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PART IV. LABOR UNIONS

XXIV

TRADE-UNIONS VERSUS SHOP COMMITTEES1

T THE Convention of the American Federation of Labor in

AT 1918 the following resolution was adopted on the recom

mendation of the Executive Council:

Betterment for wage-earners under all circumstances depends upon the control they exercise through economic organization. Control brings with it responsibility. The right of workers to a share in the results of increasing production, which makes possible their advancement and reproduction under proper conditions, means greater interest in increasing output.

The Executive Council believes that in all large permanent shops a regular arrangement should be provided whereby :

First, a committee of the workers would regularly meet with the shop management to confer over matters of production; and whereby :Second, such committee could carry, beyond the foreman and the superintendent, to the general manager or to the president any important grievance which the workers may have with reference to wages, hours, and conditions.

It is fundamental for efficiency in production that the essentials of team work be understood and followed by all. There must be opportunity for intercourse and exchange of viewpoints between workers and managers. It is this machinery for solving industrial problems that is fundamental.

The constructive demands outlined above are predicated upon the basic principle of the right and opportunity of workers to organize and make collective agreements. There is no other way to bring about coöperation for production except by organization of workers.

1 From Proceedings of the Thirty-eighth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor (1918), pp. 85, 329, 330.

Organization is the orderly system for dealing with questions which concern labor in order that decisions and adjustments may be reached that further the best interests of all concerned. Employers and workers must talk over matters of mutual interest and reach understandings. In present large-scale industry this can be done only by the use of the representative system, or what is commonly called collective bargaining, which is the foundation of all effective just labor administration.

This was followed at the Convention of 1919 by the following :1 Resolution No. 201 By request of the National Committee for

Organizing the Iron and Steel Workers.

WHEREAS, Many steel corporations and other industrial institutions have instituted in their plants systems of collective bargaining akin to the Rockefeller plan; and

WHEREAS, Extensive experience has shown that while the employers are busily carrying on propaganda lauding these company unions to the skies, as a great improvement over trade-unions, they are at the same time just as actively enforcing a series of vicious practices that hamstring such organizations and render them useless to their employees. Of these practices the following are a few:

1. Unfair elections and representation. The first essential for the proper working of a genuine collective-bargaining committee is that it be composed entirely as the organized workers may elect and altogether free from the company's influence. Only then can it be truly representative of the men and responsive to their wishes. Upon such committees bosses, representing as they do the antagonism of the company, are so much poison. Not only is it impossible for them personally to represent the men but they also negate the influence of the real workers' delegates. Knowing this very well, the steel companies, through campaigns of intimidation and election fraud, load their company-union committees with bosses, usually to the point of a majority. So baneful is this practice that were the company unions otherwise perfect it alone could suffice to entirely destroy their usefulness to the workers.

2. No democratic organization permitted. It is common knowledge that in order for the workers to arrive at a uniform understanding

1 Proceedings of the Thirty-ninth Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor (1919), p. 302.

through the systematization and formulation of their grievances and demands it is necessary for them to enjoy and practice the rights of free speech, free assembly, and free association. They must conduct an elaborate series of meetings under their own control and generally carry on their business in a democratic, organized way. But with the company-union system this is impossible. All independent organization and meetings are prohibited on pain of discharge. Consequently the workers are kept voiceless and destitute of a program. They are deliberately held down to the status of a mob. Under such circumstances intelligent, aggressive action by them is out of the question.

3. Intimidation of committeemen. As part of the general plan to keep their company unions from being of any possible service to their employees it is customary for the companies to summarily discharge committeemen who dare to make a stand in behalf of the workers. The records show a multitude of such cases. Being unorganized, the men are powerless to defend their representatives. The natural consequence is that the committees soon degenerate into groups of men supinely subservient to the wishes of the company and deaf to those of the workers.

4. Expert assistance prohibited. When dealing with their employees in any manner, employers always thoroughly safeguard themselves by enlisting the aid of the very best brains procurable. The only way the workers can cope with this array of experts is to have the help of experienced labor leaders, but under the company-union system this is impossible. All association with trade-union officials. is strictly prohibited. The company reserves to itself the right to expert assistance. As a result the green workers' committee, already weakened in a dozen ways, is left practically helpless before the experts upon the company's side.

5. Company union lacks power. In establishing wages, hours, and working conditions in their plants employers habitually use their great economic power to enforce their will. Therefore, to secure just treatment the only recourse for the workers is to develop a power equally strong and to confront their employers with it. Unless they can do this their case is hopeless. In this vital respect the company union is a complete failure. With hardly a pretense of organization, unaffiliated with other groups of workers in the same

industry, destitute of funds, and unfitted to use the strike weapon, it is totally unable to enforce its will, should it by miracle have one favorable to the workers. Weak and helpless, all it can do is to submit to the dictation of the company. It can make no effective fight for the men.

6. Company diverts aim. As though the foregoing practices were not enough to thoroughly cripple the company unions, the employers make assurance doubly sure by seeing to it that their committees ignore the vital needs of the workers and confine themselves to minor and extraneous matters, such as fake safety-first movements, problems of efficiency, handing bouquets to high company officials, etc. Discussions of wages, hours, and working conditions are taboo on pain of discharge for the committeeman who dares insist upon them. Thus the company unions complete their record of deceit and weakness by dodging the labor question altogether.

WHEREAS, In view of the foregoing facts, it is evident that company unions are unqualified to represent the interests of the workers, and that they are a delusion and a snare set up by the companies for the express purpose of deluding the workers into the belief that they have some protection and thus have no need for trade-union organization; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That we disapprove and condemn all such company unions and advise our membership to have nothing to do with them; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That we demand the right to bargain collectively through the only kind of organization fitted for this purpose-the trade-union-and that we stand loyally together until this right is conceded us.

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TRADE-UNION," according to one authority, "is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment." A tradeunion, although usually including benevolent and fraternal features, is something more than a mere fraternal order which might easily be a continuous association of wage-earners. The purpose of maintaining or improving conditions of employment involves means and ends and a more or less fixed policy which makes an organization a tradeunion. Trade-unionism involves collective bargaining as over against individual bargaining for wages and conditions of employment and the use of the strike as a weapon of last resort in enforcing demands. A number of American trade-unions began as mutual benevolent and fraternal societies and have become under economic pressure regular labor organizations. A similar development is now going on in a number of organizations resembling in some respects trade-unions, and it is the purpose of this paper to show if possible by the study of concrete instances the trend of this development.

The dividing line between fraternal or beneficiary organizations and trade-unions seems to lie in the matter of collective bargaining and in the attitude towards strikes. The National Association of Stationary Engineers, for example, which was organized in 1882, lays stress upon educational and beneficiary features and declares that "this Association shall at no time be used for the furtherance of strikes, or for the purpose of interfering in any way between its members and their employers as to wages."3 Strikes, moreover, it is urged, are unnecessary because of the identity of interest between

1 From Quarterly Journal, University of North Dakota, Vol. IX (1919), pp. 169-180.

2 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 1. 1902.

3 The National Engineer, February, 1904, p. 34; Preamble, Constitution (1914), P. 3.

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