Skip to main content

Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century: 9. Industrial Crisis and the Cape Breton Coal Miners at the End of the Long Twentieth Century, 1981–86

Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century
9. Industrial Crisis and the Cape Breton Coal Miners at the End of the Long Twentieth Century, 1981–86
    • Notifications
    • Privacy

“9. Industrial Crisis and the Cape Breton Coal Miners at the End of the Long Twentieth Century, 1981–86” in “Cape Breton in the Long Twentieth Century”

Chapter 9 Industrial Crisis and the Cape Breton Coal Miners at the End of the Long Twentieth Century, 1981–86

Lachlan MacKinnon

At the end of March 2020, Kameron Collieries announced the closure of the Donkin Mine—the last operating coal mine on Cape Breton Island. The American firm had been in crisis since the death of coal baron Chris Cline in a helicopter crash the previous summer, and executives blamed geological conditions for the decision.1 Indeed, the mine had been plagued by eleven rockfall incidents since the fall of 2017, raising safety concerns among miners, their families, and other community members.2 Compounding the circumstances of the decision were the tremendous fluctuations in financial markets and travel disruptions prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which affected Canadian and American travel through the spring of that year. With the decision, 140 workers were laid off from the coal mine once again—a situation that continues cyclically, as the troubled mine seems to periodically begin operations, only to close again after several months.3

The trouble facing the Donkin Mine, however, is the last gasp of a once robust coal industry on the island that employed tens of thousands of Cape Bretoners from the mid-nineteenth century onward. The community had faced the prospect of closure before; indeed, in 1967 when the private firm Dominion Steel and Coal Corporation (DOSCO) announced its planned shutdown of the mines, the federal government stepped in with the establishment of the Cape Breton Development Corporation (DEVCO) to take over DOSCO’s coal holdings. Likewise, when DEVCO drew to a close in the year 2001, thousands of Cape Breton miners found themselves on layoff notice. The Donkin interlude, with its handful of working miners, surface employees, American engineers, and Cline Group executives, began when the site was acquired in 2005 by Xstrata Coal, who readied the mine for operations before sale to Kameron in December 2014.

If there is one thing that a comparison of the two closure announcements reveals—DEVCO in 2000 and the Donkin Mine in 2020—it is the veracity of historian Jackie Clarke’s argument that workers’ voices are made invisible by the vicissitudes of deindustrialization.4 In 2000, the closure of the DEVCO collieries was met with anger among miners and protests among union leaders that the company was unable to facilitate a private sale. The Globe and Mail still featured first-hand accounts from Cape Bretoners, such as that of Richard Atwood, who told the gathered Canadian media, “I feel pretty bitter. Mining’s been in my family as long as I can remember, with my grandfather. My father was killed in the mine.”5 The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) registered their discontent as its representative Bob Burchill called upon federal politicians to help arrange a sale to a private firm.6 While media reports of the Donkin closure include some workers’ responses, conspicuously absent are the collective voices of the miners, offered through their union representation. Indeed, Donkin Mine—the last continuously operating colliery in Cape Breton—was not a unionized colliery, a surprising fact on an island with such a strong historical connection to the Canadian labour movement. This inauspicious end comes at the tail end of the “long twentieth century”—shaped by the growth and retraction of economic and cultural reliance on the extraction of coal and the production of steel.

Recent circumstances at Donkin aside, the UMWA has a long history in Cape Breton. In the early twentieth century, the institution was shepherded into the Sydney coal field by famed organizers such as J. B. McLachlan, who believed in the radical organization of workers as a bulwark against the machinations of global capitalism.7 The labour wars of the 1920s revealed a split between grassroots radicals like McLachlan and the conservative wing of the UMWA, characterized by the governance of President John L. Lewis. National labour legislation in Canada bolstered the position of the miners’ union in the aftermath of World War II, and by the 1950s, legalistic unionism had become firmly entrenched as the dominant mechanism for industrial relations in Canada.8 While many of the Cape Breton miners maintained their radical outlook, this was increasingly out of step with the position of their union by the mid-twentieth century. As Michael Earle and Herb Gamberg argue, the bureaucratic institutionalization of the UMWA combined with the attachment to the CCF after 1938 produced a period of moderation and lessened class struggle among the Cape Breton miners.9

Throughout the long 1950s and the shocks that preceded the creation of DEVCO and the Sydney Steel Corporation (SYSCO) in 1967, the United Mine Workers was an ever-present institution in the Cape Breton pits. Representatives from the UMWA were featured prominently every 11 June, celebrating Davis Day in the coal communities to commemorate the murder of striking coal miner William Davis in 1925. Cape Breton was a working-class island, and the labour orientation of its miners and steelworkers was well known throughout Canada. How is it that in such a place, the last remaining mine to close would be a nonunion pit with a significant portion of its workforce composed largely of fly-in American miners?10 In Cape Breton, as in deindustrializing pit towns across North America and Europe, the miners’ union and the rank and file struggled to reckon with the scale of the industrial crisis they faced. In this context, many of the old intraunion conflicts that characterized the relationship between District 26 and the UMWA international headquarters in Virginia surfaced once again.

In this chapter, two significant conflicts that erupted in the Sydney coalfield between 1981 and 1984 are examined for what they reveal about the contested nature of unionized miners’ responses to the industrial crisis and the contradictions of capitalism facing Cape Breton at the end of the twentieth century. The first section explores a bitter miners’ strike that erupted between July and October of 1981—the first in the DEVCO pits since nationalization. This conflict revealed generational and political fault lines within the membership. A slate of young miners, hired during the resurgence of coal during the 1970s, found themselves at odds with earlier generations of miners and their union around issues of pay and contract benefits. Seeking a 60 percent pay increase, the miners struck; though they would ultimately return to work in October short of the amount they sought, the frictions raised during the 1981 strike continued to percolate. In the second section, the consequences of the 1981 strike are traced to 1982–84, when a group of Cape Breton miners embarked upon an effort to break ties with the United Mine Workers and affiliate instead with the Confederation of Canadian Unions (CCU) as the Canadian Mineworkers Union (CMU). This effort ultimately failed, but it reflects the growing inability of Canadian workers and their organizations to deal with the structural challenges facing their industries. By the 1980s, these challenges would erupt into open conflict.

