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The Asbestos strike of 1949, based in and around the town of Asbestos, Quebec, Canada, was a four-month labour dispute by asbestos miners. It has traditionally been portrayed as a turning point in Quebec history that helped lead to the Quiet Revolution. [1] It also helped launch the careers of Jean Marchand, Gérard Pelletier, and Pierre Trudeau.
At midnight on February 14, 1949, miners walked off the job at four asbestos mines in the Eastern Townships, near Asbestos, Quebec and Thetford Mines. Though these mines were owned by either American or English-Canadian companies, almost all the workers were francophones. The largest company was the American Johns-Manville firm. The union had several demands. These included the elimination of asbestos dust inside and outside of the mill; a fifteen cent an hour general wage increase; a five-cent an hour increase for night work; a social security fund to be administered by the union; the implementation of the Rand Formula; and "double time" payment for work on Sundays and holidays. These demands were radical in Quebec at the time, and the owners rejected them.[ citation needed ]
On February 13, 1949, the workers voted to strike. The National Federation of Mining Industry Employees and the Canadian Catholic Federation of Labour represented the workers. Jean Marchand was the general secretary of the latter and is often seen as the de facto leader of the strike. [ citation needed ]
The strike was illegal. Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis sided strongly with the companies, largely due to his hostility to all forms of socialism. The provincial government sent squads of police to protect the mines. Duplessis' Union Nationale party had long been closely allied with the Catholic Church, but parts of the church would move to support the workers. The population and media of Quebec were sympathetic to the strikers. The lead reporter for Le Devoir was Gérard Pelletier, who was deeply sympathetic to the cause of the workers. Pierre Elliott Trudeau also covered the strike in a sympathetic manner.[ citation needed ]
Six weeks into the strike, Johns-Manville hired strikebreakers to keep the mines open. The community was deeply divided as some of the workers crossed the picket lines. The strike turned violent as the 5000 strikers attacked, destroying the property of the "scabs" and intimidating them through force. More police were sent to protect the strikebreakers. The striking miners and police fought on the picket line and hundreds of miners were arrested. Some of the incidents included: On March 14, a dynamite explosion destroyed part of a railroad track that led into the Johns-Manville Corporation Canadian subsidiary property. On March 16, strikers overturned a company jeep, injuring a passenger.
Strikers had the support of Canadian unions and some of the Catholic Church in Quebec. The Catholic Church, which had until that time been largely supportive of the Union Nationale government of Duplessis, profoundly affected the strike. Some priests backed the companies, but most sided with the strikers. On March 5, Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau delivered a fiercely pro-union speech asking all Catholics to donate to help the strikers. Premier Duplessis asked the church to transfer the archbishop to Vancouver because of his encouragement of the strike. The church refused, signaling a dramatic change in Quebec society. Charbonneau did resign and became the chaplain at a hospital in Victoria, British Columbia.[ citation needed ]
On May 5, the strikers launched an effort to shut down the mine in Asbestos by barricading the mine and every road into and out of town. Police attempts to force their way through the barricades failed. The strikers backed down when the police pledged to open fire on the strikers. The next day, the riot act was read and mass arrests of the strikers had begun, including a raid on the church. The arrested strikers were beaten and their leaders severely battered.[ citation needed ]
After the arrests, the unions decided that they must compromise, and began negotiations with the company. Archbishop Maurice Roy, of Quebec City, served as mediator. In June, the workers agreed to return to work with few gains. When the dispute ended, miners received a small pay increase, but many never regained their jobs.
One of the most violent and bitter labour disputes in Quebec and Canadian history, the strike led to great upheaval in Quebec society.[ citation needed ] The strike was in large part led by Jean Marchand, a labour unionist. Journalist Gérard Pelletier and future Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, then a journalist, also played significant roles. Marchand, Pelletier and Trudeau would eventually become prominent Canadian politicians and were known later in their political careers as Les Trois Colombes (the Three Wise Men). They would largely establish the direction of Quebec federalism for a generation. [ citation needed ]
Trudeau edited a book, The Asbestos Strike, that presented the strike as the origin of modern Quebec, portraying it as "a violent announcement that a new era had begun." Some historians[ who? ] argue that the strikers were simply pursuing better conditions and that the resulting change in society was an unintended byproduct.
