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Author Thiessen, Janis, 1971- author.

Title Not talking union : an oral history of North American Mennonites and labour / Janis Thiessen
Published Montreal ; Kingston ; London ; Chicago : McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016

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Description 1 online resource
Contents Introduction -- 1 "I tell you these things because it cast my view of God": Narratives of Religious Belief -- 2 "Not part of the landscape": Attitudes toward Unions -- "What would you say, for the archives?" California Mennonites and Migrant Workers -- 4 "What is said publicly must be carefully framed": Mennonite Memory of California Conflict -- 5 "They work with troubled conscience" Conscientious Objections to Unions in Manitoba -- 6 "It's easy to write a paper; it's not so easy to live": The Faith-Based Workplace -- Conclusion
Summary "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."-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Labor unions -- United States -- Religious aspects -- Mennonites
Labor unions -- Canada -- Religious aspects -- Mennonites
Mennonites -- United States -- Attitudes
Mennonites -- Canada -- Attitudes
Labor unions -- United States -- History
Labor unions -- Canada -- History
Oral history -- United States
Oral history -- Canada
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Labor.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Labor & Industrial Relations.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Sociology of Religion.
Labor unions -- Religious aspects -- Mennonites
Labor unions
Mennonites -- Attitudes
Oral history
Gewerkschaft
Mündliche Überlieferung
Mennoniten
Canada
United States
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780773598942
0773598944
9780773598959
0773598952
9780773547537
0773547533
9780773547520
0773547525