The 1981 Strike at DEVCO

The Cape Breton Development Corporation was born of the economic situation facing the island’s collieries in the 1960s, a concerted approach to regional industrial development, the will of federal cabinet minister Allan MacEachen and other Liberals to intervene, and the overwhelming financial reliance of thousands of Cape Bretoners on the continued operation of the mines.11 By the end of the 1950s, the coal industry was in deep trouble; the Rand Commission of 1959–60 had recommended “a slow phasing out of coal as the main source of employment” in Industrial Cape Breton, and the island was positioned to turn toward the tourist economy envisioned by boosters like former premier Angus L. Macdonald.12 When DOSCO announced its planned withdrawal from coal operations in 1965, the government of Canada moved quickly—tasking J. R. Donald to develop another report on the future of the island’s industry. The release of this report in 1966 represented one of the first explicit documents produced by the federal government in response to the looming industrial crisis; rather than prop up the private owners of the Cape Breton collieries, the Donald Report recommended the diversification of the island’s economy and the slow winding down of coal operations.13 The mechanism by which this was to be accomplished was DEVCO—which would boast both a Coal Division and an Industrial Development Division.14

For their part, the Cape Breton coal miners expressed a reticence toward some of the underlying ideas of the Donald Report in relation to the operations of the Coal Division. While support for both private subsidy and the eventual nationalization of Cape Breton coal was high, Bill “Bull” Marsh—the president of UMWA District 26 between 1958 and 1980—expressed concern about the idea that the mines would be wound down under the auspices of the federal state.15 These concerns lessened slightly after nationalization, as DEVCO remained committed to opening new collieries in the area—including the provision of several million dollars to the development of Lingan and Phalen mines near New Waterford and the rehabilitation of existing mines such as the No. 12 in New Waterford and the No. 26 in Glace Bay.16 Despite these commitments, company financials paint a concerning picture; in 1971, with the firm drawing down on the funding initially provided by the federal government, new capital injections were necessary while waiting for the Lingan and Phalen projects to take shape. In addition, job losses were mounting as the No. 26 Colliery faced production shortfalls due to engineering troubles. While nearly 7,500 miners worked for the DEVCO Coal Division at the time of nationalization, this had dwindled to 3,696 by the end of 1972.17

Darkening the horizons, a deadly fire erupted in the early morning hours at the No. 12 Colliery in New Waterford in March 1973. At 3:15 a.m., a trip jumped the tracks and knocked a support pillar askew, collapsing a section of the roof. Coal dust from this accident then ignited, and miners scrambled to escape the conflagration to the relative safety of the surface. One man, twenty-seven-year-old Earl Leadbeater of New Waterford, lost his life in the fire. Another, forty-seven-year-old mining engineer Donald McFadgen, suffered a fatal seizure while assessing the situation at the mine later that day. The dangers of coal mining, even under the operations of a federal Crown corporation, remained clear in Cape Breton—even for the island’s children. Ernie Hennick, a mine technician for the Department of Natural Resources, remembers that day in 1973 as foundational:

Some memories never fade: my first red two-dollar bill at age three; my first tricycle at age five, stolen a week later; my first train set at seven, destroyed by my sister a few hours after I opened it on Christmas Day. One of my most lasting memories also came at age seven: the memory of what it felt like to know that a 27 year old man went to work that day in a mine, but was never coming out.

It was March 3, 1973, and my Dad took me out for a drive to New Waterford. . . . As a seven-year-old, I was simply in awe of [the mine]. Though I had seen it before, it was different that day. I remember the Dominion No. 12 Bankhead that day as a monstrous dark building emitting a haunting hum. The site was intimidating and scary to this tiny boy, and that day was truly dark: it was the day coal miner Earl Leadbeater did not return from the depths.18

As a result of this disaster, the company moved quickly. The decision was made to seal the No. 12 Colliery so that the fire could not spread; Leadbeater’s body was never recovered from the site.

Financially, the disaster at the No. 12 Colliery proved a significant problem for DEVCO. As a result of problems with production at the No. 26 in Glace Bay, production had been increased at the No. 12 to make up some of the shortfall. As a result of the sealing of the mine, this was no longer a possibility, and the firm’s finances were consequently put under further strain—requiring more than $3 million in additional funding above the $29 million previously allocated for the year.19 Deindustrialization and the slow decline of employment in Cape Breton’s collieries, despite the promise of future work at Lingan and Phalen, appeared to be proceeding unabated.

Intervening in this dismal situation was the beginning of the first oil crisis in 1973. “God Bless the Arabs,” exclaimed Bull Marsh in a 1980 interview with Maclean’s Magazine. “I love them!”20 His exuberance reflected his belief that Cape Breton’s coal operations were saved by the hike in oil and gas prices prompted by the October 1973 OPEC oil embargo. This provoked something of a renaissance in the Canadian coal economy, with British Columbia and Alberta collieries boosting production through the decade.21 Matching Marsh’s hope that rumours of the death of coal had been greatly exaggerated, the DEVCO Coal Division moved ahead with several hiring waves, bringing in young miners to fill out the ranks of the workforce; employment at the DEVCO pits actually increased from approximately thirty-five hundred in 1974 to nearly forty-four hundred in 1979.22

The shifting demographics in the mines, with the majority of new hires made in the 1970s composed of young men in their twenties, meant that the political equation within the UMWA in Cape Breton was rapidly changing. By 1980, a new generation of coal miners had entered the pits—working, sometimes, alongside their fathers but without any sense of institutional malaise. Indeed, Steve Drake—hired at Lingan Mine in 1977—describes earning more working as a labourer at Wreck Cove in 1976 than he did as a DEVCO coal miner in 1977.23 The generational turnover combined with the apparent reversal in fortune for the coal industry and the decision by Nova Scotia Power Corporation to transition from energy production through imported oil to the burning of coal led many rank-and-file miners to believe that the 1981 contract negotiations represented an opportunity to push for significant wage gains.24

