muckamuck

One of the most notable incidents occurred in the initial days of the strike, when Muckamuck co-owner Doug Chrismas brought controversial American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Russell Means to Vancouver to persuade the workers to end the strike and quit the union.

Indeed, had he done so, he would have learned that members of the West Coast AIM supported the striking Muckamuck employees, having walked the picket line and donated prizes to the strike fund raffles.

Fired Muckamuck employee Sam Bob accused Muckamuck manager Carol Nowoselsky of getting him fired from his new job at the nearby Kontiki restaurant by telling his new employer about his involvement in SORWUC: "He [Bob's new boss] said I was a good worker and would have worked out fine but because of the union bit I was fired." (161) In response, SORWUC members set up a picket outside the Kontiki to protest Bob's firing.

Though SORWUC's differences from much of the Canadian labour movement helped the union to organize the Muckamuck workers and maintain a solid picket line, as with the Bimini strike, it hindered the union in other ways.

Specifically, limited funds meant that the union could not provide striking Muckamuck workers with much strike pay.

While the limited number of striking Muckamuck employees on the picket line did not detract from the strength of the line itself, it left SORWUC open to charges that they no longer represented the majority of Muckamuck employees, and ultimately set the stage for several applications for decertification by scabbing employees.

Yet while the BCLRB upheld SORWUC's certification at Muckamuck in light of management and strikebreaking employees' sustained efforts to attain decertification, it significantly impeded the union in other ways.

Although the Muckamuck strike was legal, on 1 June 1979--the one-year anniversary of the start of the strike -Justice Patricia Proudfoot granted an injunction at management's request, temporarily banning all picketing at the Muckamuck, citing violence on the picket line as the basis of this decision.

Notes taken by a SORWUC representative at an initial meeting with the Muckamuck workers show that most staff made between $3 and $4 an hour, averaging $60 a night with tips.

Muckamuck workers were told that the Standards Branch had little power to enforce laws which forbid such employer practises.

At the Muckamuck we are told by our management that we are slow, stunned, inexperienced and hard to train, rude, stupid and ungrateful for the beautiful place that they have built for us (the Indians) to work.

The Muckamuck restaurant employees organized to improve wages and working conditions but also organized as a reaction to their exploitation as First Nations people.

Muckamuck staff chose a feminist, independent union, which suggests that First Nations culture is more readily linked to a small, "alternate" union than to a large, mainstream one.

A Muckamuck employee summarized events in the Vancouver Sun: "The primary union organizer was fired the day that management was notified of the application for certification.

-- owner tries to bribe Marge and Christina (Muckamuck employees)