Lunch bars for miners end meat-ration strike

Thousands of coal-pit workers had put down their tools over shortages

Approximately 1,500 miners in Edmonton and other parts of central Alberta returned to work after a two-week strike protesting government meat rationing.

Even though the Second World War had officially ended Sept. 2, rationing continued, due in part to Canada shipping a lot of food and other goods to help postwar Europe.

Strikes, or what the miners called “holidays,” started in various parts of the province after miners complained they were not receiving sufficient meat under the dominion (Canadian) government’s rationing system.

Three hundred district miners had voted unanimously to stay out of the coal pits until the federal government allowed them a double ration of red meat and took smoked and cooked meats such as bologna and ham off the ration lists.

They followed the lead of 4,700 miners in southern Alberta who went on strike, declaring the 13/4 pounds of meat weekly allowed by the coupon and token rationing system was inadequate for “hardworking coal diggers.”

“They’ll stay out until they get more meat ... there is no doubt about that,” a union representative said.

They’ll stay out until they get more meat ... there is no doubt about that. A UNION OFFICIAL SPEAKING ABOUT A MINING STRIKE IN 1945

He added the strike decision was not called by the union “but was the united action of the men from the pits themselves without union direction.”

Mine company officials said there was little they could do about the strike because rationing was a federal matter.

Officials with the Wartime Prices and Trade Board that regulated rationing stood firm, explaining labourers didn’t need increased meat rations from a nutritional standpoint.

The strike caught mines without extra supplies and there was talk of coal rationing in the face of a shortage.

Miners began returning to the pits after voting to accept a concession from government officials to immediately establish “lunch bars” at the mines where miners would be able to buy cooked meat at cost without surrendering coupons or tokens on sandwich meat, which could then be saved for other meats, the Journal reported.

A spokesman with the prices board in Ottawa said it was “nothing unusual” to provide additional meat for “lunch bars” in some western mining districts.

The last ration books were issued in Canada in September 1946 and dairy products, for example, were taken off the government’s ration list in June 1947.