soon hard at work extending the lines indoors and installing sinks and proper bathtubs. A sewer system followed within a few years . •

Vancouver was growing up toward the turn of the century. Growth means buildings and buildings require plumbers, gasfitters, steam fitters and all the other building trades. The Post Office at Main and 15th was built between 1905 and 1910; the Dominion Trust Building on Hastings, briefly the tallest building in the British Empire was completed in 1910; and the Birks Building at Georgia and Granville was up by 1913. During this period several other major structures went up which survive to this day. The CPR pier, the CN station on Main, the Carnegie Library at Main and Hastings, and the unique Hotel Europe flat-iron building in Gastown.

From its earliest days Vancouver was split on an east-west basis. The well-to-do lived in the west end, and workers and immigrants lived in the east end close to the sawmills and docks in False Creek and along Burrard Inlet. Politically, 1898 was also a year of success. Three labour candidates won election to the provincial legislature, and held the balance of power in a minority government. That legislature enacted a eight-hour day in metal mines, and in 1902 passed a Workmen's Compensation Act, Canada's first.

In 1903, in response to the growing unionism in BC particularly among the

Mule train in front of one of the city's largest prollisioners for the Klondike at 104 Cordolla. construction trades, the employers formed the Employers Association of Vancouver with the aim of creating 'open shop' companies who could employ both union and nonunion workers. By 1904 they had 103 member-businesses, and stepped up the conflict with unions which led to many strikes over the next ten years. From 1901 to the start of the war, there were 68 strikes in Vancouver alone! In 1907 the federal Gas Ranges government got into the act. The Industrial Disputes Investigation Act provided for the appointment of a conciliation board or imposed compulsory A arbitration to resolve The Burnside Gas d · lsputes, d' h' h unng w lC Appliance 1037.1039 GranviUe Co. Street strikes or lock-outs were !'boDe 3704. prohibited. Significantly, the employerfriendly legislation did not prohibit blacklisting or firing union sympathizers. It could have been worse. In the aftermath of a vicious strike of coal miners on Vancouver Island, a bill was introduced in the Senate to amend the Criminal Code to make nonCanadians subject to imprisonment should they ': .. counsel, incite or urge to induce any strike or lockout, or a rise or fall in wages, or the imposition of additional or differential conditions on terms of employment, or impairing the exercise of industry."

The Bill, designed to keep American union

representatives from interfering in Canadian labour affairs, received second reading but died without reaching the House of Commons.

A steam shovel excavates for an extension to the Hudson's Bay store at Georgia and Seymour in 1911. The old Birks Building is seen in the background.

Then as now, British Columbia had an export economy. Its vast forest resource, coupled with its world-class ice-free harbour at Burrard Inlet and the Vancouver area's benign weather, made the concentration of industrial activity around Vancouver a natural. With two railways serving it, the area's growth and success were assured in the long term. Planners looked to promoting Vancouver as a major export centre for prairie grain, and the construction of the Panama Canal, completed in 1914, made it possible for ships to carry grain and lumber to all the world's markets.

Collective bargaining in the early years of the union was much different from what we know today. Back then the union would agree among themselves at a general meeting what their wages and working conditions would be. This is very likely the genesis of the term 'collective agreement' - the collective was the union membership. They would then meet with employers to get them to agree. If they did not, members of the union were prohibited from working with that firm. Since the majority of qualified tradesmen were in the union, that process worked surprisingly well.

In March of 1910 General Organizer Love of the UA reported on a visit to Vancouver where Local 170 was anticipating full support for a new collective agreement. "All shops are well organized and it devolves upon me to try to bring about the unionizing of the shop of Barr & Anderson." He reported little success in talking to the company, however, so Local 170 members were not permitted to work with that firm.