I.
WHAT ARE COMPANY UNIONS?
The Definition.
By company union, as the term is used in the pages of this pamphlet, we mean all kinds of shop committees, representation plans, works councils, conference boards, boards of operatives and industrial representation schemes, applied to the workers of a particular company or plant, and instituted on the initiative of the company employing these workers. "Shop committees," as the term is understood by trade unionists, are not discussed in these pages, but only those committees initiated, controlled and dominated by the employers and divorced from the trade union movement.
This pamphlet also will not include any discussion of certain types of dual unions instituted usually thru the influence of a number of employers, or by an association of companies, and including the workers in the several plants or mines operated by these companies. Such unions as the recently organized Mine Workers' Association of West Virginia, the Pittsburgh District Federated Miners' Association, and the Independent Bridge and Structural Iron Workers' Union, (confined to New York City), are not included in these pages. There may, however, be one or two such associations covered by the figures on railroad company unions.
As indicated in the preface, we have also excluded from this discussion those different shades of class collaboration which, tho involving regular trade unions, have in effect almost the same purposes as company unions.
The company unions discussed in this pamphlet are the familiar types, of company-installed works councils and employee representation plans, covering the workers of companies, large and small, ranging all the way from small clothing firms to the great steel, packing, and railroad companies.
Relation to Other "Welfare" Schemes.
Company unions are usually accompanied by other welfare, uplift, and cooperation schemes, which will not be treated in these pages both because they are subjects for separate studies and because they are not an essential accompaniment of company union plans. Many companies, such as the United States Steel Corporation, that have introduced stock ownership for workers, have no company unions. Other companies that have gone in for "representation" have not adopted stock ownership, thrift schemes, bonuses, and other "loyalty" and production stimulating devices. Some companies believe they can keep their workers "under control," and out of labor unions, by the application of the more obvious welfare poultices. Others, more thoro-going, believe their workers cannot be kept on the road of "sound economics" without some sort of "works council" scheme thru which they can have a "voice" in certain limited features of factory management. So we find all sorts of variations and degrees of paternalism in the gamut of personnel relations. In this study we confine ourselves to one phase of these relations, although occasional references will necessarily be made to other management devices now in vogue in American industry.
Backed by the Open Shoppers.
It should be noted at the outset that company unions are a part of the program of many of the American Plan and Open Shop associations, large and small, local and national. At conventions and conferences they have endorsed this device as a 100 per cent American way to bring capital and labor together.
The League for Industrial Rights, one of the most active open shop, anti-union organizations, urges the workers to rally to "factory solidarity" as opposed to "class solidarity." The factory solidarity program includes undivided allegiance and loyalty to the leadership of the employer and his foremen. "These are the only labor leaders the employees need," say these militant class-conscious employers.
The Chamber of Commerce of the United States has officially endorsed this "new union," or this "new type of collective action." The report of one of its conventions, as carried by a well known capitalist wire association, touches on the company union resolutions as follows:
"The business union—the United States Chamber of Commerce—will foster the Rockefeller plan of shop representation whereby workers will be given a slice of control in shop affairs. This divides industrial workers into shop groups which in case of labor strikes could expect no support from any other group."
This news report goes on to state that "the business union" (the United States Chamber of Commerce) proposes to be a national combination. But, it insists on "shop representation" or single plant organization for labor.
In this story of the Chamber of Commerce endorsement we get the kernel of the company union idea. It could hardly be better stated to bring out its essentially anti-union character. The slogan is: "Unite the Employers. Divide the Workers."
The more furious of the manufacturers' organs, such as the New York Commercial, hail these company unions as the death knell of "so-called collective bargaining" and "widespread organization of labor" which, with the growth of the employee representation plans, is now "unneeded."
Mr. Noel Sargent, manager of the Industrial Relations Department of the National Association of Manufacturers, and a most sedulous mouthpiece of the open shop interests, in a report on labor in England in 1925, contrasts the more favorable condition in which the American capitalists find themselves in view of the weakness of labor here and the growth of the company union. He says:
"The growth of various forms of 'employee representation' in American plants, providing for collective agreement between the management and workers of the individual plant … provides true collective bargaining instead of the form which exists under closed shop agreements in both America and England."
And such outspoken union-baiters as Henry Harrison Lewis, agent of President Barr of the National Founders' Association, and editor of many journals fighting for the non-union shop, have been lavish in their praise of the company union, particularly the highly advertised Pennsylvania committee plan. Like the League for Industrial Rights, Lewis and his organizations and organs are keen for the "new type of intra-factory organization of employees" and believe it will "produce greater loyalty and solidarity between the management and the employees and thereby make the men less susceptible to the appeal of militancy."
It need not be explained to the reader of this pamphlet that to the open shop, company union advocate, "militancy" means any form of bona fide labor union activity.