American Company Unions

by Robert Williams Dunn

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Militants, Notice!

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Organize! Join the Trade Union Educational League. This is a system of informal committees throughout the entire union movement, organized to infuse the mass with revolutionary understanding and spirit. It is working for the closer affiliation and solidification of our existing craft unions until they have been developed into industrial unions. Believing that all workers should stand together regardless of their social or other opinions, it is opposed to the common policy of radical and progressive-minded workers quitting the trade unions and starting rival organizations based upon ideal principles. That policy is one of the chief reasons why the American labor movement is not further advanced. Its principal effects are to destroy all radical organization in the old unions and to leave the reactionaries in undisputed control.

The Trade Union Educational League is in no sense a dual union, nor is it affiliated with any such organization. It is purely an educational body of militants within existing mass unions, who are seeking through the application of modern methods to bring the policies and structure of the labor movement into harmony with present day economic conditions. It bespeaks the active cooperation of all militant union workers. For further details apply to the

Trade Union Educational League

156 W. Washington St., Chicago, Ill.

American Company
Unions

A STUDY OF EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATION PLANS,
"WORKS COUNCILS" AND OTHER SUBSTI-
TUTES FOR LABOR UNIONS

By ROBERT W. DUNN

 

WITH CONCLUSION AND A PROGRAM FOR THE FIGHT
AGAINST COMPANY UNIONISM

By WILLIAM Z. FOSTER

 

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Price 25 Cents

 

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Published by the

Trade Union Educational League
156 W. Washington St.
CHICAGO, ILL.

CONTENTS

Page
I.	What Are Company Unions?	4
	The Definition.
	Relation to Other "Welfare" Schemes.
	Backed by the Open Shoppers.
II.	Extent of Company Unions.	8
	Developments 1917 to Date.
	The Railroad Company Unions.
III.	Why Company Unions Are Installed.	12
	The Chief Aim.
	The Employers' Interests Primary.
	To Offset the Union.
	Rubber Stamp Committees.
	A Bit of Oil History.
	Employers as Labor Leaders.
	"Passing On" the Wage Cut.
	Strike Breaking.—Union Smashing.
	Promoting Efficiency.
IV.	Some Specimens.	19
	Packing House Councils.
	General Electric Company.
	General Atterbury's Pennsylvania.
	The Rockefeller Plan.
	The Steel Workers Fare No Better.
	The Plan for Pullman Porters.
	The Mitten Method.
	A Kodak Company's Plan.
	International Harvester Company.
	Southern Mills and Dr. Frank Crane.
	Peace at the Pacific.
	Plans and Spies at Passaic.
	The Midvale Method.
	Bethlehem and Buffalo.
	The Wheeling Steel Corporation.
	The United States Steel Corporation.
	Samuel Insull's Views.
	A Standard Oil Device.
V.	Tactics of Company Unions.	46
	Introducing the Plan.
	The Yellow Dog Contract.
	Using the Sub-Committee.
	Discharging Trade Unionists.
	Company Union Plus Spies Equals "Cooperation."
	Political Uses of a Company Union.
	No Outsiders Allowed!
	No Discrimination!
	Vehicles of Economic Propaganda.
VI.	Organized Labor's Relation to the Company Union	59
	Labor's Argument.
	Capturing the Company Union.
VII.	The Fight Against Company Unionism.	61
Index and Bibliography		65

WELFARE.

 

Sing a song of "Welfare,"
A pocket full of tricks;
To soothe the weary worker,
When he groans or kicks.
If he asks for shorter hours,
Or for better pay,
Little stunts of "Welfare"
Turn his thoughts away.

Sing a song of "Welfare,"
Sound the horn and drum,
Anything to keep his mind
Fixed on kingdom come.
"Welfare" loots your pocket
While you dream and sing,
"Welfare" to your paycheck
Doesn't do a thing.

Sing a song of "Welfare,"
Forty 'leven kinds,
Elevate your morals
Cultivate your minds.
Kindergartens, nurses,
Bathtubs, books, and flowers,
Anything but better pay
Or shorter working hours.

—Will Herford.

PREFACE

Robert W. Dunn is a well-known labor writer and student not directly affiliated to the trade unions or the T. U. E. L. He is the co-author, together with Sydney Howard, of "The Labor Spy." He is the author of "American Foreign Investments." He is a special writer for the Federated Press. He has made extensive special studies in the field of employers' tactics against labor and the various devices used to undermine trade unions. Therefore, the Trade Union Educational League asked him to set down as briefly as possible his findings to date in the field of Company Unionism. The results appear in this pamphlet between pages 4 and 61. The concluding chapter was written by Wm. Z. Foster.

The Publishers.