While historians have come to recognize industrialization as a highly specific and diverse process there are few case studies that detail this variable process. Moreover, a reconsideration of the role of production and shop floor relations in labor activity has not followed. Production at Saint-Nazaire’s shipbuilding industry from 1880 to the Great War demonstrates the fitful and complex nature of the industrial transformation and the multiplicity of workplace experiences created. It also shows that labor solidarity and activity arose from factors specific to the industrial facility, the labor process, and the community, patterns not yet fully examined in other industries.