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
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