The recent strike by the Cape Breton Island Building & Construction Trades Council and its affiliate unions was a direct continuation of the militant trade union tradition in Cape Breton. Like their predecessors in the mines and mills, these workers fought not merely for immediate economic gains but for basic dignity and respect in the face of corporate intransigence.
The picket lines that snaked across construction sites throughout Cape Breton Island this summer told a story that echoes through generations of working-class resistance, and was the latest chapter in Cape Breton’s storied tradition of militant trade unionism, a continuation of the same fighting spirit that once saw coal miners and steelworkers stand toe-to-toe with corporate giants and state power.
The summer construction strike highlighted the fundamental contradiction in Cape Breton’s economic development strategy. Political and business leaders constantly emphasize the need for major infrastructure investment to drive economic growth and attract population. Projects like the Cape Breton University (CBU) medical campus, hospital expansions, and improved wastewater treatment are all presented as crucial for the island’s economic future. Yet when the skilled workers who actually build this infrastructure demanded fair compensation, they were treated as impediments, rather than the essential foundation of development.
This contradiction reveals the essentially extractive nature of much contemporary economic development. Capital seeks to maximize the value it can extract from worker productivity while minimizing the compensation paid to workers. The promise of “economic development” becomes, in practice, a means of disciplining workers to accept lower wages in exchange for the supposed privilege of being employed.
To understand the significance of this most recent strike, it must be placed within the broader context of Cape Breton’s militant labour history — a history that is fundamentally connected to the ongoing struggle between capital and labour in our contemporary moment.
Lessons from historic struggles in Cape Breton
Cape Breton’s history of labour struggles offers important lessons for understanding the recent construction strike. The most successful historical struggles — from the early United Mine Workers (UMWA) organizing through the early Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) period in Cape Breton — were characterized by several key features that resonate with this summer’s strike action.
First, these struggles all involved broad worker solidarity across different trades and industries. The recent strike benefited from the multi-trade structure of the Building Trades Council, which prevented employers from using divide-and-conquer tactics.
Second, successful historical strikes were explicitly political, connecting immediate workplace demands to broader questions of economic power and social justice. While the recent strike’s demands were more narrowly economic, the workers’ willingness to take collective strike action suggested an understanding that the fundamental issue was respect and dignity rather than just wage levels.
Third, historical militancy in Cape Breton was sustained by deep community roots and cultural solidarity. The recent strike benefited from similar dynamics, as these construction workers live and work in the communities they’re building, creating natural alliances with other residents who depend on the same public infrastructure.
Finally, Cape Breton’s most successful labour actions have been those that directly challenged the power of capital rather than simply seeking accommodation within existing structures. While the recent construction strike operated within the established collective bargaining framework, the workers’ willingness to reject employer offers and sustain a prolonged work stoppage this month suggested a more fundamental challenge to management prerogatives.
Roots of resistance: Cape Breton’s legacy of labour militancy
Cape Breton Island has long been the crucible of working-class resistance in Atlantic Canada, forged in the coal mines and steel mills that once dominated the industrial landscape. The island’s militant trade union tradition stretches back over a century, marked by epic battles that fundamentally shaped not only the local working class but the entire trajectory of Canadian labour law and policy.
The foundational moment in this tradition came during the early 1920s, when Cape Breton coal miners and steelworkers engaged in a series of strikes against the British Empire Steel Corporation (BESCO) that would become legendary in Canadian labour history. These weren’t merely disputes over wages — they were class warfare in the truest sense.
The miners, led by militant socialists like United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) District 26 Secretary-Treasurer J.B. McLachlan, openly declared their intention to overthrow the capitalist system. As the strike resolution of 1922 boldly stated: “We proclaim openly to all the world that we are out for a complete overthrow of the capitalist system and of the capitalist, peaceably if we may; forceable if we must.”
The climax of this militant period came on June 11, 1925, when company police gunned down William “Bill” Davis, a 37-year-old unionized coal miner and father of nine, during a march by striking workers. Davis’s murder became a rallying cry that transformed him into one of the most enduring symbols of working-class resistance in Canadian history. The killing sparked fierce retaliation as miners looted company stores and set company buildings ablaze, marking a moment when the mask of capitalist “civility” was torn away to reveal the violent reality beneath.
