VI
ORGANIZED LABOR'S RELATION TO THE
COMPANY UNION.
Labor's Argument.
Labor's case against the company union is implicit in all we have written above. Labor unions in America are against these trained seal unions for a hundred reasons some of which, tho overlapping, we can summarize in short order:
1. Under the company union the workers cannot be served by paid representatives of their own choosing—by the agents of the labor union.
2. The company union "representatives" are responsible to no one. They can "sell out" with impunity. The workers have no comeback. They are unorganized and without a treasury.
3. With two or three exceptions all company unions definitely forbid the existence or functioning of a real labor union among the workers covered by the company organizations.
4. The company union is without any economic power. It cannot strike. It has no funds, no independence, no connection with outside workers who might assist it in a struggle. Without this connection it can have no real bargaining power.
5. The company has every advantage in dealing with the company union. It has lawyers, personnel men, technicians, statisticians and labor relations advisors. The workers have no one comparable to face the corporation talent in a wage or other bargaining session. To call company union sessions with employers "negotiations" is to caricature the meaning of that word.
6. The company unions are used by the employers in getting injunctions against labor unions; their "contracts" with the corporations are used in
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