T. S. Patterson to W. L. VanDerbeek on Public Relations During the Toronto Plant Strike (1971)

A confidential two-page memo from T. S. Patterson to W. L. VanDerbeek at J-M Research, written in the first days of July 1971, reporting on Canadian Johns-Manville's public relations during the strike called at its Toronto plant at midnight on June 27. The union (the I.C.W.U.) had charged at a press conference that asbestos dust in the plant was a health hazard and the reason for the strike, and had played "a tape recorded by Dr. I. Selikoff when he visited the union late in May." Attached are the transcript of a CTV television interview with Roy Winkworth, the plant's industrial relations manager, a one-page "J-M Position" that "The main issue of this strike is wages not environmental control," and a typed statement on the company's position.

What it shows

In the interview Winkworth said that "Asbestos in high concentration over a long period of time will cause Asbestosis," that the plant met Ontario's limit of 5 fibers per cc, and that the union had not been given the company's dust counts because an educational program was needed first so they could "interpret what these numbers actually mean." He said that employees on disability pensions had started at the plant "back in 1948" and that, with the controls in place, "we are creating" no new cases. The typed statement admits "a few" cases of asbestosis among employees, blamed on the plant's first years, and a handwritten change adds that the facts about the hazards "subsequently became known through recent medical research." J-M's own medical director had written to the Toronto plant about asbestos and silica hazards as early as 1948 (Smith to Young, 1948). A week later the plant manager wrote to the strikers (Young's letter of July 8, 1971).