John Fryer, a titan in B.C.’s labour movement who played a crucial role in obtaining bargaining rights for provincial government workers, died Sunday at his home in England.
Fryer became general secretary of the B.C. Government and Services Employees’ Union in 1969, after playing an instrumental role in transitioning the organization into an official bargaining unit from the B.C. Government Employees Association. He remained in the role until 1983.
“Our union would literally not be what it is today without him. On behalf of the more than 80,000 members of the BCGEU my deepest condolences go to John’s family and all those who knew and loved him,” said BCGEU president Stephanie Smith in a statement.
Longtime friend and former colleague Derek Fudge remembered Fryer as a “brilliant and complex labour leader” and a man with a big personality who never shied away from speaking his mind, even if it hurt his political career.
“He was a passionate fighter on behalf of working people and helped win many rights for them at the bargaining table. His accomplishments were many, but more importantly to me he was a real decent human being. I will miss him dearly,” Fudge said.
From 1980 to 1990, Fryer was president of the National Union of Public and General Employees, of which the BCGEU was a founding member. In 1981, he hired a 24-year-old Fudge fresh out of graduate school to NUPGE. Fudge worked for the organization for 35 years and eventually became director of policy. The two remained close friends until Fryer’s death.
Fudge said Fryer built the national union into one of the largest and most dynamic unions in Canada during his decade as president.
“I believe a lot of his success came from a special combination of his intelligence and his rough and tumble British working class roots,” he said.
Fryer grew up in Wimbledon, and moved to Canada in the mid-1960s with a graduate degree in economics. He became director of research at the Ottawa-based Canadian Labour Congress before moving to B.C. to lead the BCGEU.
Roger Stonebanks, a former labour reporter for the Victoria Daily Times, met Fryer in the 1960s and kept in touch over the years. Stonebanks remembered him as a warm man and an excellent communicator. “All organizational leaders need this quality, especially public service unions, and John had it,” he said.
Fryer stated in an article in the Times Colonist last year to mark the union’s 50th anniversary that the BCGEU fundamentally changed public-sector labour relations in the province and the country.
Shortly after its founding, he said, the union launched training schools to teach its activists about the mechanics and tactics of negotiations and adopted a new union structure based on occupational rather than geographical groupings. It also made front-page headlines by getting a small plane to tow a banner above the B.C. legislature urging the provincial secretary of the day to sit down and discuss bargaining rights.
“The BCGEU negotiated collective agreements that were the envy of colleagues across the country, containing provisions such as the 35-hour work week, the right to use sick leave to tend for a sick child, the right to refuse overtime plus some healthy pay hikes,” Fryer wrote.
After several decades living in Canada, Fryer moved back to England. He died Sunday evening in his West Molesey home of an apparent heart attack.
— With files from Lindsay Kines