District 26 president Bull Marsh found himself at odds with a rank and file that was increasingly ready to seek significant redress of the issue of low wages. Speaking with Cape Breton’s Magazine in 1998, Marsh reflected on some of his negotiating tactics while serving the union; to ensure that contacts would pass, he would frequently put forward the contract for a vote at a time when the miners could use the built-up back pay.25 This would mean frequent contract votes at particular times of year—before Christmas, before miners’ vacation period in August—when the coal miners would be more likely to return a contract acceptance to avail themselves of the lump-sum increase backdated to the end of the previous contract. Such an approach, while engendering labour peace within the coalfield, did not necessarily offer the rank and file the opportunity to press the employer in areas where they felt further gains could be tenable. In 1980, just before the expiration of the contract, Marsh took up a position on the Coal Council of Canada and ended his role with the UMWA. He was replaced by Ray Holland, another member of the executive, to serve the remainder of Marsh’s term.26

Holland, who had started his underground career in 1953 as a horse driver in the No. 20 colliery before working the long wall at No. 16, took up this position just in time to participate in the next round of contract negotiations. Talks had been ongoing since October of 1980 at the expiration of the previous contract, but the union and DEVCO management were not reaching an agreement on the issue of wage increases. The relative placidity of labour relations in the Cape Breton mines since World War II effectively meant that miners had been indirectly subsidizing the industry by accepting contracts without significant cost-of-living increases. Now with fortunes turned, the coal miners expected a return on these sacrifices. On 7 July, the miners voted down a proposal that would see them achieve a 21 percent pay increase over two years by a vote margin of 1,954 to 827. After news of the contract rejection, miners at Lingan walked off the job—a rank-and-file action that was quickly dismissed as a “misunderstanding” by the UMWA executive who beseeched the miners to return to work.27 This walkout reveals the divisions that existed between the rank and file and their representation even at this early stage of the dispute.

Over the next ten days, UMWA executives met with DEVCO management and conciliator judge Nathan Green to try and work out a new agreement.28 Meanwhile, John “Bunny” Corbett of the Lingan union local and Greg Hicks of the No. 26 local approached Ray Holland to discuss rank-and-file perceptions of the contract talks. Some of the miners, they assured Holland, were deeply unhappy with the first offer; whatever the company put forward would have to represent a significant step forward on the issue of wage rates. Things moved fast. The union executive met again with management on 16 July and reached a tentative agreement that would see approximately $17 added to the miners’ daily rate over two years, but when word of the terms found its way to the mines, the miners at Lingan again walked out in protest.29 Under the terms of the previous contract, underground labour commanded a daily rate of $59.64, machinists and electricians earned $64.29, and the high daily rate for face miners was $66.10.30 Steve Drake describes the situation:

If there’s four people in the crowd—and they’re yelling, they can rally up forty people pretty quick. And the majority of the guys are just standing there and they’re not saying anything because they don’t want to get into the fray and get into a, you know, dust-up with all of these other guys and they just go “that’s not worth it let’s just walk away.” So these guys are walking away—these forty or whatever the number might be—they walk out, and once the picket line starts—once the UMWA picket line starts in Cape Breton, it doesn’t matter if there’s fourteen people, or four hundred people—the miners are never going to cross the picket line. It’s just forbidden. They will not do it. So, when that started at Lingan Mine, and I’m pretty certain that the first picket line was at Lingan mine, it spread through the district, and we were on strike.31

When the Lingan miners walked out, they were soon joined by workers from other mines throughout the district. Although this was initially unsanctioned by the district executive, Holland put out a statement declaring his support of the legally striking workers until a contract could be negotiated and accepted. With this act, 17 July stands as the first day of a strike that would consume District 26 for the next three months. When the vote officially came in, the miners rejected this contract by an even larger margin than the first—with a final tally of 2,732 against and 303 in favour.32

The notions that generational distinctions between young miners and their older colleagues were largely responsible for the events of the 1981 Cape Breton coal strike and that the miners reinvigorated demands around remuneration are not particularly remarkable. Ian Milligan adroitly traces the impact of youth culture and the New Left on the 1960s strike wave elsewhere in Canada, while others have gestured toward the cultural impact of feminism and other social movements on young workers’ willingness to ask more of their employers.33 The same has been argued in the British context; George Gillespie, deputy director of the Scottish area for the National Coal Board, declared in 1978 that industrial discord was caused by young “hotheads” who were much unlike the reasonable older miners.34 In Cape Breton, however, these actions also emerged during a moment when the tides of deindustrialization in the coal industry appeared to be rolling back. Yes, young workers were involved—but so, too, did the demands for higher pay respond to material conditions wherein it appeared that circumstances facing the industry had shifted. This context, combined with the executive changes in District 26, positioned Cape Breton’s miners to believe that significant wage gains were not only possible but a likely outcome.

The rejection of the second contract meant that the strike called on 17 July when Lingan miners walked out, the first in Cape Breton collieries since 1947, would continue into the miners’ vacation period. As a result, further movement between the union and management was slow to develop—though Holland called upon the federal government to intervene in support of the miners. Cape Breton’s Liberal members of Parliament David Dingwall and Russell MacLellan pledged support for the striking miners and assured Holland that they would raise the issue with minister of regional economic expansion Pierre De Bané.35 Gerald Regan, the federal minister of labour, soon appointed two mediators to meet with the union executive and DEVCO president Steve Rankin to find a solution to the work stoppage.

