IV
SPECIMENS.
To give the reader a close-up of company unions, and a better understanding of the employers' objectives, let us sketch briefly a few of them. We have already noted that there are endless varieties of plans. Attempts have been made to classify them according to form, structure, degree of "control" permitted the worker, and by other arbitrary standards. We leave aside these hair-splitting distinctions based upon analysis of constitutions and by-laws. We describe the plans with a view to showing what they have meant in terms of anti-trade unionism, in the only terms the average employer can comprehend. The class-conscious corporation manager asks of the company union one major favor, "Rid my plant of the union"; or, "Keep that union out of my shop." Those workers who have had intimate experience with the company union may consider the following examples all too inadequate to illustrate this one underlying motive of the capitalist. However, these random examples suggest the intensity of the struggle between the trade union and the company unions and the main characteristics of the latter. And in non-union industries, where few workers have ever been permanently organized, these examples will suggest the methods used to cultivate this most subtle and paternalistic instrument of exploitation.
Packing House Councils.—"Industrial Democracy" in the Jungle.
Since 1920–21, the workers in the packing houses of Armour, Swift, Wilson, and Cudahy—the big quartette of meat preparers—have been working under company committees and councils. These councils and conference boards were installed to engineer wage cuts and put the trade union out of commission. A wage cut of 10 per cent was effected in November, 1921, thanks to the docility of the Armour "representatives" and their fellow-dupes in the plants of the other firms. When some of the militants struck against this sell-out, and all the stock yards were crippled by the strike, the judges, police, and other agents of the capitalist state, put to rout the recalcitrant workers. The "representatives" were bullied into getting the workers back to the plants, and the strike fizzled in two months. The publicity men of Swift and Company thereupon announced that "the whole episode was a justification of our taking our employees into our confidence." The company union had scored!
All these highly advertised packers' plans are presented to the public as new ventures in "industrial government." They are said to inspire in the worker "an interest in the business," and to give him an opportunity to "learn the point of view of the employer." But the control over the lives of the workers remains exclusively in the hands of the management. The Swift plan, for example, leaves the final veto power with the chief executive of the company. The Armour conference board plan also permits the worker to appeal to the Big Boss—the General Superintendent. From his decision there is no higher appeal unless the worker—cares to carry his case to God—or his story to the Daily Worker!
Under the "new democracy" bearing the Armour label, the general superintendent presides over all meetings of the General Plant Conference, the supreme "parliament" of the Armour plants. Imagine a worker—an ordinary hog-killer—filling such an important post. It would never do under the Armour brand of democracy! Note also that the other strategic and influential position—secretary of the Conference Board—is always occupied by a salaried company official, functioning from the "front office" and under the thumb of the superintendent. Under such strike-proof control what chance does a worker have who proposes a wage increase? Oh yes, a committee will be appointed "to look into the matter." The company will serve up the necessary figures to prove the impossibility of a wage advance. The hand-picked committee will be confused, and "impressed" with the company's figures. The wage move will be smothered. The worker who proposed it may be fired. To be sure, he can appeal to the General Superintendent!
Accompanying the packers' company unions are the other incentives to plant loyalty—bonus schemes, pensions, group insurance, safety devices, company magazines—all concentrated on one thing—to teach the worker the highly-prized "sound economics" which the company experts have invented. The worker is "made to see the problems of the company" and the frightful competition the company has to undergo—in a monopolistic industry! There are also the usual stool pigeons, spies, and undercover men invaluable to any company that would keep abreast of "what's on the workers' mind."
The most recent act of the company union in the Armour Plant has been to entertain suggestions from the company that the 12- and 14-hour day, and the 60-hour week schedule be restored. At present the plants are operating on a ten hour day and a 54-hour week. Should the packers put over this move it would be largely due to their careful cultivation of the Conference Board Plan.
The "splendid spirit of devotion to the company's interest" which Mr. Louis F. Swift, President of Swift & Company, refers to in his annual report for 1925, resulted in an approximately 18% return on the real investment of the stockholders. At the same time the average male worker in the packing house earned $27 a week. Mr. Swift attributes the "devotion" to employee representation.
General Electric Company.
In 1918 the trade unions were strong in the plants of the General Electric Company. The National War Labor Board, as was its custom, installed shop committees in settling a strike and the regular unions went along in good faith. After the war and the liquidation of the Labor Board, the regular unions were deflated but the shop committees remained to function under the domination of the company. In Lynn the plan has gained the loyalty of some of the old strike leaders who have accepted responsible posts on Joint Adjustment Committees. As with other plans of a certain type the Committee's decisions are referred to the plant manager whose decision is final. One old worker who has displayed high powers of absorption of the employers' point of view, writing in Management and Administration, says: "We passed thru two wage reductions without labor difficulty of any kind."
