Provincial Solidarities: A History of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour by David Frank (review)

History is a collaborative discipline, and in recent years the opportunities for collaborative projects have expanded, in Canada and internationally. David Frank’s history of the New Brunswick Federation of Labour is the product of a partnership among universities and several off-campus organizations, including the eponymous federation itself. Although single-authored, the book was made possible by a Community-University Research Alliance funded by SSHRC, and the author is generous in his acknowledgement of the alliance that he represents.

The challenge is to meet the canons of scholarship while writing for interested non-academic readers, including the community partners. While the latter groups may have little interest in the details of policy and labour legislation (much of these appearing in forty-four pages of discursive endnotes), they will find a clear account of the federation, its struggles, and its evolving relationships with affiliates, international unions, and governments. Frank offers lively vignettes of the federation presidents, and his story benefits from over fifty well-chosen illustrations. Frank’s portrait of the federation is sympathetic and positive, but it is no mere celebration of past achievements. The book offers a carefully reasoned reminder of the contribution of unions and their central organizations, both to unionized workplaces and to democracy in Canada as a whole.

The scholarly challenge is a difficult one. A balance between the history of labour in the province and the institutional history of the union central is not easily achieved, and there are few recent histories of provincial federations to allow a comparative perspective. Frank weaves the federation into a wider story, drawing at every point on his long immersion in the labour history of his province and of Canada. “Disappointments and divisions” in the federation’s long quest for solidarity and social justice are fully part of the narrative. The federation emerged from the craft union tradition and faced several rivals from the industrial union movement and from nationalist Canadian unions. The tensions between the federation and more militant unions and radical political alternatives (especially socialism) are a recurring theme. Frank devotes appropriate attention to the federation’s often slow response to women workers and to Acadian workers (it was not until 1972 that federation conventions provided simultaneous translation). Much attention is given to the federation’s lobbying for legislative changes and its response to a long series of provincial acts: the Fair Wages Act and the Labour and Industrial Relations Act in the late 1930s, which did little more than raise expectations; the Labour Relations Act of 1947, which created the system of industrial legalism in the province; the Public Service Labour Relations Act of 1968, which created collective bargaining for public sector workers; and subsequent state actions, both provincial and federal, in the era of restraint, wage controls, back-to-work legislation, and other forms of coercion.

The provincial context necessarily takes priority, but readers are given the opportunity to observe where the New Brunswick story resembles and differs from patterns in other provinces. We are left wishing for similar historical accounts of other provincial federations and the labour histories they reflect. We may also wish for a more sustained engagement with critical perspectives on trade unionism in Canada. The federation presidents in their suits and ties represent a union leadership that was transformed by industrial legalism, and one wonders what room there might be for Mark Leier’s perspective on labour bureaucracy and its distance from rank-and-file union members. Let us hope that such wishes may inspire further research and reflection, while we welcome and applaud this fine book and the alliance of historical research and social justice that it serves so well.