Influenza 1918 by Esyllt W. Jones

Author:Esyllt W. Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS006020
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Published: 2007-12-08T05:00:00+00:00

Mutual Assistance

Some unions provided sickness and death benefits, linking their activism in the workplace to benevolence in the broader community. Alan Derickson has argued that unions in this period nurtured an ‘ethos of mutualism.’42 This ethos could be an essential source of aid during an epidemic.43 Skilled, unionized male workers in Winnipeg affected by influenza took advantage of union health and welfare plans, and death and funeral insurance. Over fifty members of the Winnipeg Typographical Union Local 191 applied for its sick benefit, which basically provided wage replacement for ill workers. The benefit was a very modest $5 per week, and most claims were for at least two weeks off work, some as many as five. On 30 November, a record twenty-three members made claims, totalling $300. According to union records, all claims were honoured. Until January 1919, although many of the union’s members had become ill, ‘not one member to date had died,’ it was proudly noted.44 This, unfortunately, did not last past the new year; early in January ‘the Charter was to be draped on account of the death of three of our members’ of the flu. The union also wrote a letter of sympathy to one member who had lost his wife to influenza.

The Typographical Union was relatively large and prosperous, with five hundred members and finances that remained in the black even after paying sick benefits throughout the winter of 1918–19. More financially taxing was death insurance. In January and February of 1919, the union paid out $1675 in mortuary benefits.45 It appears to have received financial aid from the international union to cover these costs. Other union locals had difficulty managing to pay out death benefits; the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen Local 1, a much smaller union with a limited budget, had to impose a death levy on its membership in the second quarter of 1919. This was to cover the $350 paid out to two members whose wives had died.46

Even where formal sick benefit schemes did not exist, unions supported their members and families financially and emotionally. Records suggest a sense of moral obligation among male unionists not only to assist male breadwinners financially, but also to play a psychological caregiver role, a role normally ascribed to women in the broader culture.47 The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Local 343, for example, reported regularly at their monthly membership meetings on the well-being and progress toward recovery of their ill brothers in the union. This was called the ‘Sick’ report, or sometimes the ‘Sick and Death’ report or the ‘Sick and Accident’ report. In this small local, the welfare of members was ritually noted in meeting minutes, in a matter-of-fact manner, with statements such as ‘Brother Jackson said he was not improving much,’ or ‘Brother H Barnard was reported improving some.’ Members were encouraged to visit the sick and offer them encouragement in their period of recovery.48

Until early January 1919, the carpenters’ union members appear to have escaped the

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