The General Electric News, a classy fortnightly published by the Lynn Works, is used chiefly to promote the plan. Minutes of the committees show the plan concerned chiefly with home ownership, safety rules, and the "general business outlook." The remainder of the pages of the News are packed with social notes, bridal showers, tributes paid by Gerard Swope, the President of the Company, to a deceased member of J. P. Morgan & Company, radio club news, "sound economics," illustrations, children's puzzle pictures, baby contest snap shots, a report of a speech by Owen D. Young, blurbs on the joint celebration of Roosevelt Day and Navy Day, bowling club scores, and other "human interest" material. (Incidentally, the importance of the company's employee magazine in cultivating the plans and the "plan spirit" should be carefully studied by those interested in the spread of company unions. The works journal is the most effective channel through which plans are put over—and kept over—among the workers).
At the G. E. C. works at Schenectady the representation plan is also in full boom. A report from a reliable informant at this plant in October, 1925, tells of a "representative" who lost his job "because he took his position seriously and actually tried to represent the wishes of his fellow-workers who had chosen him." It appears that he fought for the rights of his constituents and was fired for his pains. The regular trade unions have been almost completely extinguished in the Schenectady Works thanks to the deceitful company association. The electrical workers' union which formerly had nearly 2,000 members in the plant has now been reduced to "a number" not disclosed by the local business agents. The machinists were also quite active in the plant in wartime, but are now defeated and unrecognized. Patternmakers and plumbers are functioning to some extent. This situation illustrates the weakness of the out-of-date craft unions in the face of a plant management with a policy directed against organized labor, and using the "factory solidarity" argument to build up the company organization. No wonder the General Manager of the G. E. C. can be reported by the Commercial and Financial Chronicle as saying, "If we had been 100 per cent right in our dealings with labor, labor would never have organized … in my opinion employee representation substitutes a better method and will prevail." A better method of robbing the workers!
General Atterbury's Pennsylvania.
Of all the many die-hard enemies of labor among the railroads the Pennsylvania System probably ranks first. And foremost among the union-hating members of the Railway Executives' Association stands the head of its Labor Committee and the President of the Pennsylvania—Brigadier General W. W. Atterbury. We may single out the Pennsylvania as the outstanding railroad company union plan altho, as we have seen, there are more than 60 railroads which have set up company committees to supplant some of the standard labor unions previously recognized.
The story of the Pennsylvania’s assault on the shop crafts' unions, the clerks' organization, the maintenance of way brotherhood, the telegraphers, is the story of abrupt refusal to deal with unions representing anywhere from 75 to 90 per cent of the men in these classes, of the holding of bogus elections in violation of the order of the Railroad Labor Board, of the boycott of these elections by the mass of the workers, of company committees instituted in spite of this boycott, of "bargaining" carried on between these committees—representing a fraction of the workers—and the company's personnel department, of conferences and conventions of these handpicked committeemen, of piece work introduced and wage classifications adjusted to the wishes of the company. It is a story of union men attempting to stand up against this ruthless offensive, of furloughs terminated, of men discharged, of committees dismissed, of union meetings prevented, of spies and espionage agents at work underground, of men intimidated into voting under the Plan. It is a story full of the rankest disregard of every principle phrased on the hypocritical lips of the company agents. … Even the company unions of other railroads point to the Pennsylvania Plan as autocratic and the committees as too "dependent" on the company's will! What the labor unions think of the Atterbury Plan need hardly be repeated to those who read the railroad workers' journals.
But not all the railroad workers' unions have faced this onslaught. The four train service brotherhoods have been notably immune. Their strength has saved them and their willingness to keep their mouths shut and watch a brother union drown. There is no doubt that Atterbury has sought to drive the wedge even deeper to break what tendency toward solidarity there may have been among railroad unions during the days of amalgamation agitation and the Plumb Plan League. To weaken the shop craft unions and the other newer unions whose growth was a wartime, mushroom affair, was Atterbury's purpose. To keep the aristocratic engineers, trainmen, conductors, and firemen—the skilled service group—apart from the others, was his end, and he and his banker friends have accomplished it to the detriment of the weaker unions and the whole labor movement.
