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Juxtaposing a discussion of state policy with ideas of race and citizenship in Canadian civil society, Carmela K. Patrias shows how minority activists were able to bring national attention to racist employment discrimination during the Second World War and obtain official condemnation of such discrimination.

Focusing on the Niagara region, this study explains the continued adherence of thousands of Canadian workers to communist-led unions during the Cold War era. It argues that co-operation between communist-led unions and communist-led ethnic clubs and other political and social activists in the pursuit of human rights, social justice, and environmental goals explains why thousands of workers continued to adhere to such unions despite intense redbaiting in the 1940s and 1950s. Reaching out to allies beyond the workplace in solidarity unionism was especially important because of the marginalization of communist-led unions within the Canadian labour movement. The study’s findings reinforce the view that local economic and political conditions played a significant role in shaping communist-led unions in Canada. The study also highlights the contribution of interethnic collaboration among immigrant workers to the development of the Canadian labour movement. En se concentrant sur la région de Niagara, cette étude explique l’adhésion continue de milliers de travailleurs canadiens aux syndicats dirigés par des communistes pendant la période de la guerre froide. Elle soutient que la coopération entre les syndicats dirigés par des communistes et les clubs ethniques dirigés par les communistes et d’autres activistes politiques et sociaux dans la poursuite des droits de l’homme, de la justice sociale et des objectifs environnementaux explique pourquoi des milliers de travailleurs ont continué à adhérer à ces syndicats en dépit de la persécution intense dans les années 1940 et 1950. S’adresser aux alliés au-delà du lieu de travail dans une approche de syndicalisme solidaire était particulièrement important en raison de la marginalisation des syndicats dirigés par des communistes au sein du mouvement syndical canadien. Les conclusions de l’étude renforcent l’opinion selon laquelle les conditions économiques et politiques locales ont joué un rôle important dans la formation des syndicats dirigés par des communistes au Canada. L’étude met également en évidence la contribution de la collaboration interethnique parmi les travailleurs immigrants au développement du mouvement syndical canadien.

Focusing on the Niagara region, this study explains the continued adherence of thousands of Canadian workers to communist-led unions during the Cold War era. It argues that co-operation between communist-led unions and communist-led ethnic clubs and other political and social activists in the pursuit of human rights, social justice, and environmental goals explains why thousands of workers continued to adhere to such unions despite intense redbaiting in the 1940s and 1950s. Reaching out to allies beyond the workplace in solidarity unionism was especially important because of the marginalization of communist-led unions within the Canadian labour movement. The study’s findings reinforce the view that local economic and political conditions played a significant role in shaping communist-led unions in Canada. The study also highlights the contribution of interethnic collaboration among immigrant workers to the development of the Canadian labour movement.

During the period of the expansion and consolidation of the fruit and vegetable industry between about 1880 and 1945, seasonal work in the fields, orchards, packing houses and canneries of the Niagara Peninsula was performed by two main groups of marginalized workers: immigrant women and adolescents of eastern and southern European origin, and indigenous families. Contemporaries believed that these groups were inherently suited for the long hours, physical demands and low wages that characterized such work that those with greater options avoided. Such racial classification restricted their access to year-round, better-paid and cleaner work. That it was largely performed by minority groups, in turn, derogated such seasonal labour. During the two world wars, a radically different group of workers entered Niagara's agricultural workforce: middle-class, Anglo-Canadian girls and women, most often labelled farmerettes. By comparing minority workers and farmerettes in Niagara's fruit and vegetable industry the study sheds light on a little-studied sector of Canada's workforce. The willingness of the state and growers to improve working conditions generally deemed perfectly acceptable for \"foreigners\" and \"Indians,\" for the benefit of farmerettes, illustrates the workings of a racialized hierarchy in Canada's labour market with great clarity. At the same time, the limit on wages even for the privileged farmerettes simultaneously demonstrates the depth and endurance of gender-based inequality in the workforce. Au cours de la période de l'expansion et la consolidation de l'industrie des fruits et légumes entre environ 1880 et 1945, le travail saisonnier dans les champs, les vergers, les maisons d'emballage et les conserveries de la péninsule du Niagara a été réalisé par deux principaux groupes de travailleurs marginalisés : les femmes et adolescents immigrants d'origine européenne orientale et australe et les familles autochtones. Les contemporains croyaient que ces groupes étaient intrinsèquement adaptés pour les longues heures, les exigences physiques et les bas salaires qui caractérisent un tel travail que ceux qui ont plus d'options ont évité. Cette classification raciale restreint leur accès au travail toute l'année, mieux rémunéré et plus propre. Qu'il soit en grande partie réalisé par des groupes minoritaires, à son tour, dérogeait cette main-d'oeuvre saisonnière. Pendant les deux guerres mondiales, un groupe radicalement différent des travailleuses est entré dans la main-d'oeuvre agricole de Niagara : la classe moyenne, les filles et les femmes anglo-canadiennes, le plus souvent appelées fermières. En comparant les travailleurs des minorités et les fermières dans l'industrie des fruits et légumes de Niagara, l'étude met en lumière un secteur de la main-d'oeuvre du Canada peu étudié. La volonté de l'État et les producteurs d'améliorer les conditions de travail généralement considéré comme parfaitement acceptable pour les « étrangers » et « Indiens » au profit des fermières et illustre le fonctionnement d'une hiérarchie racialisée dans le marché du travail du Canada avec une grande clarté. En même temps, la limite sur les salaires, même pour les fermières privilégiées démontre simultanément la profondeur et l'endurance de l'inégalité entre les sexes dans la population active.

