Full bibliography

In the wake of President Roosevelt''s New Deal for labour in the United States, the International Woodworkers of America (IWA) experienced tremendous organizational growth in both Oregon and Washington. Fearing the arrival of the IWA in British Columbia, the provincial government enacted the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration (ICA) Act as a means to preserve the industrial peace through state regulation of the class struggle. It was at the company town of Blubber Bay on Texada Island that the Act was tested for the first time in an eleven-month strike [during1938-39] between Local 163 of the IWA and the Pacific Lime Company. With the failure of the legislation to broker a settlement, the union's campaign for recognition was subsequently enveloped by clashes over the common law rights of private property which limited workers' mobility in the community and the criminal laws of unlawful assembly that jailed strike leaders. Through an investigation of the state, company and union this project demonstrates that statutory, criminal and common laws in question were dedicated to the reproduction of capitalist social relations by regulating or eliminating the collective political activities of working people at Blubber Bay and, by extension, the arrival of the IWA in BC. As well, such struggles reveal the fundamentally conceptions of legality put forth by the union. Furthermore, this project illuminates the ways in which the expansion of formal collective bargaining contained class struggle and how the law and legal process shaped the political choices of working people. Indeed, the Blubble Bay conflict provides a window into the role of the state in labour/capital relations; in particular, its capacity through consent and coercion to legitimize its role as arbiter of competing class interests, secure allegiance to the rule of law, and diffuse oppositional challenges to the existing order.