The Historical Origins of an Industrial Disaster: Occupational Health and Labour Relations at the Fluorspar Mines, St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, 1933-1945
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Using union, government, and company records, as well as oral interviews, this article explores the origins of one of the most notorious industrial disasters in Canadian history — the deaths from industrial disease of some 200 fluorspar miners on the south coast of Newfoundland. It explores the social, economic, and political forces that shaped the hazards they believed were destroying their health, and the response of industry and the state to those efforts. Central to the account is a series of strikes that took place during 1941 and the actions of a government tribunal appointed to settle the dispute. Setting events at St. Lawrence in the context of some of the theoretical and methodological considerations intrinsic to the study of occupational health as a labour relations issue, this article not only adds to our knowledge of the forces that shaped this particular disaster, but also represents a contribution to a neglected area of Canadian labour and working-class history. Resume En utilisant les dossiers du syndicat, du gouvernement et de l’entreprise, ainsi que des entrevues, cet article explore les origines d’un des desastres industriels les plus connus dans l’histoire canadienne — la mort de 200 mineurs de spathfluor d’une maladie industrielle sur la cote sud de Terre-Neuve. Il explore les forces sociales, economiques et politiques ayant faconne les dangers que les mineurs croyaient avaient nui a leur sante, ainsi que la reponse de l’industrie et de l’Etat a ces efforts. Essentielles a cette tragedie etaient les greves successives qui avaient eu lieu en 1941 et les actions d’un tribunal gouvernemental nomme pour regler le conflit. En mettant les evenements a St. Lawrence dans le contexte de certaines considerations theoriques et methodiques intrinseques a l’etude de la sante au travail comme probleme de relations professionnelles, cet article non seulement ajoute a notre connaissance les forces qui avaient faconne ce desastre en particulier, mais aussi represente une contribution a une partie negligee de l’histoire canadienne du travail et de la classe ouvriere.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.014 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".