Meanwhile, women in the coal communities began to organize publicly in support of the strike. Julie Anderson and Nancy Thomas organized the United Miners Wives’ Association and arranged several meetings to create public awareness of the terms of the strike. “DEVCO beware, the women are here,” read one banner of the nearly three-hundred-strong women’s march in Glace Bay on Thursday, 13 August.36 They also sought solidarity across Canada, drawing comparisons between their efforts and those of the wives of striking Inco workers in Sudbury during their 1978 strike.37 While much of the ire of these women was directed at DEVCO, there were signs that all was not well in the House of Labour. Despite Holland’s caution that strikers should keep their focus on DEVCO, there was increasing concern about the state of the district’s finances. The international UMWA had expressed that they would be unable to fund strike pay for Cape Breton miners, as a recent American strike had depleted the strike fund. As a result, District 26 sent word to allied unions and members of the public that they were seeking donations; Local 1064 of the United Steelworkers of America in Sydney donated $1,000 and other local labour groups sent smaller donations.38 Privately, there were concerns from a financial perspective that the strike could not last indefinitely.

As the warm evenings of Cape Breton summer gave way to the chill of September, it seemed as though there was no end in sight. Another tentative agreement was presented to the membership at the beginning of the month. This contract encompassed a three-year duration—a sticking point for many miners who preferred shorter contracts—but offered significant concessions on behalf of DEVCO. According to the terms of the tentative agreement, miners would be granted an average increase of $30.50 on the daily rate over the three years of the contract, supplemented by the addition of an employee dental plan and upgrades to other areas of the contract, such as life insurance.39 Nonetheless, this agreement fell short of the 60 percent increase sought by miners, who argued that the extremely high rates of inflation meant that any gains shorter of that target would be gobbled up by cost-of-living increases. As a result, the miners once again voted down the contract—1,972 votes against and 981 in favour.40 That such a contract would be rejected, the third offering in as many months, reveals the extent to which the miners believed they were bargaining from a position of strength. The idea that the new energy paradigm would end as quickly as it began, taking with it the high hopes of the coal industry and its workers, seemed as alien as that of Cape Breton Island without any basic industry at all.

A flurry of activity throughout September reveals the political visibility of Cape Breton’s unionized coal miners in ways that were perhaps inaccessible to workers in other deindustrializing industries. Firstly, as the result of Allan MacEachen’s position as the finance minister of Canada, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s cabinet was scheduled to meet in Ingonish on 8 September. Upon arrival at the Sydney airport, ministers and local politicians were met by a picket line of striking miners who demanded action on the strike. After a brief conversation with external affairs minister Mark McGuigan, the miners allowed the politicians to pass through the picket.41 Further, there was a great deal of politicking behind the scenes by members of District 26. Holland and other members of the executive met several times that month with provincial representatives from John Buchanan’s progressive conservative government, hoping to gain a more favourable coal price from Nova Scotia Power. They also travelled to Ottawa to meet with various ministers, including Pierre De Bané.42 Though it was uncertain what effect these efforts had on the overall negotiation strategy of DEVCO, it was soon after the return of the District 26 delegation that DEVCO president Steve Rankin expressed a willingness to return to the two-year contract format.43

Once this concession was outlined, miners voted for the fourth and final time on a tentative agreement on Thursday, 8 October. Lasting two years from 1 January 1981, this contract offered a retroactive $11-per-day hike on the daily rate in the first year, followed by an additional $11 on the daily rate in the second year. In addition, it called for the establishment of a contributory pension plan for DEVCO employees hired after the ratification of the contract. After eighty-three days on the picket line, the coal miners accepted this agreement—ratifying through a vote of 2,306 in favour and 420 against.44 Despite these significant gains, the fractures they revealed inside the UMW in Cape Breton would not easily heal. While they were not on public display for much of the strike, the lack of support from the international and the moribund strike fund remained significant issues for miners, who increasingly challenged union leadership on this issue. While the strike ended in October, the fundamental issues that it raised would once again throw the miners into disarray just a year later, when an attempted breakaway from the UMWA threatened to tear the district apart.

The CMU Comes to Town: Breaking the UMWA in District 26, 1982–84

On 11 June 1983, the annual Davis Day ceremony was held outside the Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay. The ceremony, held to commemorate striking coal miner William Davis, who was murdered during the 1925 Cape Breton coal strike, had an auspicious guest speaker. Richard Trumka, president of the United Mine Workers of America, spoke loudly to those gathered, extolling the virtues of the labour movement and the benefits of international cooperation.45 Trumka had only recently won election as the union’s president, defeating long-serving Sam Church in a tightly contested race in the fall of 1982.46 Echoing former UMWA president John L. Lewis, Trumka’s approach to running the union was that of “No backwards steps.”47 In this vein, his visit to Cape Breton was no coincidence, nor was it simply to commemorate Davis Day. Rather, Trumka’s visit was intended to bolster the union faithful in District 26 against an ongoing decertification attempt pushed by a breakaway group of rank-and-file workers seeking association with the CCU. Indeed, Trumka had made his way to Cape Breton several times since 1982; the UMWA was in the midst of the first significant challenge to its authority in the district since the radical unionist J. B. McLachlan had challenged Lewis during the 1920s.48

Despite the successes of the negotiated contract at the end of the 1981 strike, the lack of support from the international union had deeply alienated a large number of Cape Breton’s miners. Nearly immediately, there were rumblings about the possibility of decertifying the UMWA. Foreshadowing the later conflict between the Canadian region and the international United Auto Workers in Ontario, disaffected coal miners applied nationalist rhetoric to underpin their largest concerns.49 Indeed, dues from District 26 had flowed to Virginia since certification in 1922; the lack of an available strike fund to draw on, for many miners, was seen as a betrayal that would not have happened had they been striking within the United States. In January of 1982, miner Archie Kennedy, speaking on behalf of what he asserted was a significant number of Cape Breton miners, asked John Lang of the CCU for assistance in organizing a decertification campaign. Kennedy had heard of the CCU after watching an episode of the television program The Fifth Estate on the unions organizing in Western Canada.50 In response, the CCU sent two veteran organizers to the island—John St. Amand and Susan Vohanka.51