This study explores employers' anti-union strategies in the Niagara Peninsula from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s in order to enhance our understanding of the nature of relations between labour and capital during the period generally described as that of the postwar compromise. Relying on such unexplored archival collections as the papers of the St. Catharines firm, Ontario Editorial Bureau, as well as the collections of the Archives of Ontario and Library and Archives Canada, the study focuses on four main union-avoidance strategies: the establishment of company-dominated unions, anti-union public relations campaigns, corporate welfarism, and company relocation. By illustrating the depth and endurance of Niagara employers' opposition to unions during the period of supposed compromise between employers, workers and the state the study demonstrates that there was greater continuity than we have supposed between management views of workers' rights during the period of the postwar compromise and the neoliberalism that characterized subsequent decades. Cette étude explore les stratégies antisyndicales des employeurs dans la péninsule du Niagara depuis le milieu des années 1940 jusqu'au milieu des années 1960 afin d'améliorer notre compréhension de la nature des relations entre le travail et le capital pendant la période généralement décrite comme celle du compromis d'après-guerre. Se fondant sur des collections d'archives inexplorées telles que les dossiers de l'entreprise de St. Catharines, le Bureau de rédaction de l'Ontario, ainsi que les collections des archives publiques de l'Ontario et du Canada, l'étude met l'accent sur quatre stratégies antisyndicales principales: la création des entreprises antisyndicales, l'organisation des campagnes antisyndicales en matière de relations publiques, le maintien du bien-être des entreprises, et la délocalisation des entreprises. En illustrant la profondeur et l'endurance des employeurs du Niagara à l'égard de l'opposition aux syndicats au cours de la période du compromis supposé entre les employeurs, les travailleurs et l'état, l'étude démontre qu'il y a plus de continuité que nous avons supposée entre les opinions de la gestion sur les droits des travailleurs pendant la période du compromis d'après-guerre et le néolibéralisme qui a caractérisé les décennies subséquentes.

Juxtaposing a discussion of state policy with ideas of race and citizenship in Canadian civil society, Carmela K. Patrias shows how minority activists were able to bring national attention to racist employment discrimination during the Second World War and obtain official condemnation of such discrimination.

This focus on fears of the threat that \"enemy aliens\" posed to Canada's war effort, however, distorts the reality of the wartime experience of minority group members. In contrast to Japanese-Canadians, only a small fraction of \"enemy aliens\" of European origin were interned. The most pervasive form of discrimination against those of eastern and southern European origin was employment discrimination. As far as immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were concerned, many Canadians paid no attention to the wartime alliances of the countries from which so-called foreigners came. All of them were deemed unsuitable for many wartime jobs. Some employers explicitly called only for \"Anglo-Saxons\" to apply for jobs, others specified that no aliens or Jews need apply. Training programs for war industries turned away applicants whom they considered problem cases, such as Jews, Blacks, Chinese, Canadian children of non-British origin, and prospective trainees with relatives in enemy territory. In Toronto, such applicants were admitted only if they could show evidence of a sponsor who would employ them at the end of the program. Even people of southern and eastern European descent who had received training in western Canada for work in war industries were turned away by some Ontario employers. State officials in charge of channelling workers into war production complied with racially exclusive requests from employers. Once the thriving wartime economy increased job prospects to workers of British and northern European origin, state officials directed the members of some minorities into menial, low-paying service, agricultural, and manufacturing jobs that no one else wanted.2 Their \"race\" rather than their national origin determined the suitability of workers for different types of jobs in the eyes of employers, state officials, and other Canadians. Employment discrimination on the home front owed far less to wartime alliances on the international stage than to long-standing associations between race and fitness for certain types of employment and for citizenship in Canada. In times of scarce employment, like the war's early years, \"foreigners\" were deemed less entitled to jobs than \"real\" Canadians; once their labour in menial occupations became indispensable owing to labour shortages, employers considered minority workers less entitled to skilled jobs than Canadians of British descent. Such discrimination demonstrated that during the 1940s many Canadians believed groups that we would describe today as \"white,\" such as southern and eastern Europeans, to be racially distinct and inferior to groups originating from Great Britain and Northwestern Europe. In Bomb Girls, the only character from minority groups originating in countries not at war with Canada is \"the Slav,\" Ivan Buchinsky, who is of Ukrainian descent. Ivan, prevented from enlisting by asthma, is clearly \"one of the boys\" at Victory Munitions. His female co-workers view him as quite a catch, not least because he is an engineer. Nothing in the series indicates that in the 1940s Canadians of eastern European origin faced discrimination in attempting to enter the professions and white collar jobs. Consequently, Ivan was the exception; communities of eastern European origin - to whom many Canadians referred scornfully as \"bohunks,\" \"polacks,\" or \"hunkies\" - were made up overwhelmingly of farmers and manual workers.