Craft union

“ If the trade-union movement is ever to be wholly effective and adequate to fulfill its lofty aims, it must cease to look upon craft organization as a final aim. The present forms of craft organization are useful, only so long as they are thought of as a step to something higher, only in so far as the craft is regarded as a part of the whole. Were this end ever borne in mind, we should hear less of jurisdictional fights, and there would be more of sincere endeavor and more of active effort among the better organized workers to share the benefits of organization with all of the laboring world. ”

“ But during the past decade the movement has been reinforced by the desire for an organisation based on the whole of an industry, such as engineering, housebuilding, mining, or the railway service, in which all the co-operating crafts and grades of workers would be associated in a single Industrial Union; in contrast with the earlier conception of the separate organisation of each craft throughout the whole kingdom; such as that of the carpenters, the enginemen, the engineering mechanics, the clerks, and by analogy the general labourers, in whatsoever industry they may be working. ”

“ In the industries the craft occupies a place parallel to that of an individual in the craft union. It knows that the union of unions, the union of all the crafts in the industry, can make better terms for the several crafts than can any one of them individually. This discovery has been the basis of federation, and now of amalgamation. When the individual joins the union he trades his individual liberty to make his own terms with the boss, a very shallow privilege at best, for the more substantial returns in higher wages and shorter hours that the union procures for him. ”

“ The case for the Industrial Union in such an industry as mining, for example, merely from the standpoint of Collective Bargaining, and for the sake of getting effective Common Rules, has always been a strong one; but the movement for the substitution of “Industrial” for “Craft” Unionism has been strengthened since about 1911 by the aspirations of those who saw in Trade Unionism something more than an organisation for raising wages and shortening the working day. ”

“ Another thing was that the masters got together in big industrial organizations; it began to be hard for the craft unions to cope with the situation—and so the industrial union was born. In this union all the workers in any industry stand together side by side, and strike together so as to completely stop the production of the shop or of the entire industry, when strikes are necessary. ”

“ The natural result has been to bring about amalgamation and federation of various craft unions which had grown up in the same industry. In England, for instance, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which originally included only machinists, now has combined with so many other unions that it covers virtually the whole metal industry. Other less recent examples of industrial organization are the National Union of Railwaymen, the Transport Workers' Federation, and the Miners' Federation. ”

“ A craft union of machinists, for instance, would not cover all the workmen in a single shop, but one of its locals might extend over a whole city, including machinists in a number of different shops. Such a local could not act easily in individual shops. A form of shop organization was necessary. Therefore the shop stewards of the various unions in a given shop would get together and form a shop committee, representing all the workmen in that establishment in their dealings with a single employer. ”

“ Men who worked at the same trade, having interests in common, were bound sooner or later to combine the conservation of those interests in a union. The craft union grew out of the need of the tradesmen to protect their economic interests against the aggressions of the employers. ”

“ This strenuous opposition was largely the cause of more or less compromising on the part of the Industrial Workers of the World with the craft-union idea, though, of course, the very weakness of the new movement and the hard-fixed habit of years of life and work under the old craft form was a potent factor here. ”

“ All agreements are arranged to expire at different times. As a result, the employer whose industry is organized under the craft union system is always assured that his industrial inconvenience will be as slight as the craft system can make it. ”

“ The craft gilds of the middle ages have sometimes been regarded as the true predecessors of trade unions, but the analogy must not be pressed too far. The structure, constitution and functions of a gild of craftsmen, aiming at the protection and regulation of the craft as a whole, were essentially different from those of a trade union, formed to protect one class of persons engaged in an industry against another. ”

“ But craft union struggles have not always failed in that which they set out to accomplish, although victories are becoming increasingly difficult and impossible with the advance of productive machinery that abolishes the need of skilled laborers. ”

“ As has been said, strictly speaking, there are no crafts, and it follows, s day follows night, that a craft union is an anachronism in modern industry. As the Industrial Union Manifesto well said: "Laborers are no longer classified by difference in trade skill, but the employer assigns them according to the machines to which the are attached. These divisions, far from representing differences in skill or interests among the laborers, are imposed by the employer that workers may be pitted against one another . ”

“ There was a time when the craft union expressed in terms of unionism the prevailing mode of industry. That was long 431ago when production was still mainly carried on by handicraftmen with hand tools; when one man worked for another to learn his trade that he might become its master. The various trades involved skill and cunning; considerable time was required to master them. This was in the early stages of the capitalist system. Even at that early day the antagonism between employer and employed found expression, although the employer was not at that time the capitalist as he is today. ”

“ The gradual change of processes, and the introduction of new materials, with an actual decline in the numbers employed, has not been met by any improvement in the organisation of the older craft unions, whilst the workers in the new processes have failed to achieve effective union. With the great demand for building since the Armistice, the Building Trades Unions have, however, shown increased vitality; and the position in the negotiating Joint Boards, at which they are now regularly meeting the employers’ representatives, has considerably improved. ”

“ But comprehending the inadequacy and futility of existing separately, and of acting independently of one another, the unions had some years back begun to weld themselves into one powerful body, covering much of the United States. Each craft union still retained its organization and autonomy, but it now became part of a national organization embracing every form of trades, and centrally officered and led. It was in this way that the workers, step by step, met the organization of capital ”

