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All miners and smelter workers know the folly of going on strike when their employer holds a stockpile. In 1958 the International Nickel Company had enough nickel on hand to guarantee sales for at least six months. Despite this, fourteen thousand miners and smeltermen in Sudbury, Ontario, downed their tools and struck against the corporate titan of the mining industry.
Standing Up to Big Nickel is a comprehensive portrait of a pivotal strike by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, a union that has inspired exceptional levels of solidarity among its members. The Cold War and the resulting instabilities in the Canadian labour movement form the backdrop to Elizabeth Quinlan’s engrossing analysis. The union straddled the line, she shows, between its historical commitment to working-class struggle and the newly restrictive legal landscape of the postwar era. Retrospective accounts by surviving union members, leaders, family, and community members bring to life the history of a distinctive group of workers who sweated over smelter furnaces and toiled underground in perilous conditions.
Quinlan traces the events before, during, and after one of Canada’s greatest strikes in both magnitude and duration. Featuring biographical sketches and scenes based on archival and documentary data, Standing Up to Big Nickel captures an intensely dramatic juncture in Canadian labour history.
“Standing Up to Big Nickel is compelling look at workers’ lives above and below ground and an astute analysis of the political and industrial circumstances surrounding the strike. It provides a playbook for modern organizing efforts and underlines the importance of family solidarity and community support when faced with giant corporate employers determined to stop unionization.” Ron Verzuh, author of Smelter Wars: A Rebellious Red Trade Union Fights for Its Life in Wartime Western Canada
"Quinlan has ties to ‘Inco’s first full-fledged strike’: her father served as the union’s research director, and her mother was a member of the women’s auxiliary. This connection, along with Quinlan’s human-centred approach, elevates Standing Up to Big Nickel from an academic study to a comprehensive, sympathetic tour of a crucial episode in Canadian labour history." Literary Review of Canada
"Quinlan is well positioned to describe the multicultural working-class culture of this northern Ontario city in the 1950s. Standing Up to Big Nickel brings to life a key moment in labour history and reminds us that workers’ struggles are far from over." Canada's History