Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union

History of the Movement

Intro Grapes of Wrath - Conditions of the Working Class The early 1930s saw the steady deterioration of working class living conditions. The two main sectors of the agricultural economy -sugar and cocoa- had remained depressed since the drop in world prices in the early 1920s. The post-war depression and the mechanisation of the production process had reduced the number of workers employed. The great depression also led to the lowering of wages and rising costs and reduction in the working hours. This meant that workers had to live on earnings in the 1930s that were approximately 2/3 of what they received in the 1920s. The sugar barracks with their open, slimy drains, overcrowding and filthy latrines were described by John Jagger as: "....words fail me when I try to describe the conditions we saw ..... perhaps most dreadful of all were the round iron cisterns at each door containing the drinking water for residence, in which were every creeping and crawling thing imaginable, plus endless masses of mosquito larvae" Workers were paid their wages not in cash but with purchase orders which could only be redeemed at the local shops. Cheating of illiterate people, indebtedness at very high interest rates, lower prices for crops mortgage to shops, reduced access to further credit, all led, for countless people, to the loss of their holdings, either to the estates or to the shops. The workers in the oilfields feared no better notwithstanding the substantial margin of profits. The earnings of the average oil worker were less than the wages he earned in the 1920s. Moreover, in the oilfields, prices for basic consumer items tended to be higher than in other parts of the country. Lt. Colonel H. Hickling, manager of Apex oilfields, started a cost of living index based on price increases and showed by his calculations that food prices had risen by 17% between 1935 and 1937. He, in early 1937, recommended to the Petroleum Association that a cost of living bonus be given to the workers in view of the steep increases in prices but there was no unanimity, and the wages remained the same. Transportation to and from the oilfields was non-existent. Very often men had to walk distances from 5 to 8 miles to get home, not infrequently, at midnight. Those who wish to avoid travel could be accommodated only in the barrack dwellings that matched those of the sugar estates in dilapidation and lack of sanitation. Oil workers were subject to utter contempt by the white managerial staff a number of whom were recruited from South Africa, a country which had already become notorious for its treatment of non-white labour. Workers had no job security as they could be dismissed at a moment notice by their white bosses and may not obtain employment elsewhere because of "red booking".["Red Booking"- a system of recording workers‘ career and performance, which had to be produced by workers seeking employment: the person fired by one oil company was thus denied work in all other companies.] Governor in a dispatch to the Colonial Office said: ".....Labour has lived in conditions of extreme poverty and squalor, and the colour line has kept employer and employed at arm‘s length apart..." In another correspondence he said: "the wages of labour throughout the colony are admittedly too low, and abortive attempts have been made for years past to establish a minimum rate". The distressing conditions led to considerable destitution, especially in the urban centres. World events at this time also helped to create a greater race consciousness. Italian attacks on the Abyssinians did much to arouse anti-white feelings among the black population of Trinidad. According to one contemporary observer ‘the betrayal of Abyssinia is nearly as much to blame for the riots in Trinidad and Tobago as is the high cost of living‘. The labour disturbances which originated in the oilfields must be seen as the culmination of accumulated grievances of the labouring classes. Economic conditions such as low wages, rising prices and the unemployment and underemployment endemic in the island, were mainly responsible for the undercurrent of discontent in the country‘s working class. Although legitimate grievances existed among the workers of the two main industries there was no machinery for bringing them to the attention of the employers. All that was needed in these circumstances was a militant and daring leader, prepared to take personal risks in a mass confrontation with the ruling class in order to create an industrial crisis. Such a leader was now to emerge. He was Tubal Uriah Butler. These then were the conditions that fueled the labour riots and strikes from June 19th 1937 and give rise to organised labour. The Labour Strikes of June 1937 The Strike of oil workers was originally planed for June 22, but intelligence was received that the oil companies, the
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Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union