Popular opinion for most of the strike was broadly supportive of the striking workers. This support, beyond its moral value, manifested itself through monetary support and the supply of provisions. It is likely that the strike would have quickly failed had it not been for the establishment of this kind of support.[ citation needed ]
In 2004, a French-language book about the strike by author-historian Esther Delisle and Pierre K. Malouf was published under the title Le Quatuor d'Asbestos .
The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) was a militant Quebec separatist group which aimed to establish an independent and socialist Quebec through violent means. It was considered a terrorist group by the Canadian government. Founded sometime in the early 1960s, the FLQ conducted a number of attacks between 1963 and 1970, which totaled over 160 violent incidents and killed eight people and injured many more. These attacks culminated with the Montreal Stock Exchange bombing in 1969 and the October Crisis in 1970, the latter beginning with the kidnapping of British Trade Commissioner James Cross. In the subsequent negotiations, Quebec Labour Minister Pierre Laporte was kidnapped and murdered by a cell of the FLQ. Public outcry and a federal crackdown subsequently ended the crisis and resulted in a drastic loss of support for the FLQ, with a small number of FLQ members being granted refuge in Cuba.
The Quiet Revolution refers to a significant period of socio-political and socio-cultural transformation in French Canada, particularly in Quebec, following the election of 1960. This period was marked by the secularization of the government, the establishment of a state-administered welfare state known as the état-providence, a shift in political alignment toward federalist and sovereigntist factions, and the eventual election of a pro-sovereignty provincial government in the 1976 election. While the Quiet Revolution is often associated with the efforts of the Liberal Party of Quebec's government led by Jean Lesage and, to some extent, Robert Bourassa, its profound impact has influenced the policies of most provincial governments since the early 1960s.
Gérard Pelletier, was a Canadian journalist and politician.
Jean Marchand, was a French Canadian public figure, trade unionist and politician in Quebec, Canada.
Michel Chartrand was a Canadian trade union leader from Quebec.
The Waihi miners' strike was a major strike action in 1912 by gold miners in the New Zealand town of Waihi. It is widely regarded as the most significant industrial action in the history of New Zealand's labour movement. It resulted in one striker being killed, one of only two deaths in industrial actions in New Zealand.
Cité Libre was an influential political journal published in Quebec, Canada, through the 1950s and 1960s. Co-founded in 1950 by editor and future Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Trudeau, the publication served as an organ of opposition to the conservative government of Maurice Duplessis.
The Coal strike of 1902 was a strike by the United Mine Workers of America in the anthracite coalfields of eastern Pennsylvania. Miners struck for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union. The strike threatened to shut down the winter fuel supply to major American cities. At that time, residences were typically heated with anthracite or "hard" coal, which produces higher heat value and less smoke than "soft" or bituminous coal.
A strikebreaker is a person who works despite a strike. Strikebreakers are usually individuals who were not employed by the company before the trade union dispute but hired after or during the strike to keep the organization running. Strikebreakers may also refer to workers who cross picket lines to work.
The Herrin massacre took place on June 21–22, 1922 in Herrin, Illinois, in a coal mining area during a nationwide strike by the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA). Although the owner of the mine originally agreed with the union to observe the strike, when the price of coal went up, he hired non-union workers to produce and ship out coal, as he had high debt in start-up costs.
The 1983 Arizona copper mine strike began as a labour dispute between the Phelps Dodge Corporation and a group of union copper miners and mill workers, led by the United Steelworkers. The subsequent strike lasted nearly three years and resulted in the replacement of most of the striking workers and decertification of the unions. It is regarded as an important event in the history of the United States labor movement.
The Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910–1911, or the Westmoreland coal miners' strike, was a strike by coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strike is also known as the Slovak Strike because about 70 percent of the miners were Slovak immigrants. It began in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, on March 9, 1910, and ended on July 1, 1911. At its height, the strike encompassed 65 mines and 15,000 coal miners. Sixteen people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families. The strike ended in defeat for the union.
Usually referred to as the "New South Wales General Strike", but referred to by contemporaries as "the Great Strike", it was in fact neither general nor confined to NSW. The strike was however a mass strike, involving around 100,000 workers, mostly in NSW and Victoria. It began in the Australian state of New South Wales and spread to other states over six weeks from 2 August to 8 September 1917 when the official leadership declared the strike over. It took two weeks for all the railway strikers to return, however, as rank and file meetings initially rejected the official capitulation. Outside the railways, significant groups such as the waterside workers in Sydney and Melbourne, and the Hunter Valley coal mines remained out until November as in their case the use of strikebreakers had turned the strike into a lockout.
The Leadville miners' strike was a labor action by the Cloud City Miners' Union, which was the Leadville, Colorado local of the Western Federation of Miners (WFM), against those silver mines paying less than $3.00 per day. The strike lasted from 19 June 1896 to 9 March 1897, and resulted in a major defeat for the union, largely due to the unified opposition of the mine owners. The failure of the strike caused the WFM to leave the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and is regarded as a cause for the WFM turn toward revolutionary socialism.
The Murdochville strike was a mining strike on March 10, 1957, in Quebec, during the regime of Quebec premier Maurice Duplessis. It provided the impetus and inspiration for other labour leaders to emerge and future calls for labour rights to become vocalized.
The Grande Noirceur refers to the regime of conservative policies undertaken by the governing body of Quebec Premier Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959.
The Kent Miners' Association was a trade union in the United Kingdom which existed between 1915 and 1945, representing coal miners in the county of Kent. After 1945 it was reorganised as the Kent Area of the National Union of Mineworkers.
The Montreal Cottons Company strike of 1946 was a hundred-day-long strike in which 3,000 mill workers from Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, Quebec, fought for the right to obtain a collective agreement. Mill workers in Valleyfield walked off the job on June 1, 1946, as part of a larger textile strike movement which included one of Dominion Textile's mills located within Montreal. The strikes were organized by the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA), an international union. In Valleyfield, Kent Rowley and Madeleine Parent acted as representatives of the UTWA.
The Carbon County Strikes took place in Carbon County, Utah from 1903–1904. The strikes primarily consisted of Slavic and Italian immigrant mine workers who partnered with the United Mine Workers of America strikes in Colorado to protest the dangerous working conditions of the Utah coal mines. The Carbon County strikes were considered the most important labor confrontation in the United States at the time. The Utah Fuel Company strongly opposed initiatives to unionize coal workers in Utah and were the primary opposition to the UMWA at the time. The Carbon County Strikes would ultimately fail in its attempt to unionize the coal workers of Utah simply because it "did not have enough support, either internally or externally, to win against a powerful and influential company that effectively played on radical, anti-foreign sentiments in defending its position" but it demonstrated a significant nationwide effort in strengthening unionization in the west.
Maurice Duplessis was Premier of Quebec, Canada, from 1936 to 1939 and again from 1944 to 1959 as leader of the Union Nationale (UN) caucus in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec, the lower house of the Quebec Legislature. The first term of the longest-serving premier of the province since Confederation lasted three years (1936–1939) and was interrupted when he lost a snap election in 1939. He returned to power in 1944 and ruled the province uninterruptedly until his death in September 1959, maintaining majorities in three following elections. The premier's death threw the Union Nationale into disarray. The next year, the party lost power to the Liberals under Jean Lesage, who reversed a lot of Duplessis's policies and radically changed Quebec's politics by leading the province through the Quiet Revolution.
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