44 Hours or Strike!
In 1931, during the Great Depression, fourteen-year-old Sophie Abramson and her sixteen-year-old sister, Rose, are garment workers who join the Toronto Dressmakers’ Strike, supported by their union, to demand better working conditions, shorter hours and decent wages. It’s the middle of winter, and all the workers on strike are impoverished and desperate to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. To add to their woes, mistrust and resentment toward immigrants is rampant, and many people blame them for their own poverty and unemployment. When Rose is imprisoned for a month for her action on the picket line and her mother is hospitalized, Sophie is left on her own to continue the fight for a cause she believes is valid but is leaving her with nothing.
44 Hours or Strike is a novella that uses the story of the girls’ struggles to mask a documentary-like report of the events and the conditions of the time. Photographs with explanations lend to the documentary style. But the girls’ hardships, as well as the prejudices and conditions of the time, hit the reader hard, making anyone reading the story appreciate what the strikers did for future generations of workers. For 14 plus