Atterbury, and Elisha Lee, the Vice-President of the P. R. R., have boasted of their cordial relations with the Big Four Brotherhoods, who, they point out, have "gone along" with the Plan. The Big Four men will tell you they have simply kept their old bargaining arrangements but with some modifications, apparently to conform to the structure of the Plan. For we find the P. R. R. circulating at one time, in its fight with the shop crafts and the clerks, a pamphlet bearing the title, "An Employee's View of How the Plan of Employee Representation Actually Works." The author is one H. E. Core, General Chairman, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. The introductory blurb runs:
"Mr. Core is recognized as the spokesman of the Engine and Train Service Employees of the Pennsylvania Railroad. He describes the amicable settlement of disputes by the methods in effect on this railroad as an 'amazing record'. The address from which these extracts are reprinted was recently delivered before the New York Railroad Club." Mr. Core certainly delivers the goods for the company. He says:
"It is not an Atterbury plan. It is not an employee representation plan. It is a Pennsylvania plan; it is a cooperative plan."
He goes further and tells us something about the origin of the plan, which corresponds with the story as given in the other plan-boosting pamphlets or the P. R. R.:
"This plan was formulated at a meeting between the general chairman of the four transportation organizations and the several general managers of the system, at the initiative of Vice-President (he has since become President—R. W. D.) Atterbury in December, 1920, becoming effective January 1, 1921."
Other Big Four officials have helped Atterbury sell his plan to the workers and to the public. Several of them have appeared on the same platform with company agents extolling the virtues of "industrial representation."
The future of the Pennsylvania Plan cannot be foretold, but it can at least be predicted that the present leaders of the four service brotherhoods now chiefly concerned with insurance, labor banking, investments and business stability, will do nothing to wipe out this plan which has greatly weakened four important brother unions on that road. In fact, the new Railway Labor Act, backed by Atterbury, W. N. Doak, friend and advisor of Bascom Slemp, millionaire open shop coal operator, and W. G. Lee, President of the Steigelmyer Manufacturing Company, a $10,000,000 concern at Seymour, Indiana, (Doak and Lee, strange as it may appear to European readers, are labor officials!) appears to be another scheme to keep the union officials away from thoughts of struggle for better conditions. Having delivered the weaker unions a body blow, Atterbury and his associates will "carry on" as usual with the respectable Big Four brotherhoods while permitting the blessings of open shop company unionism to fall upon the great mass of the "boys" on the line. The labor official Polyannas are reputed to be hopeful that the new legislation will help them to oust the company union from Atterbury's road. However, they have not explained as yet just how this is to be done without a stand-up fight against the company. Without such a fight, organization strength among the shop crafts, clerks, and others be never be regained.
The Rockefeller Plan.
More investigated and discussed than any other plan is the one introduced in 1915–16 in the plants and mines of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. It is impossible to more than summarize here the thorough studies of these company plans made by the Russel Sage Foundation. The upshot of all the research into the coal mine employee representation reveals the plan as "a beautiful automobile without an engine." The employees, as usual, have no treasury, no separate business agents, no power or control over anything vital. In the last analysis whatever is done is done on company initiative. Trade unions are not recognized. Union meetings are forbidden in buildings in company towns and camps. The plan, like others, calls for "no discrimination" for mere membership in a trade union, but it is one thing to have such a rule, and another thing to enforce it. And, as usual, we may ask: what does individual membership in a union mean unless the union functions in the mine? The answer is: "Nothing!" However, in this instance the real union by fighting and bargaining, does fix the wages in other mines which are taken as a basis for payments in the Rockefeller mines. In other words, the workers under the organized slavery of the company union are parasites enjoying the conditions made possible for them by the struggles and hardships of organized workers in other places! Besides, we find the workers so terrified and crushed by the job-fear that they dare not bring up the grievances to the committees, assuming that the latter might do them any good. (See Employes' Representation in Coal Mines, by Ben M. Selekman and Mary Van Kleeck).
Since the Sage Foundation study was published we have seen the plan used to reduce wages. In March, 1925, a 20 per cent reduction was put over with the aid of the State Industrial Commission. In August, 1925, the company circulated among the men a petition for another reduction of 11 per cent. Sixteen coal diggers in one mine refused to sign on the dotted line. They were promptly discharged. Some mines, where they refused to vote for the cut, were closed down entirely. At still other mines, for example, at Coal Creek, writes Felix Pagliano, Secretary of District 15, United Mine Workers of America, "the men voted solidly against any cut, and were duly informed by the general manager that it did not make any difference to the company; the cut would be made." The same union official reports that "everything is open shop in these Colorado mines," and that means that if a man is known to be active in the union, there is no work for him.
The Steel Workers Fare No Better.
And the Rockefellerized steel workers of the Minnequa Steel Works of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company fare no better, as another report of the Sage Foundation discloses. Furthermore, the wages are even lower than for the coal miners, because there is no national union, even outside the works, to set basic standards of wage payments for the Minnequa workers. (The United States Steel Corporation establishes the basic wage standards in the industry).
