Date: 2000
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Walter Doskoch, son of a blue-collar Edmonton Communist labour organizer, became a militant blue-collar Edmonton Communist labour organizer himself. His parents were Ukrainian immigrants from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Like many Ukrainian immigrants, his father, also named Walter, was interned during World War I as an “enemy alien” in 1915, and remained a slave labourer until his release in 1920. He then worked as an itinerant coal miner before becoming a CBRT organizer in Edmonton. His dad was jailed again during the Hunger March of 1932. Doskoch Junior entered the work force as a teenager packing lumber. In 1948 he joined the Teamsters as a cabbie and organized trucking companies and warehouses for that union, becoming well acquainted with controversial Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa. Later he joined the Plumbers and Pipefitters union, which he praises as a union where rank and file participation was encouraged. Doskoch joined the Edmonton and District Labour Council where he helped create a coalition of unions, Ukrainian organizations, and university people that led to the city creating a public ambulance service. His interview recounts many organizing drives and strikes in which he was involved. He pleads for greater working-class unity to counter the power of capitalists.
Keywords: Ambulance service; Austro-Hungarian Empire; Cab drivers; Communist Party; “Enemy aliens”; Hunger March, 1932; Jimmy Hoffa; Trucking companies; Warehouse workers; Ukrainians.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Canadian Brotherhood of Railway, Transport and General Workers; Coal Mining in Alberta; Edmonton and District Labour Council; International Brotherhood of Teamsters; United Association of Piping Trades