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This book investigates the labour history of a people who have not been involved in the twentieth-century labour movement in large numbers: North American Mennonites. It explores their historically-constructed attitudes toward organized labour and unions, which it attempts to understand on its own terms. Although Mennonites are typically associated with rural life, they in fact became very involved as workers in specific locations in both traditional Mennonite enclaves in Ohio, Indiana, Ontario, and Manitoba, and those to which they migrated in the twentieth century, such as British Columbia and California. Mennonites in these locales found employment both as field workers for large agri-business operations (for example, the orchards and packing plants of the San Joaquin Valley in California) and as factory hands in manufacturing firms (such as the automotive factories in southern Ontario). The late twentieth century experiences of North American Mennonites in these settings caused them to confront and reassess their attitudes toward unions. A study of these Mennonites--united by transnational ties of ethnic and religious identity yet shaped, at times, in distinct ways by their differing geographic locations, immigration histories and ethnic origins, denominational ties, and class positions--provides insights into how and why the majority of North American Mennonites have rejected labour unions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The oral histories of the 113 Mennonites interviewed provide insight into why many working North Americans are not union supporters, and how people in general negotiate tensions between their commitments to faith and conscience and the demands of their employment. An important aim of the book is to bring labour historians and historians of religion into conversation. --Publisher's description

This article reviews the book, "Redeeming Time: Protestantism and Chicago’s Eight-Hour Movement, 1866-1912," by William A. Mirola.

The article reviews the book, "The Pew and the Picket Line: Christianity and the American Working Class, edited by Christopher D. Cantwell, Heath W. Carter, and Janine Giordano Drake.

Despite an abundance of research on the Winnipeg Genral Strike of 1919, how the strike has been remembered and commemorated by subsequent generations of Winnipeggers has been understudied. Though many archived oral histories of those involved in the strike exist, the intergenerational memory of the strike has been largely unaddressed. In anticipaton of the strike's centennial, I conducted oral history interviews with six descedants of those involved in the 1919 strike, to learn how stories of the strike have been passed down in their families and how those stories shaped the interviewees' own understandings of labour and social justice. These interviews, though limited in number, attest to the importance of memory (both individual and collective) in oral history and, subsequently, in labour history.

Manufacturing Mennonites examines the efforts of Mennonite intellectuals and business leaders to redefine the group's ethno-religious identity in response to changing economic and social conditions after 1945. As the industrial workplace was one of the most significant venues in which competing identity claims were contested during this period, Janis Thiessen explores how Mennonite workers responded to such redefinitions and how they affected class relations. Through unprecedented access to extensive private company records, Thiessen provides an innovative comparison of three businesses founded, owned, and originally staffed by Mennonites: the printing firm Friesens Corporation, the window manufacturer Loewen, and the furniture manufacturer Palliser. Complemented with interviews with workers, managers, and business owners, Manufacturing Mennonites pioneers two important new trajectories for scholarship - how religion can affect business history, and how class relations have influenced religious history. --Publisher's description

Mennonite political theology, at least as manifested by church pronouncements on communism and labor unions, has been both more and less progressive than the ideology of the broader North American society. When the United States and Canadian governments were obsessed with tracking down enemy “reds” within, Mennonites passed resolutions that cautioned against the identification of Christianity with anti-communism. However, while the Second World War and the decade immediately following saw the expansion of labor unions as North Americans flocked to join them, Mennonites issued statements warning against the compromise of Christian principles that union membership would entail. --Introduction

[This thesis is] a labour history of Russian Mennonites employed in three Mennonite-owned factories in Manitoba: Friesens Corporation of Altona, Loewen Windows of Steinbach, and Palliser Furniture of Winnipeg. Each of these businesses had a primarily Mennonite workforce at their founding, and eventually became the largest employers in the community in which they were established. This comparative microhistory makes a significant contribution to the literature: though approximately one-quarter of North American Mennonites are working-class, few scholarly works have investigated their experiences. The history of immigration of these Mennonites is important in understanding their adaptation to North American capitalism. Immigrants had common experiences of some aspects of settlement, such as language acquisition and finding employment. Immigrants exhibited a variety of responses to government efforts to promote assimilation, and demonstrated different attitudes toward job security and expectations for their children, in part because of their diverse prior experiences of war, religious conservatism, and prejudice in their country of origin. The result was the development of an increasingly urban and heterogeneous Mennonite community in Manitoba, which perhaps contributed to the failure to develop a strong sense of class consciousness among them. The historical development of Mennonite religious thought in the twentieth century is connected to the geographical shift of North American Mennonites from rural to urban environs. This move necessitated a re-assessment of Mennonite religious beliefs, particularly of their understandings of 'Gelassenheit ', to nonresistance, and 'agape' love. The Christian's responsibility to the world came to be stressed at the expense of traditional values such as submission to the community and separation from the world. Religious belief had a role in restraining the behaviour of both workers and owners, encouraging the former to accept work discipline, and limiting the latter in their conspicuous consumption. In a case study, Barthes' semiological approach is used to demythologize an advertising campaign at Loewen Windows as a means of examining the linkages between religion and capitalism. The role of religion differentiated the operation of paternalism at these businesses from their non-Mennonite counterparts. Though Mennonite workers rarely expressed their views in class-conscious ' language', the 'content' of their remarks, particularly with respect to the labour process and their autonomy, points to the existence of a class division in these factories. The nature of their employment as factory workers affected not only their job mobility and security, the speed of their work, their sleeping patterns and social lives, but also their identity. Class differences between Mennonite employers and employees clearly existed; class consciousness on the part of workers is less evident. With the transformation of Friesens Corporation, Loewen Windows, and Palliser Furniture from small family businesses to large corporations, the relationship between Mennonite workers and their employers was reinterpreted. Employers made use of Mennonite religious motifs to craft a common ethos, but increased ethnic diversity in the workforce at Palliser Furniture, together with objective class differences between workers and owners at all three companies, resulted in some splits in the unity of the Mennonite workplace. The interplay of competing interests nonetheless resulted in redefinitions of ownership rights and their meaning for workers with respect to profit sharing and employee share ownership, as well as several unsuccessful attempts to unionize. The tension between Burkholder's emphasis on social responsibility, as exhibited by labour's demands for economic justice, and Hershberger's insistence on avoidance of confrontation was evident in the struggle of Manitoba Mennonites with their response to labour activism in the 1970s. Pacifism often had been dismissed as passivity in the past; now the adherence to the principle of nonviolence could be seen as an excuse for accepting economic exploitation. Mennonite support for cooperatives and credit unions could have translated into support for labour unions, but in late twentieth-century Manitoba, it did not. Though North American Mennonites' attitudes toward unions may have undergone change during this period, they continued to avoid becoming members. The conclusion explores whether Mennonite involvement in industrial capitalism is (or can ever be) in any way distinct from that of secular participants. Are there theological resources within Mennonitism that can mount an effective challenge to the negative results of global capitalism? This work is a modest attempt to contribute to the debate, both within the Mennonite community and without, regarding the possibilities for social and economic transformation. It is also an attempt to argue for the relevance of the consideration of religion in scholarly discourse in general, and historical study in particular.

Discusses the evolution of the Mennonite approach to labour relations in Manitoba with reference to an unsuccessful unionization drive at Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg in the 1990s.