Chicago-based International Harvester opened this plant in 1903, in order to ship trainloads of agricultural machinery duty-free to the rapidly expanding markets of western Canada. Stelco’s history dates back to 1861, when the Ontario Rolling Mills opened in the West End of the city. The Hamilton Blast Furnace Company began operations on this site in 1895. In 1910, a huge merger brought together these and other metalworking firms as the Steel Company of Canada. Stelco was controlled by Hamilton and Montreal capital.

The type of workforce in these plants was brand-new. Anglo-Saxon men still did most of the highly skilled work. The less-skilled workers were mostly immigrants who came in a large wave in the early 1900s. Each plant seemed to attract specific ethnic groups. Italians predominated in the blast furnace at Stelco. International Harvester imported a large number of Poles from its Chicago plant. Large numbers of Armenians got on the company payroll a few years later. These poorly paid workers were driven to the limits of endurance by gruff foremen who roamed the shopfloor. Protests or resistance of any sort led to dismissal, and the overall working climate was one of fear. Those who wanted to keep their jobs often had to slip the foreman a pack of cigarettes with a couple of dollars tucked inside every payday, or leave a bottle of whiskey on his desk.

It was these workers who first organized against their employers. At Stelco, the European newcomers staged strikes in 1907, 1910 and 1912. The most significant of these protests took place on March 31, 1910. Between 800 and 900 Italians, Poles and Hungarians walked out of the company’s East End blast furnace and West End Rolling Mills. Wage hikes of 5 to 10 per cent were won within the week. Two foremen were dismissed for extortion. This strike was the most significant work stoppage at Stelco prior to the 1946 strike.

Unions were rare at these plants over the next three decades. By 1919, the only unionized workers at International Harvester were its highly skilled toolmakers. The situation was similar at Stelco: unionism was limited to specific departments before World War II. In 1919, skilled workers were brought up from the United States to work in the company’s new sheet mill. They brought along their union, the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers. Negotiations with management won their local a sliding scale of wages in 1920. Two more lodges of the Amalgamated formed, but they failed to get recognition from the company before disbanding in the early 1920s. The sheet mill local also fell into disarray in the early 1930s.

Sheet-mill workers were hit with wage cuts totaling 33 per cent between 1929 and 1933. They fought back by forming their own union — the Independent Steelworkers Union. In 1935, a 10-day strike of 300 sheet-mill workers ended with mixed results. They won wage increases, but the company refused to budge on the issue of union recognition. The mill workers knew something more had to be done. As one worker put it, they quit the strike “with the idea that we would be more likely to achieve our objectives if the whole plant was organized.” This was the turning point for industrial unionism in Hamilton.