This plan was inaugurated by the company in 1916. The indifferent workers, with no trade union experience, were simply talked or forced into it. A "president's industrial representative" was placed over them in charge of the operation of the plan. The decisions of the meetings are not mandates, but simply recommendations to the management which can throw them in the waste basket if it so desires. The workers are often afraid to appeal their grievances above the foreman. They have no way of knowing what the conditions are in other plants; they have to take the management's word for it. Altogether, their plight is the same, if not worse than that of the company unionized coal workers who help to swell the profits of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
Plan for Pullman Porters.
The Pullman Company, manufacturers and operators of the kind of railroad coaches workers do not use, has a record of anti-unionism that stretches back into the last quarter of the last century, beyond the strike of 1894, broken by government order. Labor spies, discharges for union activity, merciless exploitation, all are recorded in the pages of the report of the Industrial Relations Commission, (1916). … With these conditions still in existence, the Pullman Company attempts to veneer its crimes with a coat of pure paternalism. The employee representation plan, adopted in 1920, is the result.
The Pullman Plan is run from the Pullman office and by its labor department. It promises no discrimination for unionists. Actually it has discharged some of the best men in its service for activity in the interest of the workers. Totten, Lancaster, and others, now connected with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, are among those who for a while tried to use the plan to secure some benefits for their fellow workers. The Pullman bosses rewarded them by putting them off their cars. The company forces 12,000 porters to use the plan and vote for representatives. It intimidates, penalizes, frames up, and discharges those who question its motives or who try to make the plan useful to the mass of the porters.
When the more intelligent workers, seeing the hollowness of the plan, turn against it and try to tie up with the labor movement, the company hires Negro attorneys, clergymen, and politicians to attack the real union and extol the company plan. They buy up colored newspapers, pass out thousands of dollars for advertising space, speed up their espionage system, and fight with every means, fair and foul, to down the workers who, thru experience, have learned that the plan is a hoax and a fraud. Closely associated with the plan is a Benefit Association, not a cent of the funds of which can be expended without a company O. K. The officers are all "company men" or "welfare worker" stool pigeons who have been bought off by the company to betray their brothers.
In connection with the Pullman Plan it is interesting to note that workers strong enough organizationally to resist the Plan have been relieved of its hypocrisies. The Order of Sleeping Car Conductors refused to have anything to do with the Plan. It organized the Pullman conductors, and increased their wages 100 per cent. Otherwise it would be tied, gagged, and demoralized by the Plan, as are the Pullman porters who are beginning to turn to the real union. The farcical convention of company-bought porters which met in January, 1926, to grant the porters a microscopic wage increase has turned the men all the more toward the trade unions as they realize that the concessions made by the company are entirely due to the increasing strength of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
The Mitten Method.
Then we have the Mitten plan on the lines of the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company, one of the oldest and most widely discussed of all the schemes now in operation. The Cooperative Plan and the Cooperative Welfare Association, the first for "collective bargaining," the second for welfare and other activities, have together routed the union from these street railway lines and won what appears to be the undivided loyalty of many of the workers. The plan, as is well known, was introduced after the great street car strikes of 1909 and 1910 when the Mitten Management took over all the street car properties of the city. Since then the regular labor union has been out of the picture. The last flurry of union activity was in 1918 when the Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employes attempted to call a strike without success.
The plan leaves the hire and fire control in Mr. Mitten's hands. It was adopted paternalistically and is operated paternalistically. Men who show an active interest in the labor movement are quietly "eased off" the job. But in spite of these factors the majority of the men are caught by the welfare and stock-ownership features and by the shrewd, magnetic, expansive, egoistic personality of Mr. Mitten. Labor men will tell you that many of the conditions which occasioned the grievances leading to the walkout of 1910 are still in force, and that the plan will fall either with Mitten's death or in case of a financial reorganization of the company, which would disillusion the men with respect to their hopes of "some day" owning the company thru the Mitten stock-ownership device.
As under other parasitic company plans, wages on the Mitten lines have been based until recently on a "four-city standard" which had been won thru the struggles of the unionized street car workers in other cities. Even under the new cost-of-living method of regulating wages recently established on the P. R. T., the standards won by the regular trade union have still to be equalled by Mitten. Should the regular union be beaten in other cities, he will naturally come down to the lower rates established s a result of any defeat of the union.
A Kodak Company's Plan.
