Purpose This paper sets out to accomplish the following: expand our understand of Eileen Tallman-Sufrin as an important but overlooked Canadian labour leader, organizer and author of labour policy, to expand our understanding of the development of Canada’s labour history and some of its enduring characteristics thus contributing to more historical and contemporary and scholarly engagement, to bring into focus the contributions of women to both unionizing in Canada and as contributors to Canadian labour discourse and to illustrate the power of ficto-feminism as a critical biographical method for management history. Guiding this study are the following research questions: Who was Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, and what were her key accomplishments? And why is she not a more prominent figure in Canada’s labour history? This study aims to present the key contribution of a new discrete history of an important but neglected female labour organizer, which is distinctly feminist in composition. Design/methodology/approach Ficto-feminism is a way to surface neglected figures and consider their overlooked accomplishments and contributions. Combining aspects of autoethnography, fictocriticism and collective biography, Ficto-feminism is an explicitly feminist method for feminist historical inquiry, and it is distinguishable by the writing which emerges from its application, which is polemical, embodied, affective and full of resonance. For feminist writers, it is also a strategy to engage with female historical figures anew in contemporary discourse. Ficto-feminism also contributes to the growing feminist tradition in management and organizational studies, called writing differently. Findings Eileen Tallman-Sufrin led one of the most ambitious drives in Canada’s labour history, with one of the largest employers in Canada. Additionally, the effort was unprecedented in size and with a previously ununionized, white-collar, largely female workforce. Further, she is responsible for engaging thousands of women in organizing throughout Canada, including in leadership roles. She also offered training and penned a book, which unlike herself, has become a taken-for-granted contribution to labour history (and labour education) in Canada (The Eaton Drive). Additionally, she helped contribute to other women making scholarly contributions to Canada’s labour history. She also went on to write one of the most comprehensive comparative studies of labour relations legislation in Canada. The reasons for her relative obscurity are as follows: she was not a prominent figure in her own writing, often writing in a passive voice, and foregrounding the activity of the work instead of her role in it; women’s organizing history is limited and Canadian women’s organizing history even more so; women writing on labour history in Canada is also limited and sexism in the labour movement in Canada was profound. Originality/value Combining archival traces and interviews with Eileen Tallman-Sufrin, this paper features a fictitious conversation between the author and Eileen Tallman-Sufrin. This exchange not only gives insights into Eileen Tallman-Sufrin as a person but reinforces the importance of her accomplishments in the context of Canada’s labour history, management and organizational studies and management history. Unlike previous interviews, this new composite conversation is explicitly feminist, embodied and personal. As such, it is an agentive exercise for both subject and author, in service to feminism, management and organizational studies and management history. This study capitalizes on the utility of ficto-feminism to generate the equivalent of new documentary-style source material by offering a feminist reading of previously less consider or unconsidered primary and secondary sources. Ficto-feminism also achieves a bridge between criticism and narration, a key challenge in creating feminist histories.
Kristin S. Williams (Thu,) studied this question.