On the Line: Stories of BC Workers

Ep 32: Behind the Seams - Garment Workers in BC

• BC Labour Heritage Centre • Season 1 • Episode 32

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For most of the 20th century, garment workers—mostly women—sewed, pressed and wove fabric on factory assembly lines throughout the Lower Mainland, before the domestic industry began to decline with globalization. This episode features an interview with Anne Marshall, a garment worker who became an organizer and business agent for the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in Vancouver beginning in the 1940s. We also hear from Esther Peters who worked at Vancouver's West Coast Woolen Mills. She became a shop steward and then president of the Textile Workers Industrial Union of BC. 

Theme song: "Hold the Fort” (traditional) - Arranged & Performed by Tom Hawken & his band, 1992.


Episode music: 

“Look for the Union Label”, lyrics by Paula Green, music by Malcolm Dodds. International Ladies' Garment Workers Union, 1975. https://all-together-now.com/story/the-ilgwu-in-canada/

"Bread and Roses" (traditional) - performed by So-So-So Solidarite, Justice! (Compact Disc). Canadian Union of Postal Workers, n.d.

Sources:

Anne Marshall. Audio interview by Sara Diamond, Women's Labour History Project. 1979.  Courtesy VIVO Media Arts Centre and SFU Archives. 

Esther Peters. Video interview by Geoff Peters. 1981. (personal collection)

Cornell University IRL School The ILGWU in Canada. The Kheel Center ILGWU Collection. https://ilgwu.ilr.cornell.edu/announcements/27.html

