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1/16 Cape Breton Island, on Canada's east coast, has a history of coal extraction dating back to the French presence at Louisbourg. Its collieries became some of the largest producers in Canada by the early 20th century. #SWOS20
2/16 Steel production came to the island in 1899, when a Boston financier established the Dominion Iron and Steel Company. Protracted class struggle culminated in a series of increasingly radical strikes between 1922 and 1926 known as the Cape Breton Labour Wars. #SWOS20
3/16 By 1967, then-owner Hawker Siddeley announced plans to liquidate the Sydney mill. In response, citizens rallied to “Save Our Steel.” In contrast to @ConsettWorks and cases elsewhere, the provincial government stepped in to nationalize the mill to prevent closure. #SWOS20
4/16 Now under the direct ownership of the Province of Nova Scotia, the Sydney Steel Co. (SYSCO) and its employees were under significant pressure to demonstrate profitability. For three years, the mill posted $35 million in profits, producing 1 million tons in 1969. #SWOS20
5/16 Problems emerged as equipment failed. Private owners had neglected maintenance in the years before nationalization, and parts of the mill were out-dated by the 1970s. SYSCO President Derek Haysom announced $84 million in modernization in 1970 . . . #SWOS20
6/16 This would update the Open Hearth to BOF production. However, management chose to implement an experimental steelmaking technique that had been developed by Haysom – who also held the American patent and stood to financially benefit. #SWOS20
7/16 Steelworker Harry Collins remembers, “Everything would burn up, it would drive everyone crazy. [They] said it worked in other places, in Germany and others, but it certainly didn’t work for us. It was the worst damn thing there ever was!” #SWOC20
8/16 The plant was in crisis by 1974. Backed by loan guarantees, the mill was $150 million in debt from the failed modernization and the province quietly sought out opportunities to off-load the mill to the private sector – a perennial theme by the end of the 1970s. #SWOS20
9/16 The steelworkers and their families were caught in the middle as SYSCO found itself positioned as a political football, with Liberal governments committing to funding operations while Tories made cuts and imposed roll-backs. #SWOS20
10/16 Global steel slumped in the 1980s. The steelworkers’ union, the storied @SteelworkersCA Local 1064, faced social upheaval. On one hand, the workers wanted to ensure the continuation of Sydney Steel as a “going concern” – maintain their jobs and livelihoods. #SWOS20
11/16 This meant pushing for government commitment to modernization, even while recognizing that it would come at the cost of jobs. On the other, this limited their ability to respond to a managerial system promoting “flexibility” and precarity through strike action. #SWOS20
12/16 This illustrates one of the major threats facing workers under conditions of deindustrialization. The continued thread of dis-investment and closure meant that fissures erupted within the rank-and-file surrounding any adversarial issue. Solidarity suffers. #SWOS20
13/16 The workers scored a Pyrrhic victory in 1985, when the government announced $150 million for the transition from integrated steelmaking to an “electric arc” operation. This meant no BOF furnaces, but instead a smaller “turn-key” operation.” #SWOS20
14/16 This halved the mill’s workforce, from 3,000 to ~1,200. Among the remaining steelworkers, many expressed that they had been “deskilled” by the change and that their work-relationships were suffering as the result of the end of integrated steelmaking. #SWOS20
15/16 Steelworker B. Brocklehurst: "It's more efficient, I think and it's good quality steel product. That's about it. It's every man for himself. There is no carrying on or anything like that. Very little. Everybody is scared of everybody, cutting each other's throat.” #SWOS20
16/16 Ultimately, the politics of modernization at SYSCO challenged steelworkers’ ability to resist neoliberal restructuring under deindustrialization. It also disrupted engrained notions of skill and masculinity, shifting what it means to be a “steelman” by the 1990s. #SWOS20
