Industrial unionism

“ But the fight the Industrial Workers are now making
Will make our chains a relic of the past.
Industrial unionism now is calling,
The toilers of the world they hear its cry;
In line with the Industrial Workers they are falling,
By their principles to stand or fall and die. ”

“ Rising out of conditions that have long become unsupportable, that were never intended should benefit but the few, conditions that are a living outrage on the lives of the working class of the nation; Industrial Unionism, the One Big Union, of all the workers of all trades and all industries; striving energetically and with devoted enthusiasm for the once burning ideal and hope of the world's toilers Solidarity to the end of accomplishing final and complete industrial emancipation, is no longer a mere plan or scheme to foist upon the wage workers of the land. ”

“ Industrial unionism comes, not as a new system suddenly applied to the labor movement, but as the culmination of a long and elaborate evolution from the simple craft unions to the complex organizations necessary for the modern struggle. ”

“ In the great fights that have since occurred the industrial form of our union has stood us in good stead, Had we been so organized that one part of the working force remained at work while the rest were striking, we would have been defeated and our organization broken up long ago. Speaking from experience, we heartily recommend industrial unionism to the labor movement as a whole, and we pledge ourselves to do whatever we can to bring it about. ”

“ But the issue with which the League has scored its greatest success is that of industrial unionism through amalgamation. This movement to combine all the craft unions into a series of industrial organizations it as present sweeping the country like a prairie fire. The workers realize that the death knell of craft unionism has sounded and that the way to a higher form of organization lies through amalgamation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the greater capitalist finds approval for the craft union it is obvious that the latter can no longer be regarded as a very serious protagonist of labor.
It has ceased to have fighting capacity because that for which it seeks to fight is already doomed.
A new form of organization is taking its place. This new form, called Industrial Unionism, implies more than the possession of a more effective weapon by the working class. ”

“ It is blind to the possibility of establishing an industrial democracy, wherein there shall be no wage slavery, but where the workers will own the tools they operate, and the product of which they alone should enjoy.
It shatters the ranks of the workers into fragments, rendering them helpless and impotent on the industrial battlefield.
Separation of craft from renders industrial solidarity impossible.
Union men scab upon union men; hatred of worker for worker is engendered, and the workers are delivered helpless and disintegrated into the hands of the capitalists. ”

“ What have any of us to lose if we band together in ONE BIG UNION to the end and by it as a medium transform the present system of industrial despotism and economic inequality into one of Industrial Freedom and Equality?
We would lose our chains, our miseries, but gain the world for all the workers, a world fit for men and women to live their lives in freedom of love and labor. ”

“ Craft unionism is the negation of class solidarity. The more unions you have, the less unity; and here, in fact, you have no unity at all. In this state you can do nothing to improve your working condition. You are substantially at the mercy of the corporations.
What you need is industrial unionism and you will have it when you get together in the Industrial Workers.
When workingmen join the one economic working class organization that unites them upon the basis of the class struggle, they can do something to better their working condition ”

“ Another factor in the growth of industrial unionism has been the necessity of acting together on the part of established craft unions themselves. If in a certain metal factory there are machinists, iron moulders, toolmakers, metal polishers, and numerous other crafts, each organized in a separate union, it is folly for the machinists to go on strike alone for their demands, and for all the other crafts to keep at work. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Industrial Unionism is essentially no different from Trade Unionism in so far as it, like the Trade Unions breeds its own scabs and, on occasion hands out definitely reactionary advice to the workers. ”

“ Once industrial unionism is established all the workers, regardless of their other differences, will gravitate to the powerful organizations. Likewise great financial economies will be made. The amount of money and time wasted through the duplication of offices, officials, journals, conventions, etc., in our craft unions is appalling, Let us consider the metal industry as an example. In that great industrial division there are 24 International Unions, maintaining 24 expensive headquarters, with 24 high-salaried presidents, and 24 high-salaried secretaries to adorn them. ”

“ This drain of the best blood of the trade unions begins by enormously weakening these bodies and ends by making impotent every branch of the labor movement as well; for the welfare of all Organized Labor, political, industrial, co-operative, educational, depends upon the trade unions, the basic organizations of the working class, being in a flourishing condition. Dual unionism saps the strength of the trade unions, and when it does that it undermines the structure of the entire working class organization. ”

“ Such organization to be effective must be expressed in terms of industrial unionism. Each industry must be organized in its entirety, embracing all the workers, and all working together in the interest of all, in the true spirit of solidarity, thus laying the foundation and developing the superstructure of the new system within the old, from which it is evolving, and systematically fitting the workers, step by step, to assume entire control of the productive forces when the hour strikes for the impending organic change. ”

“ The purpose of industrial unionism is to organize the working class in approximately the same departments of production as those which will obtain in the coöperative commonwealth, so that, if the workers should lose their franchise, they would still possess an economic organization intelligently trained to take over and collectively administer the tools of industry and the sources of wealth for themselves. ”

