In the Maritimes, the most active phase of unionization occurred between 1900 and 1914 when workers found themselves confronted by the full implications of the capitalist free labour market. Maritime workers organized themselves as never before against employer and government resistance to this new labour militancy. Since the workers only real power was to collectively withdraw their labour, failed negotiations inevitably led to work disruptions.
Though statistics on the incidence of strikes can be misleading, they offer some indication of worker response to their changing situation. Strikes were usually undertaken to defend existing rights or wages rather than advance workers' positions. Although there is some correlation between strike activity and trends in the economy, the internal dynamics of individual industries, provocation by specific incidents, or wage cuts seem to have accounted for increased union activity. In the statistics upon which this graph is based, the protracted struggle of thousands of miners during 1909 and 1910 counts as only one strike even though the event riveted the attention of workers across the nation for more than a year.
Courtesy: National Film Board of Canada; National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (Based on Ian McKay, Strikes in the Maritimes, 1901-1914, Acadiensis 13, no. 1, Autumn, 1983.)
