During the Second World War, the Congress of Industrial Organizations in Canada grew from a handful of members to more than a quarter-million and from political insignificance to a position of influence in the emergence of the welfare state. What was it about the “good war” that brought about this phenomenal growth?

Labour Goes to War analyzes the organizing strategies of the CIO during the war to show that both cultural and economic forces were at work. Labour shortages gave workers greater power in the workplace and increased their militancy. But workers’ patriotism, their ties to those on active service, and allegiance to the “people’s war” also contributed to the CIO’s growth – and to what it claimed for workers. Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Wendy Cuthbertson illuminates this complex wartime context. She also shows how the complex, often contradictory, motives of workers during this period left the Canadian labour movement with an ambivalent progressive/conservative legacy.