St. Amand officially moved to Cape Breton in the spring of 1982, where he began working with miners in New Waterford, Sydney Mines, and Glace Bay to lead the decertification efforts. He reflects that two significant problems he saw with the UMWA in Cape Breton were the Americanization of the union, having failed to respond adequately to local concerns, and a broader democratic deficit that meant Canadian workers’ concerns were not taken as seriously as threatened closures, bargaining concessions, and other issues facing American coal miners.52 He would later reflect that those months of uncertainty carved deep scars into the community fabric of the coal towns; the decertification effort ended friendships, caused family rifts, and drastically increased social frictions of all types.53

For her part, Vohanka viewed the CCU’s role in the intraunion conflict as symbolic of a broader Canadian nationalist push that was contemporaneously finding purchase elsewhere within the labour movement. An advocate for rank-and-file unionism, she believed that the CCU and the CMU were vehicles for the return of control into the hands of the coal miners. Further, Vohanka believed that the underlying mission of the CCU was rooted in social movements; the project of rank-and-file organizing, she wrote, was also a feminist project.54 In this sense, the ability of the miners to shape their own futures democratically within a new union would also empower their families and communities.

The campaign picked up steam in the summer of 1982 when the CMU opened two new organizing offices in Glace Bay, New Waterford, and Sydney Mines.55 On 16 and 18 August, interested miners met to adopt the Canadian Mineworkers Union Constitution and elect a slate of officials, with Donald MacLellan elected as president.56 MacLellan described the appeal of “rank-and-file unionism” in an interview with CJCB in 1984; under the UMWA, he believed, the top-down approach was stifling miners’ ability to achieve concessions at the bargaining table.57 This message was hammered in campaign pamphlets through the fall of 1982. These flyers were distributed to miners throughout the district and contained attacks on the supposed antidemocratic activities of the UMWA and the lack of strike fund and personal attacks on both Holland and Marsh.58 On 31 December 1982, having registered enough cards, the CMU formally sent an application for certification to the Canadian Labour Relations Board and called for a formal vote to be held in either February or March.59

The UMWA responded with its own information campaign. In October of 1982, the international union sent several organizers to Cape Breton to fight the decertification effort. They publicized the past successes of the UMWA, arguing that the union played a pivotal role in the nationalization of the coalfield in the 1960s. This included accounts from loyal UMWA members who sent in personalized stories; one, taken from miner Stelvio Piovesan of Lingan, harkens back to the early years of the union in Cape Breton—describing the exploitation of the “company store” system prior to the coming of the United Mine Workers.60 Bob Burchell, then the International Teller for the Canadian UMWA, gave the three main arguments against decertification: first, the election of Trumka and the history of District 26 offered an opportunity for growth within the structures of the existing union with a progressive agenda; second, District 26 had a strong record at the bargaining table on wages, benefits, and health and safety; and third, he rejected the nationalist language and tone of both the CCU and the CMU and argued that international labour unity was more necessary than ever.61

The vote took place on 9 March 1983. Miners at Lingan were the first to cast ballots, and although members of the UMWA executive spoke with the Cape Breton Post expressing confidence, the results were very close. In the end, the CMU failed to overturn the UMWA. With a 97 percent turnout, the UMWA fended off the attempted decertification with a final tally of 1,750 (UMWA) to 1,393 (CMU). A jubilant Ray Holland spoke to gathered miners, expressing a desire to return unity to the Cape Breton labour movement and move on from the hurt feelings wrought by both the strike and the decertification vote.62 The intraunion conflict in Cape Breton, however, was far from over. The UMWA had come just 357 votes from being thrown out of the Cape Breton coal field, and Trumka wanted answers. Likewise, the CMU felt that the close result meant that a future attempt at certification was not off the table. Indeed, campaigning never really ended and on 18 August; representatives from the CMU announced intentions to hold another certification vote in 1984.

Just six days after Trumka gave his rallying speech on Davis Day in June of 1983, the international UMWA announced an official inquiry into the causes of the disturbances in the Cape Breton coalfield. Clearly, the result of the vote had given union representatives pause; it appears that they did not expect the closeness of the result. The report, authored by two members of the International Executive Board (IEB) and an international staff member, found three serious problems with the operations of District 26: financial malpractice, the failure to assure the performance of collective bargaining agreements, and the denial of democratic procedures to the membership.63 The report made no mention of the lack of a strike fund during the 1981 strike or the economic nationalist arguments raised by the CMU and their supporters during the certification drive. However, the report did issue a significant recommendation—that the entire executive of District 26, including President Ray Holland, be removed from their positions immediately and placed under the control of an administrator to oversee new elections.64 In October, Trumka announced that Bill Evasuk, District 26 IEB member, and Dave Michel, District 5 IEB member, would coadminister District 26 pending executive elections.65 Of course, this did not go unremarked upon in Cape Breton, where many miners still recalled the expulsion of labour leader J. B. McLachlan from the UMWA by John L. Lewis in 1923.

This decision threw the on-the-ground UMWA supporters into disarray. With the international union in control of the district, an ongoing three-way race for District 26 president, and a renewed CMU campaign leading into the winter of 1983–84, the results of a second certification campaign were far from clear. Complicating matters further was a week-long wildcat strike that erupted between 30 September and 7 October 1983; the cause of the walkout was the layoff of fifteen wash plant employees. Once these workers walked off the job, the entire district refused to cross the impromptu picket—effectively shutting down mining for the week.66 In response to both his ousting from the District 26 presidency and the events of the wildcat strike, Ray Holland announced in mid-November that he would be supporting the ongoing CMU organizing effort and signing a CMU card in protest of the actions of the UMWA.67

The chaotic nature of these events had organizers of the CMU feeling hopeful about the results of their second card drive. When the union submitted their second application to the Canadian Labour Relations Board, this time on 31 December 1983, Donald MacLellan told reporters from the Cape Breton Post that they fully expected a different result—they had been running ahead of their previous registrations all year, he asserted, and according to their figures, they expected a victory.

