August 18, 1934 – February 6, 2025
“A working class hero is something to be” *
A lifetime in pursuit of social justice for working people, peace, and socialism is a fine thing. Dave Werlin lived that life with enthusiasm and pride. He had endless faith in the capacity of the working class to change the world for the better and relished the many forms such struggles took. His dedication, energy, wit, humour, and firm principles will be missed. One of his great strengths was his simple and uncompromising analysis which demanded that the main question to be asked in any situation was what was in the interests of the workers, or more broadly, what was in the interest of the working class.
Dave was a stalwart life-long trade unionist, who saw the labour movement as the best place to participate in the struggle for an egalitarian, democratic, socialist society. He was also a dedicated member of the Communist Party of Canada, which he saw as the political arm of the working class, from the 1950s until the split in the Canadian party upon the demise of the Soviet Union. He despised the human misery, violence, and corruption created by capitalism.
Dave was, above all, a labour activist. He was proud of his trade union participation and activism first in CUPE Local 37 (Calgary outside workers) and ATU Local 583 (transit drivers) in Calgary in the 1950s, and then in his home local, CUPE 1004 representing Vancouver outside workers. He was secretary/ business agent for Local 1004 where he was later given a life membership. At CUPE regional and national conventions and at both the BC Federation of Labour and Canadian Labour Congress he honed his political analysis, organising, and speaking skills as part of the left action caucuses who educated and mobilised around socialist projects.
If there was a dominant impression of Dave, it was of a person of boundless enthusiasm and energy. From late night meetings to early morning planning sessions, there was no end to the causes and projects he worked on. He became a masterful meeting planner and skilled orator. Although he did not suffer the overweening hubris that afflicts so many labour leaders, he was inordinately proud of the number of standing ovations he would receive when speaking. Never a preacher or salesperson as a speaker, Dave spoke with concise logical arguments, passion, and well-researched facts. He spoke to working people, not at them. He was clear, unambiguous and measured, free of confusing considerations and rhetoric.
Which brings up one of his real gifts. Dave had a knack of constructing just the right phrase to stir the imagination of working people. He never lost his real fellowship with working men and women and seemed to instinctively know how to frame the larger social and economic issues in a way that resonated with working people on a personal level. He was a skilled communicator in small groups, convention floors and in mass rallies. Combine that speaking prowess with an unswerving dedication to socialism and an apparently bottomless well of energy, and it is easy to see how he rose through the ranks of the labour movement. His mentors in the labour and politics included Art Roberts, Pat Lenihan, lifelong friends Bill Ferguson and George Hewison, and Jean-Claude Parrot.
He was elected as CUPE’s BC Regional Vice-President and sat on the union’s national executive board. In 1979 he was hired as CUPE National Representative working out of Calgary. In 1983 he ran for and was shockingly elected President of the Alberta Federation of Labour. Shocking because the AFL had for many years been a very conservative union central, and because Dave won despite vitriolic red-baiting at the convention.
As President of the Alberta Federation of Labour, Dave was at the peak of his influence. He launched many progressive programs, including mobilising unions and unemployed during the 1980s recession by creating unemployment action centres, instituting affirmative action for the AFL Executive Council, participating in the farm gate defence movement, and creating the Solidarity Alberta movement. But most importantly, Dave insisted upon transforming the Federation from a passive discussion and lobby group into a militant active participant in union struggles. He worked to mobilise the entire union movement behind every strike, regardless of inter-union rivalries or inward-looking leadership. Dave often spoke to the rank-and-file membership of unions through the media, articulating a vision of labour solidarity and activism that transcended traditional business unionism and created pressure from below for solidarity and action.
Nowhere was this more evident than during the 1986 strike wave in Alberta as workers at the Alberta Liquor Control Board, Zeidler’s plywood factories, Suncor, and the Gainers and Fletchers meat packing plants in Edmonton and Red Deer walked out against concessions. Most working people in Alberta demonstrated their support and militancy through boycotts, rallies, and picket line support despite heavy police intervention and arrests. He was one of the first people arrested on the Gainers picket line. Dave was there on the picket line and on the front page, articulating the widespread sense of injustice and giving working people a sense of their power to challenge that injustice. He transformed the strikes into mass demands for new labour laws in Alberta.
Although Dave was a bright and often strongly opinionated leader, he was dedicated to broad consensus building and collective decision making that underpinned his socialist principles, and had no problem admitting errors on his own part. He frequently invited labour and community leaders to social gatherings in his large basement rumpus room, (and later in back yard socials) where events and strategies could be discussed and action plans critiqued freely. He deliberately included all but the most entrenched conservative union leaders in an effort to extend solidarity within labour.
David Werlin’s leadership was recognized across Canada and internationally. He was instrumental in bringing a member of the National Union of Miners to speak for the striking British coal miners during their 1984/85 job action. He was invited down to Bakersfield, California during the last year of his Presidency in 1989 to share the stage with Cesar Chavez, the courageous leader of the United Farm Workers who was organizing the exploited workers in California’s fruit and vegetable industry.
In 1990 Dave was persuaded to run for the presidency of the Canadian Labour Congress as a progressive opponent to incumbent Shirley Carr, a national leader of his own union. Although defeated he did raise many issues and gained enough support to make his challenge credible. After his time at the AFL, Dave went back to work as a CUPE representative and eventually served as the union’s Alberta Regional Director from 1992 to his retirement on April 1, 1998.
Dave was an active member of the Friends of Medicare, Public Interest Alberta, chaired the City of Edmonton Taxi Commission, and served on the Employment Insurance (EI) Board of Referees in both BC and Alberta. Although Dave never finished high school, he had a keen mind and a great appreciation of higher education. He had deep respect for left academics and researchers like Sam Gindin, Ben Swankey, Gil Levine, and Leo Panitch. He was instrumental in launching the Alberta Labour History Institute, and served as its President from its founding in 1999 through 2013.
Many activists valued his mentorship and recall his warmth and skills as a story teller with fondness. Dave had a fine sense of humour, much of it directed as his own shortcomings and foibles. This helped explain why he was never arrogant or prone to interpersonal conflict without reason. He was, however, aware of his own faults, and would have despised being put on a pedestal. Like all members of our society, he had internalised many of the contradictions inherent in a free-market system that extolls the virtues of rugged individualism in education, media and cultural institutions. To his credit, Dave successfully discarded many prejudices as his life progressed.
On a personal level, Dave was married three times. First to Marlene Rayton in 1957, with whom he had three children, Deborah, Douglas (deceased), and Sherry. After his first marriage ended, he married CUPE activist and local President Maureen Nuttal in 1980. The two of them moved to Alberta together until they separated in 1995. Dave then married his current partner Karen Macdonald, a union and social justice activist, in 1998 and became stepfather to her two children, Lisa and Andy. They remained happily together until Dave’s death. Karen was with him at the end, playing union songs and talking to him even as his life faded.
His was a principled life, dedicated to struggle and equality. We all eventually fade from living memory, but Dave Werlin was a true working-class leader of whose kind we desperately need more today. Farewell to a friend and comrade. Venceremos.
For those who would like to commemorate Dave’s life, please consider making a donation in his name to the CUPE 3550 strike fund at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/cupe-local-3550-edmonton-public-schools-support-staff
*John Lennon