Research and writing by Natasha Fairweather and Patricia Wejr

Hosted by Rod Mickleburgh

Technical production by John Mabbott


Theme: Hold the Fort [00:00:13] Rod Mickleburgh: Welcome to the 32nd episode of On the Line, the podcast that brings to life labour history from BC's past. I'm your host, Rod Mickelburgh. Regular podcast followers may remember that a few years ago we brought you the forgotten but fascinating stories of "Pins and Needles", a hit Broadway musical by members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which came to Vancouver in 1938. The musical was performed entirely by rank and file members of the ILGWU from New York. Today we return to the world of the garment industry, with a focus on Vancouver's own garment workers. Almost all were women, and for most of the 20th century they sewed, pressed and wove fabric on factory assembly lines throughout the Lower Mainland, before the industry began to decline, with the advent of cheap imported textiles. Much of the research for what follows comes from Natasha Fairweather of the BC Labour Heritage Center. Natasha published an article last year about local garment workers and she is currently working on a presentation called "Behind the Seams". We also avail ourselves once again of Sara Diamond's wonderful oral history collection for an interview with Vancouver garment worker Anne Marshall, who became an organizer and subsequently a business agent for the ILGWU. And we hear from Esther Peters who worked at Vancouver's storied West Coast Woolen Mills. She became a shop steward and then President of the Textile Workers Industrial Union of BC. She was interviewed by her grandson Geoff Peters. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union started up in the States at the beginning of the 20th century. Not long after that, the union expanded to Canada, with locals in Toronto and Montreal. But it took until the 1930s for the union to spread west to Winnipeg and finally to Vancouver. Anne Marshall was a young restaurant worker in the 1920s. It was there that she first learned about unions. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:02:29] And there is where I saw exactly that at that time, there was a big longshoreman strike on. And that was when I first heard the word scab. And the first time I ever knew that there could be conflict between working people. And it was in a Chinese restaurant on Main Street. And policemen used to walk me up to the bus, a streetcar, because I used to work late at night, because that's all I could get. But anyways, they were good to me. And the longshoremen gave me the first insight. That's when I first got interested. And I was about 19 then, I guess, around '24. It was a nasty strike. And that was the first time, as I said, I heard the word scab. And they told me that, some of them, when I was serving them, said 'it's the first I ever knew you would associate with scabs' as a working person. And I didn't even know what they meant, you know, till I inquired what scab means and that. But anyways, as I said, I worked around at odd jobs and then I babysat for a Mr. Raphael that used to own Sweet 16, but it was called Raphael's up on Granville. And then as the children got a bit older, and I'd been there about three years, I guess, with them, he asked me if I'd like to learn to sew. I said sure. So that's where I first got interested in sewing. That would be about 1920. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:04:04] Anne worked in a small workshop behind the store, until she got married and left to raise a family. She went back to work during World War II. This was a time when production really took off and union organizing in the industry followed right behind. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:04:22] In the meantime, that I had been home, I think it was Fit-Well Garments and Reliable, and a few shops had been organized. And then I went to work at Jantzen's and I had never worked in a shop with piecework. That's like you do one operation and you get so much for that operation. But in Jantzen's, that was the first I'd ever seen this business of you had to put a zipper in in two seconds or something like this, you know what I mean? It's a little exaggerated, but they had a system in there that was called the Bedaux system. It came from France. In fact, I think somebody said later on, after years, a few years, that someone murdered him because he introduced this system, that the price was set by the company. They timed you. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:05:13] The Bedaux system reduced every task to small units, timing workers to the second, then using averaging formulas to figure out their pay, based on their lowest scores. It was as inhumane as it sounds, and Anne was not impressed. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:05:32] And, of course, naturally, I got thinking about it, you know, and I thought, God, that's a miserable way to... By this time, I'm married and I got the experience of being in the world, if you know what I mean. And I thought that's sort of something, isn't it now? So I talked to someone and my girlfriend, even before I was married, worked there and had worked there for a long time. I said to her, I says, this is crummy. I says, my gosh, you work hard as you can work and you don't make your pay and then when you make it, they take it away from you. And they used to show it every day on the board. You could see the 100 girls or boys working, men working there, could see exactly what you made and when you didn't make it. You're in the red and you're in the black and they were posted every day, every day. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:06:21] So anyways, we got laid off, it got slack and we got laid off. First I went to work in another crummy place, a uniform place, she was really cheap. And then I got a chance to work as a matron in the detention home. So I worked there, and while I was working there, they put on a drive for unionizing. So I was called back to Jantzen then when it got busy, and in the meantime, they had spoke to me about Rolly Gervin, he used to be head of the Council here. And he said, 'and how about organizing Jantzen's?' I said, oh, I couldn't do that. I said I can't talk to people like that. He says, well, you're there, you see. So anyways, I said well, I'll try. I mean, it was just a bad situation at that time. So anyways I got talking to them and I talked to this one and I talk to that one. And then they said, yeah. So then I said, Rolly, well, I have to have cards. I says, give me cards and I'll get them signed. And of course, I couldn't do it during working hours because they practically timed you when you went to the washroom, never mind anything else. They'd say, well you went the washroom four times and you stayed down there 10 minutes, so you're losing time. You know what I mean? Everything was time, time, and time. You just had to keep your nose under the needle. So anyways, I managed it. And there was a bit of combustion for a while. So we went into the United Garments because we didn't know where to go. I didn't know about the other one. And of course then, of course as soon as they knew we were organized, they came after us to come into the ILGWU. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:08:02] Anne Marshall had not been much of a fan of the United Garments, which she thought was more of a title than a real union fighting on their behalf. But when someone from the ILGWU showed up, Anne showed her true colours as a future negotiator who knew how to stand up for her workplace colleagues and lay it on the line. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:08:23] So then, of course, the head guy comes out from Winnipeg, Mr. Herbst, and looking at him, he was a real organizer. He'd come from New York and from out of the trade, and he had organized a lot, a lot of the shops in Winnipeg. He had really helped them in Winnipeg, so he came and we called a meeting and he said his little piece, you know, about why we should be with them and not with the others. We'd already paid our initiation fee into the others. And he says -- so we let them talk and that, so then he says, 'well, now we'll take a vote'. I said, no, we won't. I says, you'll go out of the room. All of you will go out of the room, like all their executive and that was there. A lot of their executive was there and they were saying what they'd done in Fit-Well and Reliable garment and everything, you know? And I says no, we won't. And of course, he says, why won't we? I says, because, I says we want to talk about it first. I says so you all go out of the room and we'll talk about it. Well, it nearly floored him that someone would get up and tell him what to do, I think. Well, he said after, he says, I'm telling you, I just couldn't believe my ears that anybody had the nerve to  tell you to go out. So anyways, they went out. And I told them now, I says this is what is in one and this is  what it could be by the sound of it in this. And they are the better shops. They're not overalls and stuff and jeans and stuff like that. And they're not tailored garments like the United. But I says, I feel that the ILGWU, because I had listened and read a little bit, would be maybe the stronger of the two. And so anyways, I said, now, decide now what you think. So a few got up and said what they thought and that and I said okay we'll take a vote. I said now don't be bashful about your hand because we have no paper to make a ballot on. I says don't be bashful, if you don't like it just say so. Well they were all practically for it you know. So anyways we went ILGWU and we negotiated a contract with Jantzen. It was a hard one because the management was against it and they had a lawyer arguing, but Mr. Herbst was a very good negotiator, if you know what I mean. He'd look and he could talk and, you know, he'd bring you up, they'd think, you know, well he's weakening and all of a sudden he'd put a bombshell in there that would make them stop and think. So as I said, that's how I started. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:11:09] Timing and piece work remained, but with the backing of the union, the workers were finally able to get rid of the hated Bedaux system. Interviewer Sara Diamond asked Anne Marshall how the new system worked. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:11:23] Well, if you have to make, let's say, 60 cents an hour, well, you've got to have a price on each garment or that to make that 60 cents. So if it took you five minutes to, or say six minutes to do one garment, so you knew you had to make 10 garments in an hour to make 60 cents, right?  So it made it easier for them that way, because they knew, I have to get 10 out. So if you worked hard in the morning when you were rested, you could make over your pay. So if your weren't, so if you were tired in the afternoon, you still would make your pay or make your 60 cents or whatever you wanted to make, what you'd based yourself on, because you knew that you had done extra in the morning. And the afternoon, sometimes it would be hot or that you, you know, you couldn't produce as much. And of course you get tired. And when the garment was finished, like, you know, and they were, the samples were finished, well, then the union and the company would sit down and we'd get a price, and then that price would be set. But we both worked together on that. We never always agreed and sometimes we had to give, sometimes he had to give. 

