Interviewee: Neil Reimer
Year: 2002, 2004, 2007
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Neil Reimer was Canadian director, from 1951 to 1982, of the union that evolved into the Energy and Chemical Workers Union. A leading figure in the labour movement for decades and first leader of the Alberta NDP (1963-1969), Reimer comments on Alberta politics and development of the provincial labour movement from the 1950s onwards.
Reimer began working at the Consumers Cooperative Refinery in Regina in 1942 and joined efforts to form a Congress of Industrial Organizations local. That local became part of the fledgling Oil Workers International Union (OWIU) which hired Reimer as an organizer in 1950. Soon after, they sent Reimer to Alberta, where anti-labour legislation and anti-union employers had frustrated OWIU efforts to organize. Reimer organized the Edmonton area refineries. In 1951 Reimer began his long Canadian directorship of OWIU. In 1981 the Canadian section of what had become the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers, amicably broke with the international union to form the independent Energy and Chemical Workers Union (now part of Unifor). Reimer also served for years on the executive of the Canadian Labour Congress. In retirement, Reimer became secretary-treasurer of the Alberta Council on Aging and an activist in the Alberta Labour History Institute.
Keywords: Alberta Council on Aging; Alberta Labour History Institute; Anti-labour legislation; Breakaway union; Canadian director; Congress of Industrial Organizations; Consumers Cooperative Refinery; Energy and Chemical Workers Union; Oil Workers International Union.
Transcripts: Download PDF (2002); Download PDF (2004); Download PDF (2007)
See also: Alberta Federation of Labour; Canadian Labour Congress; Celanese Edmonton: Workers’ Stories; Unifor