| Reviews / Comptes Rendus | Labour/Le Travail, 53

Reviews / Comptes Rendus

Peter S. McInnis, Harnessing Labour Confrontation: Shaping the Postwar Settlement in Canada, 1943–1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press 2002).

THIS BOOK PROVIDES information and insight into the development of new consensual relations involving unions, employers, and governments at the end of World War II in Canada. At the outset of Harnessing Labour Confrontation, Peter McInnis argues that there "is a notable gap in our knowledge [of] the transition from all-out war to peacetime reconversion" and promises "an investigation that provides a more nuanced account of the immediate postwar years." (6–7) He delivers on this promise, particularly in Chapter Two, dealing with the broad societal debate on reconstruction at war's end, and in Chapter Four on the place of Labour-Management Production Committees (LMPCs) in "consolidat[ing] a new era of routine state intervention under the rubric of cooperation." (114) Harnessing Labour Confrontation therefore has some very strong components. Unfortunately, as I explain at the end of this review, the book lacks the theoretical and analytical coherence that would allow it to be more than the sum of its parts.

The debate on reconstruction concerned both the shape of industrial legality and the nature of the nascent Canadian welfare state. (84) Peter McInnis notes that in 1945–46 the Canadian Congress of Labour (CCL) "viewed itself as the advocate not just of its own membership but of the Canadian working class generally" (58) and presented a broad corporatist vision of the future that contrasted with the strong preference of most private companies for a return to unfettered free enterprise. For a brief time, the result of this debate was quite uncertain; indeed, just prior to the onset of the Cold War, "citizens appeared ready to opt for a much more corporatist society over the return to business as usual." (64) McInnis argues that this "fervent debate ... had the potential to secure an expansive welfare state." (47) He portrays the struggle in Gramscian terms, pitting one ideological bloc that "defended the hegemony of free enterprise" against a second ideological bloc that "proposed a counter-hegemony of tripartite corporatism." (184)

Harnessing Labour Confrontation makes it clear that individual corporations and business lobby groups took the debate about reconstruction very seriously. In my own research on the Crowsnest Pass, I have found some highly ideological advocacy advertisements that ran in local papers just after World War II. An example is the quarter-page ad for the Imperial Bank of Canada that appeared in the Fernie Free Press on 5 September 1946. Titled, "Canada's Way of Life," the ad noted the bank's services to retailers and listed the bank's branches in Natal and Fernie, BC. Its primary message, however, was that the needs of Canadian consumers would be met by retail stores that epitomize the qualities defining the Canadian way of life: "individual initiative ... free enterprise ... personal responsibility ... the spirit of competition in service rendered the public." Harnessing Labour Confrontation allows us to put such a local advertisement in a national political context. McInnis presents four advocacy ads purchased by four other major corporations that ran in the Financial Post in 1944 and 1945. (73–76) He argues, "That Canada's largest banks and leading corporations found it necessary to present such images is a telling comment on the perceived threat to the status quo." (72) The fact that this type of advocacy was extended to the Crowsnest Pass, a bastion of support for industrial unions and socialist politics, confirms McInnis's conclusion.

The corporate offensive against unions and social welfare programs included the establishment of private institutes that scrutinized and countered union legislative proposals. These institutes promoted provincial jurisdiction over labour legislation (78) and undoubtedly lobbied very hard prior to the federal-provincial conference of labour ministers in October 1946 that discussed the possibility of a uniform labour code. Despite considerable provincial support for a uniform code, the federal minister, Humphrey Mitchell, actively discouraged such a step. (159) Big Business proved to be a very active and successful lobby group in the mid-1940s, just as it has been in recent decades.

Peter McInnis portrays "Teamwork for Harmony," his chapter on Labour-Management Production Committees (LMPCs), as a corrective to existing postwar labour histories that have concentrated on "overt conflict and intra-union political rivalry." (115) The chapter is quite successful because it presents rich empirical materials within a strong theoretical framework and posits interesting conclusions. One of those conclusions is that "LMPCs served to entrench a functioning model of industrial democracy on a micro-level, which in turn helped build confidence in the larger macro-level strategies under development for postwar industrial legality." (124) While this judgment is supported by the sketchy documentary evidence available to the author, further research is needed to establish the ways that LMPCs articulated with union organizing, shopfloor militancy, and strikes in particular workplaces. Such research would also shed light on the validity of McInnis's provocative assertion that the willingness of Canadian unions to participate in LMPCs and other cooperative ventures with management "spurred the development of a 'split-level' economy that favoured the strongest trade unions." (144)

Harnessing Labour Confrontation includes reproductions of six intriguing government posters produced in 1946 on the theme of "Produce for Prosperity." (130–143) These posters implored Canadian workers to cooperate and increase production in order to create more jobs and secure a higher standard of living. In addition, the posters presented gendered representations of labour, as did government literature on LMPCs. Peter McInnis's analysis of the gendered assumptions in these materials is another reminder of the speed with which, at the end of World War II, "gender politics were ... returned to their prewar formation." (137)

I have three main criticisms of this book, despite my appreciation of its many accomplishments. Firstly, at a number of different points in the text the author laments how the new system of industrial legality "stifled spontaneous worker self-activity." (191; SA 3 and 125) But he fails to theoretically or empirically link this issue to the main theme in his narrative, namely the hegemonic struggle between the supporters of free enterprise on the one hand and the supporters of tripartite corporatism on the other. Secondly, McInnis condemns choosing sides when producing historical narratives (8) but then proceeds to choose sides at different points in his text (for example, the CCF's "narrow class-collaborationist policies" make a cameo appearance on page 69). My problem is less with his choices than with his claim that history can eschew choices. To my mind the best narratives both focus on "complexities and ambiguities" (8) and are explicit about political sympathies.

Finally, Harnessing Labour Confrontation lacks the coherence that would have been provided by a consistent theoretical discussion or a unifying narrative of key events. From chapter to chapter, and even within chapters, the book reads like a collection of brief empirical studies rather than an integrated study of the period. These studies are effectively collected and organized by Peter McInnis, but they do not fit together as part of a bigger picture. Perhaps this is less the fault of the author and more an indication of the difficulty of researching and writing a critical labour history "on the 'national' level of civil society."(9)


Tom Langford University of Calgary

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