From factory workers in Welland to retail workers in St. Catharines,from hospitality workers in Niagara Falls to migrant farm workers inNiagara-On-The-Lake, Union Power showcases the role of workingpeople in the Niagara region. Charting the development of theregion’s labour movement from the early nineteenth century to thepresent, Patrias and Savage illustrate how workers from this highlydiversified economy struggled to improve their lives both inside andoutside the workplace. Including extensive quotations from interviews,archival sources, and local newspapers, the story unfolds, in part,through the voices of the people themselves: the workers who fought forunions, the community members who supported them, and the employers whoopposed them.
Early industrial development and the appalling working conditions ofthe often vulnerable common labourer prompted a movement toward workerprotection. Patrias and Savage argue that union power – power notbuilt on profit, status, or prestige – relies on the twinconcepts of struggle and solidarity: the solidarity of the sharedinterests of the working class and the struggle to achieve commongoals. Union Power traces the evidence of these twin conceptsthrough the history of the Niagara region’s labour movement.