Industrial legality and workplace control: Merchant seamen, the Park Steamship Company, and the Canadian Seamen's Union, 1942-1948

Canada's modern maritime past is an understudied aspect of the nation's history. During World War Two the Canadian government undertook a rapid merchant shipbuilding programme and rebuilt the country's Merchant Navy by placing 176 vessels under the ownership of a Crown corporation, the Park Steamship Company Ltd.;This thesis examines the working lives and struggles of the merchant seamen who served on the Park fleet. It is particularly focused on the elaborate system of laws and routines which organised the bargaining relationship between employees and employers in this context. All sailors on the Park fleet were eventually covered by collective agreements negotiated by the Canadian Seamen's Union. They were incorporated into a system of "industrial legality", a term used to denote not only these contracts but also the whole network of laws and procedures through which the state sought to stabilise class relations in industry. This thesis examines the impact of industrial legality on the working and living conditions of the sailors who served on the Park vessels during and immediately following the Second World War.;Sailors did benefit from the collective agreements; wages and conditions on the Park fleet improved by the end of the war. At the same time they lost some of their ability to bargain at the ship level to a combination of union, shipping company, and government officials. However the new structures complemented rather than supplanted the old. Seamen continued to use traditional methods to shape their workplace throughout the war.