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CALL NUMBER: T3607:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Ellen Barber : early union organization in the laundries, 1914-1918 : [tape 1] RECORDED: Port Moody (B.C.), 1979-08 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Barber was one of the first women active in the Vancouver Trades and Labour Congress (an affiliate of the Trades and Labour Congress). She was involved in organising laundry and communication workers during the First World War period. In this interview, she describes union organisation during World War One; working conditions in the laundries; bargaining procedures; organising the unions; the laundry strike and its defeat; the formation of the Minimum Wage Board; the telephone workers strike. TRACK 2: Attitudes to women within the unions; working in the war industry in WWII; post-war layoffs of women workers; piecework; CCF involvement in the unions; her family's roots, and her decision to become a unionist; women's suffrage and its effects on working women; Oriental workers and parallel attitudes to women; the Shirt, Waist and Laundry Workers' International Union in the 1940s; the streetcar strike of 1918.;

CALL NUMBER: T3607:0002 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Ellen Barber : early union organization in the laundries, 1914-1918 : [tape 2] RECORDED: Port Moody (B.C.), 1979-08 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Depression use of female labour; the impact of the Russian Revolution on the labour movement; shipyard conditions; accidents in the laundries; women's organisations in the 1930s. [TRACK 2: blank.];

CALL NUMBER: T3628:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Jonnie Rankin : women in the B.C. shipyards in the 1940s RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1978-07-10 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Rankin wrote a column for the newspaper of the Shipyard and General Workers Union during the war, describing the experience of women working in the shipyards. She has also been involved in the HREU, OTEU and the IWA. She was an activist in the Labour Progressive Party during the war. In this interview, she describes the motivations of women taking industrial jobs; hiring procedures; attitudes of men to women entering the yards; the transformation of the craft unions into industrial unions; childcare; political differences in the unions; Soviet women on ships which came into the yards for repair. TRACK 2: Piecework; shop stewarding; layoffs and women; work as a journalist for "The People"; the LPP; left-wing theatre; the IWA strike of 1946; organizing in the restaurants; women's auxiliaries; equal pay struggles. Women were unwilling to leave their jobs after the war ended; working had brought them self-respect and economic autonomy.

CALL NUMBER: T3628:0002 RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1978-07-10 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Rankin worked in the IWA hiring hall and was involved in some of the early attempts to form the OPIEU from union employees (1947). [TRACK 2: blank?]

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Harold (Buster) Foster : The IAM and union women in World War II RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-06-06 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Buster Foster was an engineer; burned in an accident in the early 1930s, he was forced onto relief. Social workers harassed relief recipients throughout the Depression. During both world wars, he worked in the shipyards. He participated in the 1919 solidarity strike with the OBU in BC. During World War II he supervised thirty-five to forty women in the shipyards as steward for the union. There were few grievances filed by the women. TRACK 2: After the war, he voiced his concern that two people in a family should not be working when there were only adequate numbers of jobs for one family member. Despite the no-strike pledge, the International Association of Machinists, which he represented, went out on a seven-day job action during the war, resulting in the Richards Commission. Conflicts existed in the IAM over Canadian autonomy and control by the International over Canadian funds and policy.