The District 26 election in January exposed many of the fault lines created by this situation. Supporters of the UMWA accused CMU organizers of working to undermine the election by throwing their support behind particular candidates who they hoped would be ineffectual. The CMU denied these allegations, with MacLellan again remarking that miners were free to vote for whoever they so chose—noting that the true fight for democracy would occur with the CMU certification vote.68 When the results of the vote were tallied, John Jake Campbell—a former president of the No. 26 local—emerged as president of District 26 along with a full slate of new executive officers.69 This undercut some of the campaign arguments of the CMU, which criticized the UMWA for the situation of direct administrative control and appeared to settle some of the ongoing tensions within the district.

In the week leading up to the 7 March 1984 certification vote, the UMWA in Cape Breton put on a full-court press to entice members to remain with the fold. On Monday, 5 March, the union paid for a full-page advertisement in the Cape Breton Post depicting letters of support from nine allied labour organizations, including the United Steelworkers of America, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, and the Cape Breton District Labour Council, among others.70 Trumka, too, took the time to discuss the vote; the changes made in the district as the result of the UMWA inquiry, he insisted, were widely popular and ensured that they would win “a convincing victory.”71 Indeed, he was proven right. On 7 March 1984, Cape Breton coal miners once again voted to reaffirm the hold of the UMWA over the Sydney coal field—defeating the attempted breakaway through a vote of 1,795 (UMWA) to 1,242 (CMU) in a larger margin than the 1983 attempt.72 With that, the United Mine Workers of America would remain the only union representing Cape Breton’s coal miners until the final closure of the DEVCO collieries in 2001.

Conclusion

The early 1980s in the Sydney coal field and the events described in this chapter reveal the contradictions of life and work as a collier on the island at the end of the twentieth century. Contextually, the 1970s energy crisis produced a historical moment where—despite the planned deindustrialization of the island’s coal industry dating back to the 1966 Donald Report—it appeared that a reindustrialization of the industry might be possible. New hires being made at DEVCO, young men being enticed into work in the pits, and Nova Scotia energy production transferring from oil to coal power produced a situation where it seemed that big gains in contract bargaining were possible for the miners. As a result, they rejected three negotiated contracts during the course of the eighty-nine-day strike, ultimately settling on a two-year contract with an approximately 50 percent increase over the course of the contract. Despite these promising tailwinds, DEVCO’s financials and the overall economic situation of the coal industry in Canada signalled a gloomy future. Far from representing a new normal and the rebirth of King Coal, the energy crisis of the 1970s gave way to the oil glut—wherein the price of crude oil dropped significantly each year between 1980 and 1986. DEVCO annual financial reports illustrated this trend, describing by 1983 delays in the transition from oil to coal power in the province and profits falling short of predictions made just a few short years earlier.73 For those young men hired in the 1970s, the strike represented less the dawning of a new age and more a temporary bulwark against the slow unwinding of the coal industry.

For its part, the attempted CMU raid on UMWA District 26 exposes the weakness of the labour movement in responding to these structural challenges. While the 1981 strike in Cape Breton was undertaken from an assumed position of strength, the UMWA as an entire institution was fighting a rear-guard battle against the dual challenges of technological job losses and a transitioning energy regime. When the institution that had represented Cape Breton’s miners since the labour wars of the 1920s proved unable—or unwilling—to provide strike support in 1981, it provoked a great sense of cognitive dissonance. How was it that such a powerful organization, with its long and storied history, could not help the miners? Nationalization provided a pat answer; the Americans, “the foreigners,” didn’t care about Canadian unions and never had. Of course, as Steven High has noted elsewhere, this notion emboldened Canadian workers in other parts of the country and provided them with the necessary tactics to challenge their employers over threatened closure. But had the vote gone differently in Cape Breton, would the history that unfolded have also gone differently? Probably not. The divisions that arose within District 26 during the early 1980s reflected material conditions across the entirety of the North American coal industry that had deteriorated to the point where the old, once strong institutions could no longer hold. Such developments varied by industry along with the material circumstances that gave rise to them. Tracing those connections helps understand not only Cape Breton but the entire industrial capitalist order at the end of what the editors of this collection have referred to as “the long twentieth century.”

Notes

  1. 1. Ayers, “Donkin Coal Mine in Cape Breton Closing Permanently,” https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/donkin-coal-mine-in-cape-breton-closing-permanently-1.5514689.

  2. 2. Montgomery-Dupe, “Donkin Mine Suffers Another Rockfall.”

  3. 3. The company hesitates to call the decision “permanent,” though they do indicate that the current closure is also not temporary. For the time being, coal is not being extracted in Cape Breton. See “Donkin Debate Continues,” Cape Breton Spectator, 3 April 2020, https://capebretonspectator.com/2020/04/03/brisco-vs-drake-on-donkin/.

  4. 4. Clarke, “Closing Moulinex,” 443–58; for Scottish examples, see Clark and Gibbs, “Voices of Social Dislocation,” 39–59.

  5. 5. “Cape Breton Mine to Close,” Globe and Mail, 17 May 2001.

  6. 6. “Cape Breton Mine to Close.”

  7. 7. Frank, J. B. McLachlan.

  8. 8. Heron, Canadian Labour Movement.

  9. 9. Earle and Gamberg, “United Mine Workers,” 26.

  10. 10. Ayers, “Donkin Mine Punished for Violations.”

  11. 11. Approximately seven thousand direct jobs were linked to the DOSCO pits in 1965, with an estimated several thousand more tangentially related in secondary production, service, etc.

  12. 12. Parnaby, “Roots, Region, and Resistance,” 8.

  13. 13. Donald, Cape Breton Coal Problem.