 

Sara Diamond [00:12:38] So you'd negotiate each? 

 

Anne Marshall [00:12:39] That's right. Each garment was a problem and each operation, if it was an operation, because we had to put down like so much for collars, cuffs, body or something or so on. We both, the company and union used to sit down and that was that for the season until the next samples were made or if they made a sample in between and they were going to try something, then they'd say price it for us, you know. 

 

Sara Diamond [00:13:02] That would really require you knowing the trade very well. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:13:04] That's right. You had to know. And you had to know approximately how fast a person could work on it or how long it would take. And every day, if they changed anything, every day we had to set a different price for something new that they would come up with. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:13:18] The ILGWU was also able to negotiate a reduced work week. When Anne started in the trade, she worked eight hours a day, six days a week. This went down to 44 hours a week, and then to 40 hours. Benefits improved as well, and health and safety measures were negotiated to reduce eye strain. Anne said working conditions in Vancouver were not as dangerous as in other parts of North America, but the job was not without its hazards. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:13:49] There's a lot of fluff in a garment trade. A lot of dust, you might say, or that, you know, because cloth is moving all the time. There's always a certain amount of fluff off the thing. And the pressers, handling an iron. I agree, it's a whole lot better than when I was 19, '26 and that, when I used to press, we had a 22 pound iron, and we had to wet the materials, and then press. Today they got steam irons, which is a lot better, but for a lot of us, it was real bad. Eight hours a day to have your hand crooked around the handle of a hot thing. That's why their hands would go something like that. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:14:33] No account of women garment workers would be complete without a rendition of the famous women's song, "Bread and Roses". The words were taken from a speech by American suffragette Helen Todd, and they became a rallying cry during the 1912 Lawrence textile strike. James Oppenheim incorporated the words into a poem, which was then set to music by Caroline Kohlsaat in 1917. This version of "Bread and Roses" is performed by the Quebecois group, So-So-So Solidarité. 

 

Music: Bread and Roses performed by So-So-So-Solidarite [00:15:07] As we go marching, marching in the beauty of the day, a million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray. Are touched by all the radiance,  that a sudden sun discloses. For the people hear us singing bread and roses, bread and roses. As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men. For they are women's brothers, and we'll march with them again. Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes.  Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:16:27] West Coast Woolen Mills was another large workplace in the local garment industry. As in other mills, work ramped up there during the war, as demand skyrocketed for wool uniforms and army blankets. Esther Peters started working there as a young woman at a time when the factory was non-union and the work was often unsafe. She talked about injuries she suffered on the job in an interview with her grandson, Geoff. 

 

Esther Peters [00:16:56] When I first started there, I started on the looms, they're manual, in that you change the bobbins by hand and stop them by hand, by hand. Yeah. And for some reason, they did away with these manual looms and for that time, they put me on the carding machines. And they're huge things, and sort of dangerous if you don't watch out. I got hit on the head with a shuttle. And it was a funny thing, those men, the man was a first-aid attendant. Yeah, and he was yakking away, well you couldn't hear, there was no use calling, because if I were to talk to you, I'd have to, absolutely holler into your ear. 

 

Geoff Peters [00:17:54] It was very noisy?

 

Esther Peters [00:17:57] Yeah, oh, firstly, I couldn't hear a thing when I got home. 

 

Geoff Peters [00:18:00] I assume they didn't have ear pieces or cotton or anything? 

