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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  • forcequit [she/her]
    ·
    1 year ago

    "No, there's no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation," she said. "A positive impact, absolutely," she says.
    "I mean, now we have running water, readily available food, everything that my grandfather had when he was growing up, when he first thought white fellas in his adolescence, we now have."

    She argued the conversation around colonisation and its ongoing impacts can do harm.
    "If we keep telling Aboriginal people that they are victims, we are effectively removing their agency, and giving them the expectation somebody else is responsible for their lives," she said.

    aus-delenda-est

    • VHS [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      we are effectively removing their agency,

      damn this line has gotten a lot of play in the last few years