Labor strike

“ THE class war between employers and workers over the product of Labor goes on without letup. "Settlements" in wage movements, whether these are accompanied by strikes or not, are at best only truces in the ceaseless struggle, only turning points where the struggle takes on new forms. ”

“ Strikes, however, form one of the modern means of collective bargaining between employer and employees. They are, in fact, the workmen's final and most effective resource in driving a bargain. Denied the right to strike, labor unions would be so many wooden cannon at which employers could laugh. If the employer knew absolutely that the men could not strike, he might offer any terms he pleased. In wage bargaining the men would not stand on a level footing, but be bound and gagged. ”

“ The dark months of the year had proved a very hotbed for the microbe of industrial unrest, and it had propagated a hundredfold.
As spring dawned, from every corner of the world came the same story. Strike, strike; everywhere, and in every calling, the word had gone forward—Strike! It mattered not the reason. It mattered not the worker's condition. If wages were ample, then strike for less work. If the work was insufficient, then strike for a minimum wage. In any case strike, and see the demands included recognition of labor unions, and particularly recognition of the demagogues who led them. ”

“ The spectacle presented by men of labor who belong to different organizations rushing at each other's throats whenever a strike takes place, must be a gratifying thing to the employers of labor. It must indeed give satisfaction to the corporations to know that neither Knights of Labor nor Brotherhood men dare in future ask for better treatment, with any assurance of receiving it. It must be a consoling thought to the monopolist to know that his power is not half so dangerous to the labor organizations as the possibility that another labor organization will espouse his cause through revenge. ”

“ In the old days when an employer proceeded to cut labor costs radically he did it openly and brusquely, usually in the form of a sweeping wage cut going into effect on a certain date. Result, always a universal protest and indignation on the part of the workers and often a bitter strike. But now the employers cut their labor costs in much more and subtle ways. Often they accomplish the same ends as a wage cut by speeding up their workers, which is easy for them to do in present-day industry. ”

“ The employers will continue to try to destroy the workers' standard of living and break the unions; the workers will continue to build their unions and to advance their interests. Organization campaigns, strikes, settlements and their aftermath, are but various phases of the one great process of class struggle under capitalism.
In making strike settlements this key fact must always be borne in mind. Such must be handled in the sense of preparations for new campaigns in the class war. The right wing reactionaries have a wrong conception of the whole Capital-Labor controversy. ”

“ On their side, the workers have as their great weapon the cutting off of the employer's supply of labor-power. They seek to keep his plants shut down until his greed for profits, or the pressure from other capitalists who need his products, compels him to come to terms. But in order to do this they must be able to maintain an unbroken solidarity in the face of all the employer's many attacks, open and insidious. This is the chief objective of strike strategy during the heat of the open struggle. ”

“ The right of labor combination? It is tempered by the power of your class to subdue the workers leaders by starvation through dismissal.
The right to strike? The witnesses whom you have heard, witnesses from own class in many cases, come to tell you how strikers, even inoffensive strikers, are sabred and horsewhipped, and how, after strikes, even victorious ones, the powerful employers thin out the ringleaders in order to terrify the rest. ”

“ Such tactics are not worth a single drop of sweat of the workingmen, since they are not only contradictory to the basic principles of trade unionism, but even useless and impractical.
Pity for and indignation against the workers fill one's soul at the spectacle of the ridiculous strike methods so often employed and that as often frustrate the possible success of every large labor war. ”

“ Under present conditions in the United States, with the final capitalist crisis still far off, the workers make their hardest fights when they are defending standards that are already in existence. The most desperate strikes in American labor history have been against sweeping wage cuts and other attacks upon the workers' standards. ”

“ In a situation demanding the quick building of a skeleton of a union and the early launching of a strike they waste their efforts trying to perfect an organization in detail before beginning the wage struggle. They overstress mere organization and understress the thing that labor organization is built for, the fight to defend the workers' interests. To quote from my pamphlet, "Organize the Unorganized:"
The future trade unions of the great unorganized industries will be born in the heat of the struggle against the employers over the demands of the workers. ”

“ The Congress, without believing in the possibility of completely renouncing partial strikes, recommends the workers to devote their efforts to achieving an international organization of trade bodies, which will enable them to undertake some day a general strike, the only really efficacious strike to realize the complete emancipation of labor. ”

“ Strike funds have for their sole object to provide the necessary money in order to make possible the costly organization and maintenance of strikes. And the strike is the beginning of the social war of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, while still within the limits of legality. ”

“ This strike has taught both capital and labor that they owe certain obligations to society and that their obligations must be discharged in good faith. If both are fair and conciliatory, if both recognize the moral restraint of the state of society by which they are surrounded, there need be few strikes. They can, and it is better that they should, settle their differences between themselves.... ”

“ The authority of the State should intervene to put restraint upon such fire-brands, to save the working classes from their seditious arts, and protect lawful owners from spoliation.
When working men have recourse to a strike, it is frequently because the hours of labor are too long, or the work too hard, or because they consider their wages insufficient. ”

“ This gives rise to disputes between rival unions and causes annoyance and loss to the workers themselves, to the employers, and to the general public.
§ 8. #Strikes in labor disputes.# A strike is a concerted stopping of work by a group of employees to enforce a demand upon the employer. A lockout is an employer's closing of his shop because of a disagreement with his employees. The strike is, in its direct and indirect, immediate and ultimate, effects the most important weapon of the organized wage-earners in their relations with their employers. ”

