This summer, I worked at a tree planting camp for the first time. Lumber work is piece work, where you’re paid by the tree, planting thousands of trees, for 11 hours a day. The work creates a “grind” culture where people push themselves to the limit. Unions are few and far between, with the temporary workforce and seasonal work creating barriers to organizing.
So when our camp was made to waste a day doing unnecessary “repo” (replanting), and the bosses told us they “weren’t sure” if we were going to get paid for our time, some people were ready to accept it as just another shitty aspect of the industry.
However, 48 hours later, we were face-to-face with one of the owners of the company, threatening to strike. How did this happen? All it takes is one Communist!
At the beginning of the season, people saw me reading my copy of Communist Revolution and it didn’t take long for there to be a list of people in line to read it next. This soon expanded into back issues, In Defence of Marxism, and every other piece of Marxist literature I brought with me. Soon after, I organized a reading group to feed this growing hunger for Marxism. Looking back, it’s clear this helped prepare people for what was to come.
After talking to people about the fact that we were being sent to do work for which we would likely not get paid, people were pissed. With the managers away in their own meeting, I called all my coworkers into the mess tent to discuss the issue. When we started discussing, it became apparent that workers weren’t just upset about the repo day. From measly driver pay to unpaid meetings on our days off, to payroll issues, there was a lot we wanted to change. All that was needed was direction—a way to make change. At the end of our meeting, we wrote all our demands onto a sheet of paper, which almost every planter signed. We even agreed to an indefinite strike if our demands were not met!
That night, I handed the letter to management. Two experienced planters accompanied me to do this, telling me that they wouldn’t want me to get singled out and fired. After handing the camp supervisor the letter, we waited.
The next day, one of the owners came to talk to us on our day off. He was emotional, condescending, and, quite frankly, unprofessional. He came into the meeting offended that we’d used the word “demands.” He asked, “am I the asshole here?” and spent most of the meeting avoiding accountability and blaming the supervisors. He also accidentally admitted to shorting us pay for camp setup, telling us there was only three hours of pay allotted for it in the budget—when we’d all been paid for only two hours—even though we’d worked for over four! After some discussion, we took a recess in the mess tent, where we voted on modifying our demands, and reaffirming our desire to strike. With only one abstention, we voted to strike if we didn’t get our demands.
When we returned, the owner agreed to pay us for the repo day as well as fix the camp setup pay. Although we didn’t get everything we initially asked for, this was a big success! We forced our will on management who, as one planter put it, were “trying to make us do the most work possible and pay us as little as possible.”
The next day, walking past my workmate on a phone call who shouted out to me: “Hey man, I’m telling my friends about you—the communist that got us paid!”