This tradition of militancy did not end with the coal and steel era. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Cape Breton remained “a hotbed of political radicalism and trade union militancy.” The Communist Party maintained considerable influence in Cape Breton in this period, and workers continued to organize independently, often in defiance of both employers and conservative union bureaucracies. Even as late as 1941, Cape Breton miners engaged in a massive slowdown strike that became “one of the most costly wartime industrial disputes,” demonstrating their willingness to challenge not only their immediate employers but the broader war economy that prioritized corporate profits over workers’ welfare.
The contemporary relevance of militant unionism
The July 2025 Cape Breton building trades strike occurred at a moment when militant unionism is experiencing a revival across North America. From teachers’ strikes in West Virginia and Arizona to recent successes by rail workers and auto workers, there’s growing recognition that business unionism’s “collaborative approach” has failed to stem decades of declining living standards for working people.
Real improvements in working conditions come through struggle, not partnership with employers. The recent strike demonstrated this principle in action — only by withdrawing their labour power have Cape Breton construction workers been able to force public attention to their demands and create pressure for meaningful negotiations, which eventually led to a tentative agreement in the early morning of Monday July 21.
The recent strike also illustrated the continuing relevance of class-based analysis in understanding contemporary labour relations. Despite decades of rhetoric about “stakeholder capitalism” and “win-win” solutions, the fundamental conflict between capital’s drive for profit and workers’ need for decent living standards remains as sharp as ever. The employers’ refusal to honour pandemic-era promises revealed the essentially predatory nature of capitalist employment relations, regardless of temporary collaborative arrangements.
The outcome of this strike will have implications far beyond the immediate wages and benefits of construction workers. The picket actions of striking workers demonstrated that organized labour retains significant power even in smaller regional economies often considered vulnerable to capital flight and employer threats.
More broadly, the strike raised fundamental questions about the future of economic development in Cape Breton. If the island is to build the infrastructure necessary for sustainable growth — hospitals, schools, housing, transportation systems — it must have a workforce willing and able to do that work. Treating skilled trades workers as a cost to be minimized rather than a crucial resource to be valued represents a fundamental strategic error.
The strike also highlighted the potential for reviving Cape Breton’s tradition of militant unionism in contemporary conditions. While the coal mines and steel mills that once provided the foundation for labour organizing are largely gone, the construction industry offers similar opportunities for coordinated action by skilled workers with significant economic leverage.
Standing the Gaff in 2025
The strike by more than 4,000 Cape Breton construction workers this month continued a tradition that stretches back over a century to the coal mines and steel mills that once dominated the island’s economy. Like William Davis and the thousands of other workers who “stood the gaff” in the face of corporate and state power, trades workers in this month’s construction strike asserted their fundamental dignity as human beings who create the wealth of society through their labour.
The phrase “Standing the Gaff” — Cape Breton dialect for enduring hardship with courage and determination — captures something essential about the island’s working-class culture. It speaks to a recognition that meaningful improvements in working conditions don’t come through polite requests or bureaucratic procedures, but through the collective power of organized workers willing to make sacrifices in pursuit of justice.
The recent strike represented more than a dispute over wages and benefits. It was a contest over fundamental questions of power, respect, and human dignity that have animated working-class struggles throughout history. The construction workers walking picket lines across Cape Breton this month are the inheritors of a proud tradition of resistance that has consistently challenged the assumption that workers should simply accept whatever conditions capital chooses to impose.
Whether or not the strike has fully succeeded in its immediate objectives with the recent tentative agreement, it has succeeded in demonstrating that the spirit of militant unionism remains alive in Cape Breton. In a period when working people across North America are rediscovering the power of collective action, the island’s construction workers provided an inspiring example of what’s possible when workers stand together and refuse to accept less than they deserve.
The hundred-year-long Cape Breton legacy of Davis Day — commemorating a worker murdered by company police a century ago — lives on in every picket line, every moment of solidarity, and every refusal to accept the dictates of those who profit from workers’ labour while contributing nothing to its creation.
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