“ This historic movement entranced the working class rebels all over Europe, not only because it was the first modern attempt to win the universal 8-hour workday, but especially because it marked the first successful application of their beloved weapon, the general strike of all trades in all localities. In after years they named as Labor's international holiday the day, May 1st, upon which the strike began. In those stirring times our labor unions stood alone in the world for militancy and fighting spirit. This the international labor movement looked upon as perfectly natural. ”

“ Consider yourself how foolish and inefficient is the present form of labor organization in which one trade or craft may be on strike while the other branches of the same industry continue at work. Is it not ridiculous that when the street car workers of New York, for instance, quit work, the employees of the subway, the cab and omnibus drivers remain on the job? The main purpose of a strike is to bring about a situation that will compel the employer to give in to the demands of labor. ”

“ The occasion for a strike, which means a sudden stopping of work by the employés of an establishment, is usually some question of immediate advantage to the workmen. A desire for increased wages, fewer or different hours of labor, or the removal of some restriction upon habits or [pg 260] associations, gradually becomes general, and through some permanent or temporary organization united action is taken. Quite frequently a strike is occasioned by a sudden and apparently arbitrary reduction of wages, affecting a large body of men. ”

“ When the Probable Results of a Strike afford an Unfair Standard of Wages.—Where monopolies exist and trade unions rely on violence in carrying their point, it would not be fair to establish a permanent rule of wages based on the amounts that strikes so conducted secure. Such strikes depend for success on the violent exclusion of non-union men; and actually to give permanence to rates so gained would be to fasten on the majority of workers the disabilities under which they now labor, and to perpetuate the gains of a two-fold monopoly. ”

“ It restricts its house-cleaning to its own shop, limits its demands to its trade, asks for a minimum wage and minimum hours, and lays out with considerable detail the conditions under 59 which its members will work. The weapons in its arsenal are not new—the strike and the boycott. Now that he has learned to distinguish essentials, the new trade unionist can bargain with his employer, and as a result trade agreements stipulating hours, wages, and conditions, take the place of the desultory and ineffective settlements which had hitherto issued from labor disputes. ”

“ When the unions are heavily defeated and broken up by the employers in an industry, as often happens, the conservative labor leaders commonly abandon the field in hopeless rout. They leave to their fate the workers who have loyally supported the strike, with the ultimate disastrous effect of alienating these workers completely from the unions. ”

“ The industrialist matches this with a direct method. For example, he engages in a passive strike, obeying rules so literally as to destroy both their utility and his work; or in an opportune strike, ceasing work suddenly when he knows his employer has orders that must be immediately filled; or in a temporary strike, quitting work one day and coming back the next. ”

“ We know that when the union declares a strike the discipline of organized labor is sufficiently strong to make the laborers freely take upon themselves all the dangers and horrors of unemployment and to remain hungry for months in order to secure a victorious conclusion for the common cause. ”

“ The acid test of the union is its capacity to live up to this trade agreement.
For the purpose of forcing its policies upon its employers and society the unions have resorted to the strike and picketing, the boycott, and the union label. When violence occurs, it usually is the concomitant of a strike; but violence unaccompanied by a strike is sometimes used as a union weapon. ”

“ The New York Independent for February 12, 1903, recognized without qualification the class struggle. “It is impossible fairly to pass upon the methods of labor unions, or to devise plans for remedying their abuses, until it is recognized, to begin with, that unions are based upon class antagonism and that their policies are dictated by the necessities of social warfare. A strike is a rebellion against the owners of property. The rights of property are protected by government. ”

“ It is urged that labor alone is absolutely necessary to production and that if, in a great general strike, it should cease production, the whole of [275] society would be forced to capitulate. And in theory this seems unassailable, but actually it has no force whatever. In the first place, this economic power does not exist unless the workers are organized and are practically unanimous in their action. Furthermore, the economic position of the workers is one of utter helplessness at the time of a universal strike, in that they cannot feed themselves. ”

“ Such action as has been taken by them in sympathy with the present labor troubles may, if continued, lead to a serious conflict, the outcome of which might be most calamitous for the business and industrial interests of San Francisco.”
And the secretary of the United Brewery Workmen: “I regard a sympathetic strike as the last weapon which organized labor should use in its defence. When, however, associations of employers band together to defeat organized labor, or one of its branches, then we should not and will not hesitate ourselves to employ the same instrument in retaliation.” ”

“ And as it was in Germany, so it was in the United States. At last organized labor had learned its lesson. Beaten decisively on its own chosen field, it had abandoned that field and come over to the political field of the socialists; for the general strike was a political strike. Besides, organized labor had been so badly beaten that it did not care. It joined in the general strike out of sheer desperation. The workers threw down their tools and left their tasks by the millions. ”

“ Most of the unions are moving steadily onward and upward, and they have an unshakable grip upon the workers in their respective spheres. This being so, the logical thing to do is systematically to set about improving and strengthening them. If this is done, then, instead of the wild, desperate, dualistic outbreaks and strikes, which have characterized the American labor movement for years, and done it incalculable harm, the discontented rank and file will find relief through an orderly and rapid progress within the folds of the organizations they already have. ”