Hope against Hope: Strike Activity in Canada, 1920-1939

The received view is that, across countries and time, strike dimensions trace an empirical regularity. The incidence and duration of contract strikes move in opposite directions over the business cycle: incidence is procyclical and duration countercyclical. The Canadian experience in the interwar years was different. Strike incidence was independent of the business cycle and strike durations fell steadily over the period. A distinct pattern emerged. The 1920s saw a decline in strike activity and steady losses for workers; in the 1930s strike activity gained momentum and there were more worker wins. Our interpretation of this extraordinary episode is based on a new data set collected for the period 1920 to 1939. We evaluate strikes in the context of a war-of-attrition model and estimate the probability of strike outcomes (success, failure, or compromise) and capitulation times (for firms and workers) as functions of firm and striker characteristics. We find that workers capitulated first in the 1920s because firms used replacement workers as part of a larger strategy to break the union movement. In the 1930s, it was firms' turn to capitulate first because they had cut back on resources to fight strikes, even as workers became more belligerent.