A labour of love & labour
March 20th, 2017
“When one reads other accounts of the history of British Columbia since the Second World War,” says Mark Warrior, “the role of unions generally receives short shrift.” So he’s done something about it. Warrior’s history of the Labourers’ International Union of North America in British Columbia since its first local was chartered in 1937 is Building the Power: The Labourers’ Union in British Columbia (LiUNA! Local 1611).
Born (1952) and educated in England, Mark Warrior of Ladysmith has published in several anthologies, both in Canada and abroad. He wrote a chapbook entitled Quitting Time (Vancouver: MacLeod Books 1978) published by antiquarian bookseller Don Stewart. He worked for ten years in the forest industry during which he was an IWA job steward, a logging Camp Chairman and a member of IWA Haney Local 1-367’s Executive Board. This was followed by twenty years as a commercial fisherman as a member of the United Fishermen & Allied Worker’s Union, during which he was Secretary-Treasurer its 1,000-member Vancouver Fishermen’s Local 1 and Fishermen’s Strike Captain during UFAWU’s 1989 industry-wide “Free Trade” strike.
Building the Power can be downloaded without charge at: http://www.cswu1611.org/book/
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