After the six week FASWOC strike in 1984 “the cleaners put on a celebratory party in a Portuguese hall for the families of strikers and union supporters and about four hundred people attended. The cleaners cooked the five course meal themselves, and did all the clean-up. Many of them, dressed in their nicest dresses with aprons overtop, ran back and forth between the kitchen where they prepared the food, the microphone where they gave speeches, and the dance floor. Some cleaners brought their traditional homemade wine to the party (which was illegal), and a large cake was decorated with the slogan, “O povo, unido, jamais sera vencido”. The cleaners, their families, and supporters danced until 3 a.m.”
[Excerpt from Susana Miranda’s pHD which was the major resource in our research on Cleaner’s Action. Paula Susana Ferreira Miranda, “Not Ashamed or Afraid, Portuguese Immigrant Women in Toronto’s Cleaning Industry, 1950s – 1995” (PhD dissertation, York University, 2010), p334-5.]