The Eastman Kodak Company, one of the pet examples of a "good employer" presented by the personnel experts, has also used the company union in one of its plants. A reliable official of the Metal Polishers' International Union reports on a nine year job in Eastman's Rochester plant. Toward the end of his stay the company union was introduced with the promise that "every man was going to get a square deal." In spite of this, three attempts were made to oust the metal polisher and his active union associates. Thanks to the labor union members who stood by him he resisted the first two attempts to fire him on technicalities. The third time he was laid off on account of unemployment. When requested to give him a letter of recommendation to another plant, a company executive wrote that his workmanship was good, but his "character very poor, was a disturber in the department, retarded production, and had distorted views on economic questions." These words reflect the general opinion of company union employers toward active trade unionists in their plants. This worker, who is an exceptionally keen observer, describes the company union as "a plan of representation including delegates from the employees of each department who meet at different times to discuss baseball, bowling, picnics, and banquets. But never did they at any time—and I attended nearly all of the meetings—take up any matter that was of vital interest to the workers, such as wages and hours of labor." This, as we have noted, is a common complaint against the company union. It is willing to discuss almost anything except issues of genuine importance to the workers. As a device for putting over "welfare" this type of union is without an equal. As an instrument for stifling important economic demands it is equally effective.
International Harvester Company.
Some twenty plants of this company in the United States and Canada are working under the Harvester Industrial Council scheme. The plan has been much praised by employers ever since 1919 when most of the plants adopted it. One of the Chicago plants held out at the time, and when its workers went on strike later, the council was used to close down the other Chicago plants "to avoid bloodshed," which is one way of saying that picketing was effective. Finally, the strikes were beaten and since then the Harvester plan has been a model for imitation by smaller companies thruout the country. The plan stresses the educational features and is used with skill to offset what its spokesmen call "the promiscuous propaganda" of "organized labor and labor agents." The workers are given "the facts" in the usual way and the company-directed "leaders" do the rest. A Department of Industrial Relations, similar to that used by the Pullman and other large companies, gives special attention to the plan, and the chairman of this department, a salaried official of the company, or some one appointed by him, acts as chairman of the works council, while the secretary of the council is appointed by the superintendent of the works. The company prides itself on the way the plan has been used to reduce wages "without friction" while the workers, particularly in the Tractor Works in Chicago, speak of the plan as a "bitter joke" and regard the representatives as "company men." Said one of the workers, "we know and they know that they would not dare to run for the position of representing us unless they obeyed every wish of the Harvester Company. Their jobs would be taken from them." Active union men have been discharged from the plant for being too talkative on behalf of real unionism. Of course no unions are recognized as all the works are completely open shop. Americanization, stock-selling, and safety campaigns are tied in with the plan, and the workers' representatives are inspired with "mutual responsibility" by handing over to them minor jobs in connection with the administration of these "morale-building" devices.
Southern Mills and Dr. Frank Crane.
Among the textiles the company union has had a more cautious growth due largely to the weakness of the trade unions and the consequent absence of any effective threat of organization which, as we have seen, drives the employers to seize on the company union as a defensive weapon. In the South several corporations, like the Durham Hosiery Co. and the Riverside and Dan River Mills, have used the Congress, Senate and Cabinet type of "industrial democracy" in fighting off the United Textile Workers. These Dan River workers, incidentally, were among the first to vote themselves drastic wage cuts in 1920. Whereupon Dr. Frank Crane, the notorious word weaver, told his readers that the New Day of Democracy had arrived in industry. That Crane was justified in using this gorgeous generality seems a little dubious judging from the wages paid in this mill, and the servile attitude of the workers. But being a capitalist journalist, his soul may have been elevated by the mere words used in connection with this Dan River plan. The company circulates among its workers a printed pledge card. On one side of the card are printed many pretty paragraphs about Justice, Cooperation, Economy, Energy, Service. On the other side, this oath:
"I hereby subscribe to and heartily endorse the Policy of our Company as printed on the back of this card. I pledge myself to observe and be governed by its principles of Justice, Cooperation, Economy, Energy, and Service. I also agree with my fellow-associates of the Riverside and Dan River Cotton Mills that by the help of God, I will do all in my power to aid in carrying out this Policy and to achieve the distinguished success which I believe is within the reach of our great organization.
Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Date . . . . . . . . . .
Street Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ."
