reason for his discharge. There are plenty of plausible technical reasons with which the management may camouflage its real objectives. It is extremely rare in any industry, no matter how fully nonunion it may be, for the management to tell a discharged worker that he is being fired for union affiliation. Some other reason is always given. How can we believe, then, that management drops this practice the minute it adopts a company union plan, which in nine cases out of ten is admittedly an anti-union device?
Furthermore, we find in some of these "no-discrimination" clauses certain limitations which confine the "protection"—such as it is—to only a part of the workers. For example, the Memorandum of Terms between the Shell Oil Company of California and its employees provides "that membership in any labor union affiliated with the American Federation of Labor shall not be a bar to employment, nor shall any man be discharged or discriminated against for membership in any such union." It happens that the I. W. W. are active in California. They are placed beyond the pale by this agreement. It is perfectly proper and legitimate to discharge a "wobbly" should he happen to be discovered working for the Shell Oil Company. The same is true, for example, of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation, and other mining companies using company unions in the West. The wobblies are beyond the law, and United States Department of Labor commissioners of conciliation, assisted by Department of Justice agents and Burns dicks are employed to drive them off the properties, to hound and deport them. The A. F. of L. unionists—the few that there are—may be promised "protection" and "no discrimination," but so long as they are not recognized as a union and have no say in the bargaining arrangements of the company, they are,
56
