mutual interests of employers and employees, has to a great extent removed the necessity for unionism." And where labor unions have to be destroyed, the company association has proved of great value to the employer. Scores of "plans" have been installed during or at the close of unsuccessful strikes. Refusing to deal with the trade union, the employer must frequently offer his workers a substitute "collective bargaining" on another platter. The Western Union Telegraph Company, the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, du Pont de Nemours & Company, Washburn-Crosby Company, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Co., and the leading meat packing companies are illustrations of the types of corporations, the shop committees of which have been used as effective instruments in "liquidating" trade union organization among their workers.
"Promoting Efficiency."
In the shops where the presence or threat of unionism is absent, the chief general purpose of the company union is to promote efficiency and get more work out of the workers. The tendency is for a large number of grievances to be settled soon after the introduction of a plan, but these gradually recede in importance. This tendency is described by the Assistant to the President of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, writing in Factory, in 1925:
"Grievances, in importance, are rapidly being replaced by constructive operation problems, covering such subjects as increased production, better quality and service."
And Harold Swift, Vice President of Swift and Company, writes in the same journal, that:
"the attitude of our assembly has broadened so as to include practically all matters of interest to employees' welfare without undue prominence to wages, hours, or grievances."
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