  14. 14. DEVCO, Annual Report, 1967, Beaton Institute Archives (BI), Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  15. 15. “Coal Hangs by a Thread,” Chronicle Herald, 22 January 1965.

  16. 16. DEVCO, Annual Report, 1970, BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  17. 17. DEVCO, Annual Report, 1972, BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney NS; DEVCO, Annual Report, 1973, BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  18. 18. Hennick, “Remembering When a Man Was Lost Underground.”

  19. 19. DEVCO, Annual Report, 1973.

  20. 20. Anderson, “Reprieve for Cape Breton.”

  21. 21. Watson, “Coal in Canada,” 239.

  22. 22. DEVCO, Annual Report, 1974; DEVCO, Annual Report, 1978; DEVCO, Annual Report, 1979.

  23. 23. Steve Drake, interview with author, 29 July 2019.

  24. 24. Manley, “1981 Coal Strike,” 15.

  25. 25. “William H. ‘Bull’ Marsh—Still Fighting,” Cape Breton’s Magazine 73 (June 1998): 1–12.

  26. 26. “Cape Breton Labour Leader Fought for Miners,” Cape Breton Post, 25 March 2015.

  27. 27. “Miners Turn Down Proposed Contract,” Cape Breton Post, 8 July 1981; “Officials Blame ‘Misunderstanding,’” Cape Breton Post, 9 July 1981.

  28. 28. Manley, “1981 Coal Strike,” 47.

  29. 29. “Contract Vote Thursday, Miners Walk Out in Protest Move,” Cape Breton Post, 18 July 1981; “Mining Operations at Standstill,” Cape Breton Post, 20 July 1981.

  30. 30. United Mine Workers of America, “Agreement between the Cape Breton Development Corporation Coal Division and District No. 26, 1979–1980,” MG 19.23, Canadian Mineworkers Union, BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  31. 31. Drake, interview with author, 29 July 2019.

  32. 32. “Coal Miners Reject Contract,” Cape Breton Post, 24 July 1981.

  33. 33. Milligan, Rebel Youth; Godden, “Contesting Big Brother,” 71–98.

  34. 34. Perchard and Phillips, “Transgressing the Moral Economy,” 396.

  35. 35. “Mining Operations at Standstill.”

  36. 36. “United Miners Wives Association Organized,” Cape Breton Post, 15 August 1981.

  37. 37. “United Miners Wives Association Organized.”

  38. 38. “UMW Executive Board Seeking Financial Help,” Cape Breton Post, 26 August 1981; “Steel Union Aids Strikers,” Cape Breton Post, 27 August 1981.

  39. 39. “Memorandum of Agreement between District 26, UMWA, and the Cape Breton Development Corporation, September 1981,” BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  40. 40. “Third Contract Offer Rejected by Miners,” Cape Breton Post, 5 September 1981.

  41. 41. “Striking Miners Greet Ministers,” Cape Breton Post, 9 September 1981.

  42. 42. “Restructuring of DEVCO Possible,” Cape Breton Post, 22 September 1981.

  43. 43. “Corporation Prepared to Discuss Contract Term and Money,” Cape Breton Post, 25 September 1981.

  44. 44. “Miners Say Yes, Contract Approved,” Cape Breton Post, 9 October 1981.

  45. 45. “Davis Day in Glace Bay,” Cape Breton Post, 13 June 1983.

  46. 46. Warren, “Watch Out for Rich Trumka”; “Trumka Is Sworn in as President of Mine Workers,” New York Times, 23 December 1982.

  47. 47. “Trumka, Richard L.,” in Arenesen, Encyclopedia of American Labor, 1389.

  48. 48. Frank and Manley, “Sad March to the Right,” 115–34.

  49. 49. High, “I’ll Wrap the F*** Canadian Flag around Me,” 111, 224.

  50. 50. MacKinnon, “Cape Breton Coal Unrest.”

  51. 51. MacKinnon.

  52. 52. Moore and Sacouman, “Policy Issues in the Trade Union Movement,” 170.

  53. 53. McCrorie, Guy in the Green Truck, 57.

  54. 54. Vohanka, “Getting Organized . . . in the CCU,” 143.

  55. 55. The New Waterford office was near the Lingan Mine, located at 390 Cockburn Street; the Sydney Mines office was on Pitt Street; “Two New CMU Offices Open,” MG 19.23 (4)a, “CMU Press Releases, 1982–1983,” BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  56. 56. “CMU Constitution, as Adopted at Meetings of Cape Breton Coal Miners, August 16 and 18 1982,” MG 19.23 (4)a, “CMU Press Releases, 1982–1983,” BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  57. 57. Don MacLellan, “CJCB Interview, March 1984 Transcripts T-2101,” MG 19.23, Canadian Mineworkers Union, 1974–1984, BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  58. 58. “CMU Bulletin, November 1982”; “Enough of this Bull___, January 1983,” MG 19.23 (4), Canadian Mineworkers Union, 1974–1984, “CMU Campaign Literature, 1983–1984,” BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  59. 59. CMU, “We Did It! January 1983,” MG 19.23 (4), Canadian Mineworkers Union, 1974–1984, “CMU Campaign Literature, 1983–1984,” BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  60. 60. “UMWA Press Release, 26 January 1983,” MG 19.23, Canadian Mineworkers Union, 1974–1984, “Scrapbook—CMU vs the UMW, 1982–83,” BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  61. 61. “International Teller Says UMW Is ‘Strong Proud Union,’” Cape Breton Post, 15 January 1983.

  62. 62. “United Mine Workers Defeat CMU by 357 in Heavy Vote,” Cape Breton Post, 10 March 1983.

  63. 63. United Mine Workers of America, “District 26 International Commission Report, p. 5,” 19 September 1983, MG 19, 23, Canadian Mineworkers Union, 1974–1984, BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  64. 64. United Mine Workers of America, 14.

  65. 65. “Program of Action, District 26, 10 October Revision, p. 3,” MG 19, 23 (3), Canadian Mineworkers Union, 1974–1984, Constitution, Minutes, Briefs, BI, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS.