In a speech before the Rotary Club of his home city, the President of these mills informed his audience that his plan embodied the ethics of the Rotarians and the teachings of the Apostle Paul! Also that "the spirit of Industrial Democracy kindles within the heart of man the inextinguishable flame that is to burn out the dross of his own selfishness and imperfections and transform him into a new creature." However, the miraculous workings of this "spirit" are reserved for the "white person." Negro workers are not eligible for election to the workers' body, the House of Representatives. This practice is, to be sure, common enough in the South and is shared, for example, by the American Cast Iron Pipe Company of Birmingham, Alabama, two-thirds of whose 1,500 workers are colored. The Negroes there can vote under the plan, but they must elect whites to the Board of Operatives! The management explains that the two races would never work together. Besides, a separate board has been set up for the colored men which, the personnel department manager tells us, "discusses matters pertaining to the moral and religious side of their lives." This spiritual note is sounded in connection with many of the plans, but it rises with particular fervor in the Fundamentalist belt of the South. This same cast iron pipe plant in its "Industrial Cooperation Manual," which in some respects resembles an Episcopalian prayer book, describes the service department of the works as follows:
"This third division of our Plan of Service is concerned with our employees. What is known as our 'service work' for employees was begun in 1911 with the building of a bath house. Since that time the plans to render service to employees have developed gradually, one step suggesting another, until the point was reached in December, 1921, when the Management announced that the Golden Rule and the teachings of Jesus Christ were to be made the controlling principles of the business."
Peace at the Pacific.
In the North the Pacific Mills of Lawrence which have persistently fought any attempt at unionization for two decades, have installed a plan calculated to give the workers the impression that they have something to say about the plant, without granting them a particle of real authority. An executive of the company recently explained to a friend of the writer that the company was learning how to rid itself of labor disturbances by the use of this plan. One of the tricks used in connection with the inauguration of the plan was to pay the committee's expenses on an "investigation tour" to the General Electric Company, the United States Rubber Company, and others. The executive explained: "Of course we sent them to the factories where we knew they would see the things we wanted them to see." The committee returned to Lawrence, met for a day or two (presumably on company property and on company time, and with the personnel director advising them) and adopted the plan.
Does this plan give the workers any power? The company with unusual candor explains that it does not. It also explains that in most factories where some legislative function appears to be given to the workers, the actual fact is that "this function is so safeguarded that all the executive power actually remains with the management." So the Pacific Mills, with a degree of frankness not displayed by most companies, calls its plan "advisory." In other words it helps the company to find out more exactly just what the sentiment of the workers is. It can thus be better prepared to give the workers the proper kind of economic dope to make them swallow wage cuts when they come. For example, in 1925, when the Pacific put over a cut in the woolen department, the shop councils were simply called together by the management and the wage cut briefly explained. The employees were given no opportunity to vote on the reduction. The plan, you see, is strictly advisory. However, the ‘workers are the ones who receive the advice. The employers do the advising when it comes to vital questions like wages.
Plans and Spies at Passaic.
Take another example from the textile field, from that spy and blacklist ridden city, Passaic, N. J., and from that efficient union-smashing machine, the Forstmann & Huffmann Company, woolen and worsted goods manufacturers. "Mutual understanding, cooperation, and good will" is the slogan. The "Representative Assembly," elected from "wards," meets with the management four times a year. The annual dinner, a free spread by the company, takes up one of these occasions. Workers in the mill report that "company men" and espionage agents put themselves forward as candidates to "represent" the workers in the Assembly. They frequently get elected by having the illiterate Hungarian and Polish workers write their names or check numbers on the ballots. Any worker who is not close to the company has no chance of getting elected. An efficient card catalog blacklist system operated from a central employment office for all the woolen mills of Passaic, keeps out of the plant any workers suspected of relations with textile unions which have several times been beaten out of existence in the city.
"Why don't the workers take up their grievances with their 'ward representatives'?" one alert worker was asked. The answer was simple: "If he did he would get a double envelope in two weeks," which means he would be dropped from the payroll the next pay day. … Like under similar plans in other mills, the elections are held on company time and the worker is herded into line to drop a ballot in the box. The company agents circulate among the workers telling them whom it would be good to vote for, and the photographers snap pictures to tell the world of another "popular election at Forstmann's." As for wages, they are set by the company and announced to the Assembly. Should the management decide upon a reduction, the Assembly accepts it without question. Its interests are over minor matters of ventilation, baseball teams, and the annual picnic. A company magazine, printed in several languages, helps to keep the workers gulled. An unusually venal city administration and a squad of motorcycle policemen lend aid, when necessary, in deporting union "agitators" from the city. The woolen companies are thus kept safe for the "F. & H." type of understanding and good will! (For further light on the results of Passaic company unionism read the reports of the woolen and worsted workers' strike now—May, 1926—in progress in that city. The company "assembly;" or "suckers' union," as the workers call it; is being employed to break the strike).
"Disloyalty" in Steel.
The Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company, since absorbed by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, introduced some years ago a plan of representation which in some of its provisions illustrates the "catch" in other such plans. The company, as usual, reserves the right to hire, suspend, and discharge men. And what are the excuses the company needs to discharge a worker? They are mentioned in the printed constitution. Guilty of any of them, he is liable to "immediate discharge without notice."
(a) "Disloyalty to the United States Government by act or utterance" (any trade unionist who perhaps suggests that Calvin Coolidge is not as wise as God Almighty);
(b) "Refusal to obey a reasonable order of his superior officer" (the superior officer, of course, reserving the right to determine what is "reasonable");
(c) "Carelessness, failure to report for duty regularly, inefficiency, etc." (not difficult charges to make against any man when the foreman wants to get rid of him).
Midvale illustrates also the type of plan in which the final appeal is to the all-powerful tsar, the General Superintendent. "Any employee discharged for cause, may demand that such cause be clearly stated to him, and shall have the right of appeal to the General Superintendent either in person or thru his elected representative." And if the General Superintendent doesn't happen to like his looks—or his economic ideas—the worker finds himself on his way out.
Bethlehem and Buffalo.
"It is capitalism's move and Bethlehem has shown the way" wrote an enthusiastic "personnel engineer" two years ago, after examining the plan installed in 1918 by Charles M. Schwab and his fellow directors of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, a company which can shower "industrial democracy" blessings on its thousands of unorganized steel hands while violating its agreement with the miners' union in West Virginia. It is always easy to be sweet to a foe when you have him paralyzed and on his back. Charlie Schwab is sweet to his slaves at Bethlehem, Steeltown, Johnstown and Coatesville.
Under Charlie's plan one has much the same advantages as those enjoyed under the Midvale scheme just mentioned. "Representatives" who think they have been intimidated by the company can appeal to Mr. Eugene Grace, the President of the Company! And if Mr. Grace shows grace but no mercy, the worker can step right on up to Mr. James J. Davis, millionaire Secretary of Labor, Grand High Kleagle of the Loyal Order of Moose, advocate of finger-printing our 7,000,000 alien population, and Deportation Agent Extraordinary for the United States Government. Mr. Davis's decision "shall be binding."
These Bethlehem committees have the usual power. They can recommend that a new pane of glass be put in a window, that the toilets be flushed regularly, that workers be permitted to keep goats in their back yards. The findings of these committees, however, are not mandatory. They are recommendatory. The higher-ups can carry out the suggestions of these committees if they are so disposed. The Bethlehem Steel Corporation considers that the plan is "good business." It has also introduced the plan at the Lackawanna Steel Company, its Buffalo subsidiary. At the time the new harmony was introduced in this plant, President Grace said:
"We are in argument with no one. We want to regard ourselves as a big happy family, wedded 100 per cent to the interests of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, each of us just as important to it as the other."
Wheeling Steel Corporation.
Another steel company which has succeeded in displacing the trade union by the use of a company union plus a corps of spies, a private army of thugs, and an expensive battery of lawyers and personnel managers is the Wheeling Steel Corporation.[1] This corporation has driven the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers off the premises chiefly by the use of injunctions which prevent the strikers from talking to the nonunion men. To take care of the strikebreakers, boarded free on the company's property, the corporation has installed a representation system which is now in full blast. In spite of the expense entailed by the items mentioned above, the company's profits in 1924 amounted to $5,251,430. The company union has proved a thoroly profitable device—from the business point of view.
The United States Steel Corporation.
We mention U. S. Steel as an outstanding exception.[2] It has no company union. It doesn't need one. It has every other welfare wrinkle at work, purely, to use Judge Gary's own words, as "a business proposition." It is "old-fashioned" in some of its methods; up-to-date in others. Judge Gary and his Labor Department know other tricks that work as well as committees and which preserve the "military discipline" on which the corporation takes such pride. The blacklist and the discharges for union activity from which there is no appeal, operate in the corporation's mills.
The U. S. Steel autocracy is also important to a study of company unions because its wages determine the wages in every other steel mill, no matter how. much "discussion" there may be of wages and conditions in those other mills, or how extensive their plans for giving the workers the illusion that they are negotiating. From Colorado to Bethlehem, steel mills wait for Gary to decide what wages he will give his men. The independent steel companies follow suit no matter how elaborate their system of "representation."
The Steel Corporation is satisfied that its "Helfare" work, as the workers call it, will keep the loyalty of the men without any "industrial representation." Still the personnel professionalists and the liberal economists are yelping at the Corporation's heels with advice as to the timeliness of such a plan. They point out that the strike antagonisms of 1919 have had six years to cool, that the union is down and out, and hence the introduction of a plan would not be looked upon as a palliative in lieu of real union recognition. They also intimate that "public opinion" is not so heated about Garyism as it was before 1923 when the longer hours were cut.
