Not Talking Union

Thiessen's study examines the labour history of North American Mennonites, a group that for the most part stayed out of the large-scale labour movement of the twentieth century. Instead of measuring their stance against outside expectations, the book asks how their views on organized labour and unions took shape, and it tries to explain those views using the community's own frame of reference.

Mennonites tend to be associated with rural life, but many also worked for wages. Members of long-established communities in Ohio, Indiana, Ontario and Manitoba, along with those who later moved to places such as British Columbia and California, took jobs in large agricultural operations, including the orchards and packing plants of the San Joaquin Valley, and in manufacturing, including the automotive factories of southern Ontario. Their experiences in these workplaces during the late twentieth century led them to rethink their position on unions.

Despite a shared transnational sense of ethnic and religious identity, Mennonites differed in where they lived, how and when they immigrated, their ethnic origins, their denominational ties and their class position, and the book shows how these differences shaped their choices. It explains why most North American Mennonites rejected labour unions across the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

The analysis rests on oral histories with 113 Mennonites. These interviews shed light on why many working North Americans do not support unions and on how people balance their commitments to faith and conscience against the demands of their jobs. The author also aims to connect labour historians with historians of religion.