These included the elimination of asbestos dust inside and outside of the mill; a fifteen cent an hour general wage increase; a five-cent an hour increase for night work; a social security fund to be administered by the union; the implementation of the Rand Formula; and "double time" payment for work on Sundays and holidays.
Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis sided strongly with the companies, largely due to his hostility to all forms of socialism.
Some of the incidents included: On March 14, a dynamite explosion destroyed part of a railroad track that led into the Johns-Manville Corporation Canadian subsidiary property.
The Catholic Church, which had until that time been largely supportive of the Union Nationale government of Duplessis, profoundly affected the strike.
On March 5, Archbishop Joseph Charbonneau delivered a fiercely pro-union speech asking all Catholics to donate to help the strikers.
The next day, the riot act was read and mass arrests of the strikers had begun, including a raid on the church.
[citation needed] The strike was in large part led by Jean Marchand, a labour unionist.
Marchand, Pelletier and Trudeau would eventually become prominent Canadian politicians and were known later in their political careers as Les Trois Colombes (the Three Wise Men).
argue that the strikers were simply pursuing better conditions and that the resulting change in society was an unintended byproduct.
[citation needed] In 2004, a French-language book about the strike by author-historian Esther Delisle and Pierre K. Malouf was published under the title Le Quatuor d'Asbestos.