“ They believed trade unionism wrong in principle. They discarded the principle of trade autonomy for the principle of laboring class solidarity, for, as one of their spokesmen said, “The industrial union, in contradistinction to the craft union, is that organization through which all its members in one industry, or in all industries if necessary, can act as a unit.” ”

“ IT says, "Labor is entitled to all it produces," and to get it or any partial increase, Industrial Unionism is needed. "All workers in an industry, or in all industries, if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof; thus making an injury to one an injury to all." Every worker in any section of an industry is organized in a Branch of an Industrial Union of all the workers in that industry. ”

“ Industrial unionism, as a structural type simply, and even revolutionary industrial unionism—wherein the industrial organization is animated and guided by the revolutionary (socialist or anarchist) spirit—hark back in their essential principles to the dramatic revolutionary period in English unionism of the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In America the labor history of the seventies, and especially the eighties, teems with evidences of the industrial form and the radical temper in labor organizations. ”

“ We have also pointed out the glaring weaknesses of the unions as they now stand, and shown that only in industrial unionism can the workers exert their maximum economic power. But we have likewise indicated the folly and ruin of trying to achieve the needed industrial union by going outside of the old unions and starting new organizations. We have explained that the natural development of labor unions to the industrial status is through the three phases of isolation, federation and amalgamation ”

“ But "organisation may follow the lines, not of the work done, but of the actual structure of industry. All workers working at producing a particular kind of commodity may be organised in a single Union .... The basis of organisation would be neither the craft to which a man belonged nor the employer under whom he worked, but the service on which he was engaged. This is Industrial Unionism properly so called." [29]
Industrial unionism is a product of America, and from America it has to some extent spread to Great Britain. ”

“ Even group struggles—the isolated wars waged by craft unions against their employers—bear fruitful lessons in class solidarity. For craft wars are becoming more uniformly failures, and they show the vital need for revolutionary industrial unionism. ”

“ Industrial Unionism, like all previous forms of economic organization which preceded it, is but a product of the particular character of the industries from which it emanated. The complex and centralized form of production, which gave birth to Industrial Unionism, can again on the one hand be attributed to the concentration of wealth into ever fewer hands, and on the other to an ever increasing social character of the machines or instruments of production. ”

“ It is fully 30 years behind the times in its ideas and organization structure. Its officialdom has persistently remained capitalistic and has tied the labor unions to the chariot of industrial despotism, This bond must be broken and Labor released from the thralldom of capitalist thought by the sturdy militants who are now assembling under the banner of the Trade Union Educational League. The accomplishment of departmentalized industrial unionism through amalgamation is the first and most important step in this great work of emancipation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The process of amalgamation must go on unceasingly until, finally, industrial unionism has become class unionism, and the whole mass of Labor has been brought into one army under one head. With one common interest and one common goal, the whole working class must be so organized that it can move as a unit against the exploiters. ”

“ A more correct term would be "labor" unionism as distinct from "trade" unionism, or "class unionism" against "sectional unionism." By "industrial unionism" the promoters of the new movement means that all the employees of a given industry are to be solidly bound together in a single union instead of being divided into many separate organizations as so often happens to-day, and so as to act as a unit against the employer, as, for example, the steel workers, machinists, longshoremen, structural iron workers, etc., are all to be united against the Steel Trust. ”

“ We, the Industrial Workers of the World, in Convention assembled, hereby reaffirm our adherence to the principles of Industrial Unionism, and re-dedicate ourselves to the unflinching prosecution of the struggle for the abolition of wage slavery, and the realization of our ideals in Industrial Democracy. ”

“ So we ask you who, when you are no longer able to live, you ask for more pay and are forced to strike and in reply to your petitions and pleadings for more bread receive bayonet thrusts, rifle shots, etc., "What have you, any of you, to lose by opposing the present economic system, banding yourselves with us in one common bond of Solidarity and devotion as industrial unionists to the end of bettering our everyday conditions in the factories, mines and mills?" ”

“ For the revolutionary International, which has to confront such a problem as the social revolution, it is necessary to create an organizational prerequisite for such revolution. It is necessary to rebuild the trade union movement on a new basis. This is why we adopted a slogan of industrial unionism: In one industry, one union. And this slogan was carried into every country by revolutionary workers. ”

“ Craft unionism is insurance for the boss against very serious embarrasment. Contrariwise, it is a serious handicap and an embarrassment to the working group which it condemns to fight alone; for one set of union workers in an organized employment may strike to adjust a grievance, but the rest of the organized workers, bound by their agreements, remain at work and assist the employer—thus helping to defeat the strikers with whom they are in sympathy to the last heart beat. Nothing on earth, except the craft union system, could induce these workers to scab upon their fellows. ”