On this day in 1978, United Steelworkers union workers in Sudbury, Ontario voted to go on strike to fight proposed layoffs and pay cuts. The strike was the longest in Canadian history until the record was broken by Sudbury workers in 2009.

The layoffs and cuts to pay and benefits were at the multi-national company Inco, which cited low nickel prices as a justification.

According to filmmaker Martin Duckworth, workers voted to strike against the advice of the United Steelworkers hierarchy, and the strike enjoyed national support because Inco was a known polluter and one of the biggest multi-nationals in Canada.

Around 11,600 workers were involved in the strike, which affected the wages sustaining 43,000 people, or about 26% of the population of metropolitan Sudbury. By the end of the strike, nine months later, the company had been deprived of over twenty-two million hours of labor.

The workers won small wage increase and a pension package, however thousands of workers lost their homes and cars because of the length of the strike. According to journalist Amy Miller, since 1979, INCO has fired 20,000 employees from their staff and now have more people receiving payments from the pension roll than pay roll.

The role of women in the community during the strike was profiled in the 1980 documentary film A Wives' Tale (Une histoire de femmes).

All Out to Support Striking Vale Inco Workers!

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  • asa_red_heathen [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Watching Fionna and Cake and Im really loving it lol. Idk how they keep doing it but the adventure time folks really keep making banger after banger.

    The only bad part so far has been that they recast Prismo, which was apparently the fault of Kumail's agent telling them no, even though he really loves Prismo, so they fucked up bad lmao. The new guy doing his voice does a decent job but it's just not the same.