 

Esther Peters [00:18:06] No, nothing. And I just waved to him and turned my head because the blood was coming down. So then he ran over and he took me to the General Hospital and stitched it up. So that wasn't the only one. Another time I got my finger, which I shouldn't have done, cleaning the pulleys, you know, the wool started going around instead of coming. And I got my finger in there and it cut it off. This one here.

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:18:31] These kinds of conditions made West Coast Woolen Mills a prime candidate for organizing. And that's what happened. Esther Peters: 

 

Esther Peters [00:18:41] Three years before I quit, we got a union there. And it was funny, you know, the owners, there's two brothers, Stanford, brothers Stanford, and they were, they were for the union, but the superintendent, oh, he was madder than a hatter. Well, I think there was a woman, I think she was giving us paper -- she had a piece of paper and we put our name on, to see if we wanted to have a union. So we could ask for a little more pay, that's what she said. So I was like, it's okay by me. 

 

Geoff Peters [00:19:27] So she was someone who worked in the plant? 

 

Esther Peters [00:19:29] Yeah, she worked in the plant. Then we got our union and we put in the... She was the one that got it started, got everybody to sign. And then we had a meeting at the Vancouver Hotel and we had the superintendent and the owners over there. 

 

Geoff Peters [00:19:54] I want to back up a bit. When this woman was going around andpeople were signing up, did you have any problems getting people signing up? What were you doing at that point? 

 

Esther Peters [00:20:01] I was at the looms. 

 

Geoff Peters [00:20:03] In terms of getting people to sign up, were you one of the people that went around? 

 

Esther Peters [00:20:06] No, not that I know of, because she was very furtive. She wasn't hollering, you know, do you want to join the union? She just went around and quietly talked to them and would get their name, and then went another day and so on. And so it wasn't done in a day. She took quite a while, the people that owned it and the superintendent, they didn't know it, not until it was already... 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:20:31] As for Anne Marshall, once she got the taste of union organizing at Jantzen's, she started talking to garment workers at other workplaces, often visiting them at home in her drive to sign people up. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:20:43] Well, you talk to somebody or somebody comes in the shop and says it's terrible in this shop or this and that is wrong and something's wrong. So you go from there and then you visit people at their homes and especially if they were young people, I always liked to have their mothers or fathers or somebody listen to what I was saying to them and asking them, you know, what was wrong in the shop. And that I used to do, but I used go out at night time or in the day time. I used work at the detention home in the night and on my days off, that's when I organized Rose Marie Reid, you know, the bathing suits. And I used to go all around to the houses. You'd go to the houses and then sometimes  we'd meet them outside the shop and talk to them. And then when we felt we were getting somewhere, we'd be outside the shop with pamphlets that there was a meeting so that they'd all could try to come and that was how I did it. I was up in Edmonton, too. I walked in there and organized a big shop up there.

 

Sara Diamond [00:21:53] The shops that were difficult to organize, like Al Jean's, what made them difficult? Was it the workers or the attitude...? 

 

Anne Marshall [00:21:59] No, the boss. 

 

Sara Diamond [00:22:00] What kind of things did they do? 

 

Anne Marshall [00:22:01] Oh, they would say, well, okay, get the union in, and we'll close down, or we'll move back east, or we'll threaten, always making it miserable for them. And they pained me a long time. After we started to organize them, they really upped their prices and gave the people a break to keep us out. And they said, well as I said, why do you have to join the Union? Well, we'll give it to you. How long they'd have it was another thing,  you see, because there was no contract, they could just take it, the price away or could take the hours away just like nothing you know. 

 

Sara Diamond [00:22:36] So did that work at all? 

 

Anne Marshall [00:22:38] Oh, some shops it did, some people from that and many times religious things would come into it. They'd say well, we don't believe in belonging to anything you know. But I said you belong to your church and the church is an association. Every church, they're together, you know what I mean? And they'd say a union is something else. I said, the lawyers have a union, the doctors have a union, and the bosses have a union.  It's not called union. It's called associations. But it's still a union because they have rules and regulations, and they set principles, right? So everybody actually belongs to a union in the working world, one way or another 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:23:31] Given Anne's dedication, it was no surprise that Sam Herbst, the ILGWU leader from Winnipeg, asked her to become a full-time organizer. At first, she said she would come in for a couple of months, but she ended up staying for 17 years, and eventually became a business agent, where her duties included, as Anne put it, straightening out difficulties. Sometimes that involved newcomers to Canada who found work in the garment industry, where they often encountered discrimination. The ILGWU prided itself on combating such racism. Anne remembered one time when she had to intervene directly after racial tensions rose in the workplace. 

