SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Anita Andersen : the Trocadero strike RECORDED: New Westminster (B.C.), 1979-[09-03 & 12] SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Andersen was born in Princeton, where she and her family experienced the collapse of the Princeton mines (the Granby Mines) and the disastrous economic consequences. She was subsequently orphaned and moved to Vancouver where, as a very young girl, she worked for several families as a domestic; this was one of the few alternatives for working class women who needed a place to live, food and work, and who were basically unskilled. Her sister also worked as a domestic, and they both began to radicalize, due to the influences of the longshoremen's strikes -- and for Mrs. Andersen, her interests in Yugoslavian cultural activities. She came a busgirl and organised for the HREU at the Trocadero Cafe. The Cafe was struck, and a contract was eventually achieved, but the central organisers were fired and blacklisted, including Mrs. Andersen. She continued to work for the union until she moved to the Yukon in the 1940s. TRACK 2: Returning to BC, she worked for the Jubilee Summer Camp; as a cultural organiser the Yugoslavian community; and with consumer organisations.

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Barbara Stewart : organizing restaurant workers during the Depression RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-06-17 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Barbara Stewart first radicalized during the Depression. She was present in Regina in 1935 at a citizens' meeting called to protest the lack of jobs and support the On to Ottawa Trek. She was swept into the streets with many of the crowd by the attacks of the police and RCMP. She came to Vancouver in 1936 without a job, and was placed as a domestic by the YWCA. She moved on to waitress at Kennedy's, where she was laid off for her union sympathies. She then worked at the Melrose and then Love's Cafe. Waitresses worked four-way split shifts at that time. She participated in job actions like the following: waitresses wore their aprons for six weeks without washing them, to establish employer responsibility for laundry. TRACK 2: Restaurant work was very hard; it required physical labour and long hours of work. Women faced sexual harassment on the job. Some restaurants even tried to exploit waitresses as prostitutes. Most women who worked did so out of economic necessity rather than choice. Bill Stewart was the business agent of Local 28 during the 1930s and early 1940s. Mrs. Stewart later took over as business agent, traveling all over the city for twenty dollars a month. A major struggle of the union was to change the laws so that employers would have to provide transportation for waitresses after dark. Mrs. Stewart as business agent was also a delegate to the VDLC; She went into houses to organize them, and worked on the White Lunch and Trocedero strikes.

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Emily Nuttall : organizing hotels in the 1940s RECORDED: Toronto (Ont.), 1979-12-31 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Emily Nuttall (nee Watts?) was born in Winnipeg in 1913. She worked in the trade union movement in Winnipeg and then Toronto before coming to Vancouver in 1944. This interview covers her career as a union organizer and president until 1946. She describes working in the restaurant industry in the 1930s; working in the Bartenders Union office; launching the organizing drive in the war industry canteens, restaurants and hotels; support from the Boilermakers and Machinists; winning cab fare for women working late shifts in restaurants; effect of the legalization of unions on conditions; for organisation during the war; the Georgia Hotel drive (a one-day blitz wins a contract); winning a BC master agreement; establishing shifts and hours through the first contract; thrown out of the Belmont Hotel while organising; servicing restaurants; sexual harassment; women were the best union members -- "give me a picket line of good dedicated women and they will out-picket any man". TRACK 2: Women's issues include dressing rooms; broken shifts; sexual harassment; childcare not an issue; no-strike pledge and industrial action; negotiations. Winnipeg childhood; mother was a women's rights activist, father was a trade unionist. Skills needed by organisers -- empathy. HREU International and conservative leadership; defeat of Progressives in 1946; Cold War; local under trusteeship for refusing to clean out "Reds"; Ms. Watts loses position as organiser; chauvinism towards women in the trade unions; women not taken seriously; women participate during the war; after trusteeship, male leadership.