government and the police were concerting measures to frustrate it, as such the strike was brought forward to June 18th. The strike was intended to be peaceful and confined only to the oilfields, with workers simply sitting down on their jobs. The strike organizers warned the workers against street demonstrations, looting and forbade encouraging strikes in other industries. There was no strike fund, but the organizers had secured the assistance of the small businessmen within the oil belt. The strike began at midnight on June 18th, when rigmen sat down on the job at Trinidad Leaseholds Ltd, Forest Reserve and Fyzabad. The planners of the strike, like those who planned the general strike in Britain in 1926, did not anticipate the inexorable logic of a strike once it threatens the interests of the dominant elites and thus threatened would resort to the full use of the armed apparatus of the state whether the strikers intended to be peaceful or not. Warrants were issued for the arrest of Butler on charges of using violent language and of the incitement to breaches of the peace. Police were deplore in the oilfields and troops sent to the South. The Governor issued a proclamation prohibiting assemblies in the oil-producing counties of St. Patrick and Victoria. A party of policemen tried to arrest Butler, who at the time was addressing a large group of workers. The crowd exploded in anger, rush the police and rescued Butler. The crowd, cut the telephone lines, and turned their anger on the police. Some chase Corporal Charles King, who having fallen an broke his leg, was drenched with oil and burned to death. The police later regrouped and tried to recover the body of the slain policeman. But they were received with extreme hostility by the villagers who stoned and fired upon them. By the mourning of June 21st , what was initially a peaceful oil workers strike developed into an island-wide labour crisis. At Point Fortin bus-loads of men outside the district joined their counterparts and erected barriers across the road to prevent vehicles from entering the refinery. In San Fernando mob ruled the day. Sugar workers at the Usine St. Madeleine sugar estate invaded the bungalows of the white owners, smashed furniture and engaged in pilfering. the close down the unit that supplied water for domestic and sanitary purposes. On June 22nd, similar occurrences by sugar workers took place at Penal and Waterloo and Woodford Lodge estates. On June 22nd news of the unrest reach Port of Spain. Workers there, spurred on by activists of the NWCSA (Negro Welfare Cultural and Social Association) demonstrated through the city and closed down businesses. The workers even attempted to raid a train with a consignment of arms bound for San Fernando but the police opened fire and the raid was repulsed. On this day agricultural workers also strike and rioted in Rio Claro and Tabaquite. However, at Rio Claro the situation was worst as persons armed themselves and over-ran the railway station. The police were engage in battle and five men were killed and several injured. By June 23rd sugar workers on the Caroni sugar estate strike, so to did the workers on several estates on the outskirts of Arima: O‘Meara, Carapo, Esperanza, La Reunion, San Raphael and Golden Grove. Workers at the government owned St. Augustine estate also took strike action. By June 23rd workers on the Port of Spain waterfront, as well as workers employed by the City Council were on strike. Strikes in the Government‘s Public Workers Department had also spread rapidly, affecting thirty-one areas. By June 25th workers were on strike at the Bamboo Factory, St. Joseph, and on Black estate in Flanagin Town while in Tableland schools and post offices were forcibly closed. By June 26th the strike movement reached Mayaro, affecting the Beaumont, St. Anns and Lagoon Doux estates. By June 27th the agricultural workers at Caigual and Fishing Pond, on the Non Pariel and St. Lawrence estates also strike, and by June 29th workers attached to the Manzanilla Local Road Board also took strike action and in Tobago workers went on strike in sympathy with the Trinidad workers. Meanwhile the Governor proposed new rates of 72 cents for men and 60 cents for women in Port of Spain, outside of Port of Spain: men to receive 60 cents and women 36 cents, the purpose being to give the workers ‘a lead in the direction of wage increases‘ and the oil companies agree to raise the minimum wage per day from 56 cents to 72 cents and the working week to go down from 54 hours to 45 hours. By July 2nd Governor Fletcher now triumphantly reports to the Colonial Office: with the cordial agreement of the legislative council, I have ....set the minimum wage only a fraction higher than that of pre-depression years. Having seized the initiative with token increases and promises the Governor backed with the armed forces brought and end to the island-wide strike movement that had griped the country for the past month. The strikes of June 1937 had cut across the barriers of race within the working class population and affected every major sector of the economy. 100 years from 1837 Emancipation (1834) brought great fear to the ruling class. There was great worry as to whether the black population would accommodate to the system of free labour that was to be introduced. The general social system in Trinidad and Tobago was in some respects identical with the system then obtaining in the United Kingdom. In the 1830s in the UK trade unions had not been fully establish. Indeed they were fighting for recognition and encountering fierce resistance, opposition and even persecution. It was only in the latter half of the 19th century that the legislative and institutional framework was attaining that stage of development which would enable a free labour movement to emerge. So that the framework into which free labour in Trinidad and Tobago was introduced was the archaic legislation still obtaining in the ‘Mother Country‘
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Banking, Insurance and General Workers Union

1937 The first half of the 1930s witnessed the steady deterioration of working class living conditions in the main sectors of the Trinidad economy. By the early months of 1937 the purchasing power of the Trinidad and Tobago dollar had fallen drastically and was worth 70% of its 1929 value The two main sectors of the agricultural economy, sugar and cocoa, had remained depressed since the drop in world prices in the early 1920s. An adult male sugar or cocoa worker earned, at best, 40 cents per day. But it was in the oil industry, where substantial profits were being realized by oil companies, that working class resentments were first translated into strike action. By June 1937, Tubal Uriah Butler had emerged as the leading spokesman for the oil workers. On June 19th 1937 the oilfield workers struck and this was translated into a series of spontaneous strikes on the sugar and cocoa plantations and other sectors in almost every part of Trinidad and Tobago. The strike movement had cut across the barriers of race within the working class population and affected every major sector of the economy. Collective Bargaining In July 25th 1937 a committee of oil workers decided to publicly announce their intention to for a union and to conduct negotiations via the process of collective bargaining. Such an announcement was anathema to the oil companies, who were completely opposed to the unionization of workers and the principles of collective bargaining. However, by the end of 1937 six unions had gained official recognition from the colonial government. They were the Oilfield Workers Trade Union, All Trinidad Sugar Estates and Factory Workers Trade Union, Federated Workers Trade Union, Seamen and Waterfront Workers Trade Union, Public Works Workers Trade Union and the Amalgamated Building and Wood Workers Trade Union. The immediate net result of the 1937 general strike movement, therefore, was the achievement of the legal right to collective bargaining by workers. Today June 19 is Labour Day and is a public holiday in Trinidad and Tobago.

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