 

Anne Marshall [00:24:18] Like one time, you know, one girl caused a big commotion because the forelady was a newcomer, a displaced person, but she was a very good forelady and she knew the work. And she was very good and she was very fair, but this one girl, her husband had been in the war or something, I don't know, or her father had or something. I don't know, and she wouldn't take orders from her. She says, I'm not taking orders from her she tells the boss. So the boss phones me, and says so-and-so's causing commotion in the shop. She isn't going to take orders from Hilda. And I says, why? She says, well she says she's not gonna take orders from a foreigner, they come to this country and she was born here and that. I says well send her up to the office. So she came up and I talked to her for a little while about how wrong she was and that. She says well I don't care. She says we fought the war and then they come over here and they take all, you know the same old story, you've heard it a hundred times. And she says I'm not going to you take orders from her.  I says you take orders from me. She says, well, that's different. I says, no, I'm an Indian. I says how do you like that? And she says, well she says anyways. I says, no it's not anyways. Either you take order or you'll have to quit, I says and you cannot call people names. I says you know it, it's always been our rule, you do not call people names just because they're not your type of people. Yeah, she was very English, you know. And then so she said, well, I'll quit. I said, fine. So I phoned up the boss, I says, she's quitting. See, because the boss was Jewish and the forelady was, I don't know what she was, I can't remember, but she was a foreign. She'd come over with displaced people from some  of those countries. That's how I used to do it. I used just bring them up and talk to them and just tell them, you don't do these things. That's not the way to live together. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:26:08] In the 1970s and '80s, garment manufacturing began to tail off in North America, a victim of the increase in cheaper goods from countries with low-cost labour and little regulation. The ILGWU responded with an aggressive union label campaign that promoted buying union. The Union Label Song that went along with the campaign became well-known, with lyrics by Paula Green and music by Malcolm Dodds. 

 

Union Label ad campaign and song [00:26:39] When we didn't have the International Ladies Garment Workers Union we didn't know from day to day whether we'd have a job or not. It was a hard way to live. That's why we worked to get the union. We need something to count on. We're working fair hours for fair pay now.  The ILG gives us a chance to better ourselves and our kids. That's our union. And that's what our label stands for. 

 

Union Label Song [00:26:59] Look for the union label, when you are buying a coat, dress or blouse. Remember somewhere, our union's sewing, our wages growing to feed the kids and run the house. We work hard, but who's complaining? Thanks to the I.L.G. we're paying our way! So always look for the union label...

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:27:39] Meanwhile, Sara Diamond had one last question for the feisty Anne Marshall. 

 

Sara Diamond [00:27:44] Are there any sort of specific other things that you'd like to mention about your experience in the trade and organizing? 

 

Anne Marshall [00:27:52] Well, all I can say there, as I said in the beginning, either you be honest or you might as well quit now. You go to him with it honestly, and you try to negotiate it that way, and hope that he can see it your way if it's right. And I used to tell the people, don't come and tell me a pack of lies and everything, because I can't go in there and fight. If I myself know that you're wrong, how can I go in and fight for you? So just be honest, that's all I'm saying. And you've got to give and you've gotta take. You've got to give there also and get something next time. That's why you say, do you want 15 cents? You're going to get seven or eight. Take the seven or eight and come back for it the next time, because I think that's only fair. So as I said, it burns me up when I hear them say, you shouldn't have a union, you shouldn't be forced to join the union. I say, if you're good enough to work for that company, you should belong to the union because the union has fought for the principles of health, welfare, and so on. 

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:28:56] A lot has changed since then. As the number of garment workers kept going down, in 1995, the ILGWU merged with other unions to form the Union of Needle Trades, Industrial and Textile Employees. And here in Vancouver, there was a merger with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union in 2004 to form Unite Here Local 40. Local 40 continues down the path blazed by the once-formidable ILGWU, still fighting for immigrants and other women in the workplace. 

 

Theme: Hold the Fort [00:29:36] Hold the fort, for we are coming, union Hearts, be strong, side by side...

 

Rod Mickleburgh [00:29:44] Thanks for tuning in for this look back at those tough women who worked in Vancouver's once thriving garment industry and tried to make it better. We hope you enjoyed it. Thanks to Natasha Fairweather of the BC Labour Heritage Center for her research. Thanks as well to the inimitable Sara Diamond for the interview with Anne Marshall and Geoff Peters for the interview with his grandmother, Esther Peters. "Bread and Roses" was performed by So-So- So Solidarite. And finally, big thanks to the other members of the podcast collective: donna Sacuta, Executive Director of the BC Labour Heritage Center, which sponsors the podcast; Patricia Wejr, who drafted the script, and John Mabbott, who put everything together. I'm your host, Rod Mickleburgh. We'll see you next time, On the Line.