  66. 66. “Wildcat Strike Shuts down Mining System,” Cape Breton Post, 5 October 1983; “Coal Operations Returning to Normal as Strike Ends,” Cape Breton Post, 7 October 1983.

  67. 67. “Former UMW President Ray Holland Joins CMU,” Cape Breton Post, 15 November 1983.

  68. 68. “CMU Official Denies Rumours,” Cape Breton Post, 19 January 1984.

  69. 69. “It’s a Brand New Ball Game for UMW President Campbell,” Cape Breton Post, 21 January 1984.

  70. 70. “Stay with Us,” Cape Breton Post, 5 March 1984.

  71. 71. “Trumka Confident District 26 Will Win Certification Vote,” Cape Breton Post, 6 March 1984.

  72. 72. “Miners Vote to Remain with UMW International,” Cape Breton Post, 8 March 1984.

  73. 73. DEVCO, Annual Report, 1983.

References

  1. Anderson, Ian. “A Reprieve for Cape Breton.” Maclean’s Magazine, 14 July 1980.
  2. Arenesen, Eric. Encyclopedia of American Labor and Working-Class History. Vol. 1. New York: Routledge, 2007.
  3. Ayers, Tom. “Donkin Coal Mine in Cape Breton Closing Permanently.” CBC News, 30 March 2020. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/donkin-coal-mine-in-cape-breton-closing-permanently-1.5514689.
  4. Ayers, Tom. “Donkin Mine Punished for Violations under Temporary Foreign Worker Program.” CBC News, 25 July 2018. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/donkin-mine-temporary-foreign-worker-program-fines-1.4760421.
  5. Clark, Andy, and Ewan Gibbs. “Voices of Social Dislocation, Lost Work and Economic Restructuring: Narratives from Marginalized Localities in the ‘New Scotland.’” Memory Studies 13, no. 1 (2020): 39–59.
  6. Clarke, Jackie. “Closing Moulinex: Thoughts on the Visibility and Invisibility of Industrial Labour in Contemporary France.” Modern & Contemporary France 19, no. 4 (2011): 443–58.
  7. Donald, J. R. The Cape Breton Coal Problem. Ottawa: National Energy Board, 1966.
  8. Earle, M., and H. Gamberg. “The United Mine Workers and the Coming of the CCF to Cape Breton.” Acadiensis 19, no. 1 (Fall/Autumn 1989): 3–26.
  9. Frank, David. J. B. McLachlan: A Biography. Toronto: James Lorimer, 1999.
  10. Frank, David, and John Manley. “The Sad March to the Right: J. B. McLachlan’s Resignation from the Communist Party of Canada, 1936.” Labour/Le Travail 30 (Fall 1992): 115–34.
  11. Godden, Mason. “Contesting Big Brother: Legal Mobilization against Workplace Surveillance in the Puretex Knitting Company Strike, 1978–1979.” Labour/Le Travail 86 (Fall 2020): 71–98.
  12. Hennick, Ernie. “Remembering When a Man Was Lost Underground.” Cape Breton Post, 17 March 2018.
  13. Heron, Craig. The Canadian Labour Movement: A Short History. 3rd ed. Toronto: James Lorimer, 2012.
  14. High, Steven. “‘I’ll Wrap the F*** Canadian Flag around Me’: A Nationalist Response to Plant Shutdowns, 1969–1984.” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association / Revue de la Société historique du Canada 12, no. 1 (2001): 199–225.
  15. MacKinnon, Harvey. “Cape Breton Coal Unrest.” New Maritimes 1, no. 6 (February 1983).
  16. Manley, Jody Ann. “The 1981 Coal Strike: An Examination of the Collective Bargaining Relationship in the Cape Breton Coal Mines.” MA thesis, Queen’s University, 1987.
  17. McCrorie, James N. The Guy in the Green Truck: A Biography of John St. Amand. Halifax: Fernwood, 2009.
  18. Milligan, Ian. Rebel Youth: 1960s Labour Unrest, Young Workers, and New Leftists in English Canada. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2014.
  19. Montgomery-Dupe, Sharon. “Donkin Mine Suffers Another Rockfall, This One during a Shift.” Chronicle Herald, 14 February 2020.
  20. Moore, Barbara, and James Sacouman. “Policy Issues in the Trade Union Movement: Two Views from Labour.” In From the Net to the Net: Atlantic Canada and the Global Economy, edited by James Sacouman and Henry Veltmeyer, 169–88. Aurora, ON: Garamond Press, 2005.
  21. Parnaby, Andrew. “Roots, Region, and Resistance: Facing Industrial Ruin in Sydney, Cape Breton, during Canada’s Centennial Year.” Acadiensis 48, no. 1 (2019): 5–31.
  22. Perchard, Andrew, and Jim Phillips. “Transgressing the Moral Economy: Wheelerism and Management of the Nationalized Coal Industry in Scotland.” Contemporary British History 25, no. 3 (2011): 387–405.
  23. Vohanka, Sue. “Getting Organized . . . in the CCU.” In Still Ain’t Satisfied: Canadian Feminism Today, edited by Maureen Fitzgerald, Connie Guberman, and Margie Wolfe, 141–51. Toronto: Women’s Press, 1982.
  24. Warren, James. “Watch Out for Rich Trumka.” Washington Post, 8 August 1982.
  25. Watson, Andrew. “Coal in Canada.” In Powering Up Canada: A History of Power, Fuel, and Energy from 1600, edited by R. W. Sandwell, 213–50. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.
Next Chapter
10. The Great Spawn Aquaculture and Development on the Bras d’Or Lake
PreviousNext
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that the original author is credited.
Powered by Manifold Scholarship. Learn more at
Opens in new tab or windowmanifoldapp.org
Manifold uses cookies

We use cookies to analyze our traffic. Please decide if you are willing to accept cookies from our website. You can change this setting anytime in Privacy Settings.