“ Throughout the rest of the world there are many single unions—such as building, metal, railroad, general transport, printing, etc.—that have been built up recently by amalgamating the original craft organizations. Others are being constantly created. In England the giant new Transport and General Workers' Union has just been formed; the Amalgamted Engineering Union is making steady headway towards its avowed goal of one union in the metal industry ”

“ Repeated attempts have been made to arrive at some “line of demarcation” or other compromise, by which this rivalry between Unions could be brought to an end; but hitherto without success. The quarrel is inflamed by a conflict of Trade Union doctrine. The engineers, boilermakers, carpenters, and other trades assert that organisation should be by craft, whatever may be the industry in which the craftsman is working. ”

“ Federation appeals to the craft unions because it insures their craft autonomy. The unions are alt strong on "craft autonomy," which means to them the mastery over their own craft and the right to do as they please, irrespective of the rights of other trades that work beside them and whose liberties are tied up absolutely with theirs. ”

“ During the last year or two the possibilities of Industrial Unionism have become smaller and smaller, for not only have Craft Unions either amalgamated on national lines, or are contemplating doing so, as witness the Engineers, Toolmakers, Pattera Makers, etc., but even unskilled Labour Unions have amalgamated. ”

“ Accordingly the National Guildist proposes that the system of craft Trade Unionism that exists in this country should be replaced by industrial Unionism under which all manual workers employed in each industry would be enrolled in a comprehensive Trade Union embracing the whole of the industry, which in course of time would be expanded into an industrial Guild that would also include all the supervisory, technical, managerial and administrative staff, and that this Guild should be entirely responsible for the control and organization of the work of the particular industry. ”

“ Craft divisions foster political ignorance among the workers, thus dividing their class at the ballot box, as well as in the shop, mine, and factory.
Craft unions may be and have been used to assist employers in the establishment of monopolies and the raising of prices. One set of workers are thus used to make harder the conditions of life of another body of laborers. ”

“ So long as industry was, relatively, in an undeveloped state and great areas of land were available for settlement, the craft unions met the requirements of the organized portion of the working class; but, when the development of inventions brought on the "machine age" and the desirable lands were occupied, craft unionism ceased to function advantageously. ”

“ So long as the capitalists competed vigorously among themselves and the various shops confined themselves to the manufacture of single articles, or closely related articles, or only one of the processes of transformation was carried out in the one shop, the craft unions had a measure of success, but when, through the process of elimination, competition entered wealth into fewer hands and machine production took on the form of industry (following the raw material through all the processes to the completed article) craft unionism lost its force and effect. ”

“ The craft unions are thereupon compelled to look in another direction and to turn their eyes towards industrial unionism as a remedy. Louder and louder the demand arises that the only way in which the working class can expect to achieve progress in face of the odds which confront it is by organization in terms of the capitalist industry, and that means the practical elimination of the crafts, as protectors of special property interests. ”

“ Craft division incites craft jealousy and so they are more or less in conflict with each other, and the employer constructively takes advantage of this fact, and that is why he favors pure and simple unionism.
It were better for the workers who wear craft fetters if they were not organized at all, for then they could and would spontaneously go out on strike together; but they cannot do this in craft unionism, for certain crafts bind themselves up in craft agreements, and after they have done this, they are at the mercy of the capitalist ”

“ Furthermore, each of the craft unions has shown an increasing tendency to organize the unskilled and semi-skilled with which it was most closely associated. Thus within the most conservative unions themselves the tendency toward industrialism has cropped up in the formation of what may be called inter-craft unions. ”

“ The ideal of taking over the instruments of production appealed to all intelligent workmen as workmen. To them it seemed merely Co-operative Production writ large, the ownership of the instruments and of the product of labour by the workers themselves. But the ownership and management was now to be carried out, not by small competing establishments doomed to failure, but in the industry as a whole by a “blackleg-proof” Trade Union. ”

“ Alongside the skilled engineering craftsmen, of different specialities in technique, there has grown up a vast number of unapprenticed and semi-skilled men, whom the Union has failed to exclude, not only from the work- shops but also from the jobs formerly monopolised by the legitimate craftsmen. ”

“ It is the result of a crying need for a system of organization that will meet the demands of modern industrial evolution. The old clumsy method of each craft fighting its own battle is as much out of place as would be an ox-cart service in competition with modern railroads. Whether in the matter of economy and efficiency of administration, or in the defense of the workers' interests, departmentalized industrial unionism is incomparably superior to our present primitive and outworn craft organizations. ”

“ The gild system at no time extended to any but the skilled handicraftsmen, alongside of whom must always have worked a large number of unapprenticed labourers, who received less than half the wages of the craftsmen. We venture to suggest that it is doubtful whether the Craft Gilds at any time numbered as large a proportion of the working population as the Trade Unions of the present day. ”

“ Everywhere the employers became supreme and the men were at their mercy. Labor was dismayed. Its unions lost their industrial character and resumed their original form of purely benevolent associations. Such was the state of affairs in the early years of the nineteenth century. Industry was in a stage of transition, and inevitably suffered from the change. It was only at a later date that the idea of mutual aid in industry revived, and the trade union—a new form of association adapted to the new situation—arose as the lineal successor of the old society of artisans. ”