But Gary budgets his welfare outlay carefully and, he sees no reason why there should ever be any organization to challenge his power in the steel industry. Hence, why bother about committees? With barely 10,000 steel worker "aristocrats" organized out of more than 260,000 steel workers in his plants he should worry about a union ever forcing his hand!
It may be added, that Mr. Gary's social panacea, according to a recent interview is "the general adoption and practice of the Golden Rule."
Samuel Insull's Views.
Then we have in the public utility field, where the movement has recently spread so rapidly, the People's Gas, Light & Coke Company of Chicago, an Insull company, which operates an employee representation scheme prepared and installed by the Bureau of Commercial Economics, Inc., of Chicago. An Industrial Relations Department connected with the company, presides over the plan, and the head of this department is chairman at all the meetings. And Mr. Samuel Insull, supercapitalist, addresses his "worker representatives" occasionally in order to stimulate the family spirit. On one occasion he harangued his company unionites as follows:
"My advice is to be conservative in your action. It is easy to get applause by radical propositions. … The real success of this effort depends on how few of your propositions have to come up to me finally for decision. If I don't hear from the employees' representation plan for a whole year, I shall know that it has functioned properly and has been highly successful."
In other words, if no cases are appealed to the Grand High Justice of the Klan, Mr. Insull himself, he will know that "democracy" is working properly among his people. A wage appeal carried to the Chief by some wilful subject would indicate clearly that the plan was not successful! For wage appeals must be smothered in committee. Plan committees are devised with a view to this end.
A Standard Oil Device.
In all its fields—producing, refining, and marketing—the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey has introduced a plan. John D. Jr. had seen a similar arrangement controlling his workers in coal mine and steel mill in Colorado. He decided, in 1918. to permit the oil workers to come under the yoke. In the Bayonne district alone some 12,000 refinery workers are affected.
Investigators who have studied the Rockefeller plan in oil find it similar to other schemes described above. It has not affected wages except to assist the company over certain ticklish places where a strike, like those of 1915 and 1916 in Bayonne, might have resulted. Wages have been determined by the company statisticians. The representatives have merely O. K.'d the items. The plan is admittedly advisory and is merely to bring out "opinions" of the workers so that the company may have a more accurate guide in determining its differential of exploitation. No separate meetings of the employees are permitted. No separate spokesman is allowed. Joint Council meetings are called at the discretion of superintendents and with no regularity. Vital questions such as promotions, layoffs, transfers, and annuities, are considered "company business" not to be discussed by the council. The workers have only a shadowy right to appeal to 26 Broadway when such matters do not suit them. Discharges can be made for "cause" and this may be as wide a technicality as the superintendent cares to make it. The foremen, as under the Colorado plan, have not been tamed. They possess subtle and effective methods for intimidating the men and their "representatives." Pensions and stock ownership devices, depending upon length of service, hold the men to their jobs. To strike would be to lose all the "benefits" accumulated under these devices.
These are but a few of the plan provisions which bind the worker hand and foot to the company while giving him certain trivial "representation" privileges, and the "representatives" a chance to play at conference with the executives and to banquet once a year with the bosses.
In 1924 a request for a ten per cent wage increase was demanded and was immediately refused, by no means the first time this had occurred. There was some talk of striking and at a mass meeting of workers, called against company orders, one speaker declared that the company had "fairly swamped" them in conference with its statistics on the cost of living. "We could get nowhere," he lamented! Nothing happened.
No wonder Ralph M. Easley, life-tenure secretary of the National Civil Federation and pal of Sam Gompers and August Belmont could remark some years ago when the Standard plan was adopted:
"Instead of promoting class hatreds, which the American Bolsheviki hoped it would do, the war situation is just having the reverse effect. A striking illustration of this can be found in the recent industrial program adopted jointly by the thousands of unorganized employees of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the officials of that Company."
- ↑ See Chapter I of "The Labor Spy," by Sidney Howard, for a certain "R-O"—Jake Peters—who handled undercover work for the Corporations' Auxiliary Company, the nation-wide spy agency, employed by this company in 1919.
- ↑ Henry Ford might be mentioned as another. Henry has never gone in for committees and has rather worried the personnel managers by his backwardness in this respect. Being in no fear of trade unions, he replies realistically that "facts, not votes, decide technical questions." He thus lays bare the sham of many other employers who contend that their workers are being permitted a "say" over production questions. Ford's feudalism is strictly paternal and despotic, with certain welfare features added to assist in extracting the last penny of surplus value from his serfs.