CALL NUMBER: T3621:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Marion Sarich : organizing working women in the 1930s and 1940s RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-08-31 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Ms. Sarich was born in Princeton, BC and later moved to Saskatchewan, later returning to BC. She started work as a domestic at the age of thirteen for five dollars a month and then moved on to several different positions. She began organizing domestics in the 1930s and worked with the Housewives' League to get a charter from the AFL. The TLC could not decide which union should receive jurisdiction and the campaign died. Ms. Sarich then began working as a busgirl at the Trocedero Cafe, helping to organize it. The cafe was struck and she and her sister, Anita Sarich, were blacklisted, but the strike helped to initiate a campaign to organize the restaurants. During the strike they received extensive support from the public. She also participated in drives to organize Army/Navy and Woolworth's helping whenever organizers were needed, and taking no pay. TRACK 2: The HREU fought for special classes for women; equal pay, protection at night for waitresses getting off shift and requiring transportation. Ms. Sarich participated in pickets of restaurants which were guilty of unfair labour practices. She also supported the unemployed men in the post office. Local 28 tried consistently to join with the Bartenders local 626, but the latter refused amalgamation. In the 1940s she assisted in the organization of the Canadian Seamen's union, which later became the SIU (1948). CALL NUMBER: T3621:0002 RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-08-31 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Sarich remembers Norman Bethune's visit to Vancouver; solidarity with Spanish orphans through the Girls Brigade to Aid Spanish Orphans. In the 1950s she became a postal worker and has been active in the unions. [TRACK 2: blank?]; CALL NUMBER: T3621:0003 RECORDED: Vancouver (B.C.), [date unknown] SUMMARY: [No content summary available for this tape.];

CALL NUMBER: T3603:0001 SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): May Martin : industrial organization in the hotel and restaurant industry, 1940s RECORDED: North Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-07-23 & 25 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: May Martin (nee Ansell) came from Capetown. She left school at the end of grade 9 and worked as a grocery clerk, hotel worker, and waitress. She moved from Canada to the U.S.; then to Montreal, Halifax, Toronto, and Windsor, where she stayed until 1941. She then drove west with her husband, searching for work. Her first interest in the HREU came as a result of working in a restaurant where the women union organisers were being harassed by the boss. She went down and joined the HREU and worked in the union houses. She moved to the Yukon in 1942 and organised for the HREU in Whitehorse. In 1944 she was elected business agent upon her return to Vancouver. Mrs. Martin was a strong proponent of industrial organisation, although the HREU was a member of the craft-oriented TLC. From 1945 to 1946, the HREU signed a master agreement with the majority of restaurant employers and began to organise the hotels. The union helped to establish a new and better minimum wage law for women, as well as restrictions on women working late hours, which forced the employer to furnish better shifts. TRACK 2: Mrs. Martin attended the 1946 convention of the union at which the syndicates threatened the internal opposition and retained control of the International. Mrs. Martin and other Canadian delegates were physically threatened, and the opposition leader was shot. Soon after this, the International organised to remove her and Emily Watts, despite membership protests. CALL NUMBER: T3603:0001 RECORDED: North Vancouver (B.C.), 1979-07-23 & 25 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: In 1946, before she was removed, Mrs. Martin spoke on the radio defending a woman's right to a job and a union, as a union member and official. [TRACK 2: blank.]

SUPPLIED TITLE OF TAPE(S): Pearl Moreau : Fraser Cafe workers get organized RECORDED: New Westminster (B.C.), 1979-07-26 & -08-02 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mrs. Moreau, nee Wong, began to work in Vancouver in 1944 as a waitress-in-training. The conditions were deplorable; five dollars a week to ten dollars a month, a ten-hour day, and half an hour for lunch with no other breaks. She had a child, then returned to the Fraser Cafe in 1955, leaving her child with her mother while she worked. The Fraser was a union shop, and after seeing the union attain a raise of only two cents any hour, she determined to become active, seeing many important issues for women -- equal fringe benefits, sick benefits, and sexual harassment. Workers supported each other to resist sexual harassment by the boss, a recurring problem for waitresses. The union worked towards the principle of equal pay. She participated in negotiations, served on the VDLC, and ran for hostess. TRACK 2: She found herself at times at odds with her union and voted independently. She eventually ran against Ed Carlson for president as an opposition candidate, claiming a need for stronger democracy in the union.