Trade union federation

“ In 1899, arising out of the losses caused by the costly engineering dispute of 1897-98, the Trades Union Congress established a General Federation of Trade Unions, largely at the instance of Robert Knight, the able secretary of the Boilermakers, designed exclusively as a mutual reinsurance agency against the heavy financial burden to which, in the form of Strike Pay, or Dispute or Contingent Benefit, labour disputes subject every active trade society. ”

“ But the most extensive federation of the Trade Union world is to-day, as it has always been, the Trades Union Congress, which could count in September 1919 an affiliated membership of more than five and a quarter millions, a number never paralleled in this or any other country. ”

“ But the Cotton-spinners, with their preference for legislative regula- tion, refused to have anything to do with a federation which contemplated nothing but strike benefits. The whole scheme was, indeed, more a project of certain Trade Union officials than a manifestation of any general feeling in favour of common action. Each trade was, as we have said, working out its own policy, and attending almost exclusively to its own interests. Under such circumstances any attempt at effective federation must necessarily have been still-born. ”

“ The preamble of the Constitution states: “We therefore declare ourselves in favor of the formation of a thorough federation, embracing every trade and labor organization in America under the Trade Union System of organization.” The Knights of Labor had endeavored to subordinate the parts to the whole; the American Federation is willing to bend the whole to the needs of the unit. It zealously sends out its organizers to form local unions and has made provision that “any seven wage workers of good character following any trade or calling” can establish a local union with federal affiliations. ”

“ It must be recognised that during the past six or seven years the Federation has lost favour with important sections of the Trade Union world. It was probably inevitable that its inclusion of small sectional societies should eventually bring it into conflict with the larger Unions by whom such societies are often regarded as illegitimate competitors. Grounds of this kind may be assigned for the secession of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the Amalgamated Society of Tailors in 1915; and for the powerful hostility shown since 1913 by the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. ”

“ Without taking a vigorous part in promoting, enforcing, and resisting all sorts of legislation affecting education, sanitation, the Poor Law, the whole range of the Factories, Mines, Railways, and Merchant Shipping Acts, the Shop Hours, Truck, Industrial Arbitration and Conciliation, and now even the Trade Boards’ Act, the Trade Union cannot properly fulfil its function of looking after the regulation of the conditions of employment. ”

“ Here then we find the special function of the Trade Union in the administration of industry. The simplest member of the working-class organisation knows at any rate where the shoe pinches. The Trade Union official is specially selected by his fellow-workmen for his capacity to express the grievances from which they suffer, and is trained by his calling in devising remedies for them. But in expressing the desires of their members, and in insisting on the necessary reforms, the Trade Unions act within the constant friction-brake supplied by the need of securing employment. ”

“ The right of Free Association, won by Allan, Applegarth, Odger, and their allies, is now a past issue, but the Trade Union interest in legislation has, with the advance of Democracy, extended to larger and more complicated problems. The complete democratisation of the political machinery, the duty of the Government to be a model employer, the further regulation of private enterprise through perfected factory legislation, the public administration of monopolies, are all questions in which the Trade Union world of to-day considers itself keenly interested. ”

“ In order to fulfill its important functions of protecting the workers, giving to them adequate control over their working conditions, and the power of bargaining for the disposal of their labor power through recognized representatives, trade-union organization must be world-wide. Organizations of capital are so, or are becoming so, and in order that the workers may bargain upon an equal footing, they must be in an equally strong position. ”

“ We see in this evolution a great future for the Trade Unions, if they will, in organisation and personal equipment, rise to the height of their enlarged function. They will need, by amalgamation or federation, and by affording facilities for easy admission and for a simple transfer of membership, to make themselves much more nearly than at present co-extensive with their several industries. ”

“ Whether or not we are to see all the rival and sectional Unions in each industry amalgamating into a single " In- dustrial Union," as many Trade Unionists desire, it must be recognised that the development, during the past decade, of active negotiating federations for the several industries goes far to supply the most urgent need. ”

“ As the Trade Union movement develops in power and intelligence, it inevitably stretches out its hands towards the control of industry. The Trade Union, no doubt, begins as a mere bargaining body, “a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving their conditions of employment”; but it cannot grow to its full stature without becoming far more than this, without claiming for itself and its members the right to control production. ”

“ But both Amalgamations and Federations, being definitely limited to similar or related and interdependent trades, are in idea essentially Trade Unions. The distinctive connotation of the term Trades Union was the ideal of complete solidarity of all wage-workers in “One Big Union”—that is to say, a single “universal” organisation. It is the attempt, on the part of the Trade Union leaders, to form not only national societies of particular trades, but also to include all manual workers in one comprehensive organisation, that constitutes the New Unionism of 1829-34. ”

“ As we have explained, the Trade Union, being essentially an Association of Producers, has never quite lost the idea that, so far as industry is concerned, this form of association, and no other, is Democracy. But the new form in which the faith in Associations of Producers is now expressing itself is concerned less with the ownership of the instruments of production (it being to-day commonly taken for granted that this must be vested in the community as a whole) than with the management of industry. ”

“ But it has been equally apparent in the incapacity of the Trade Union Movement as a whole to establish any central authority to prevent overlapping organisations and demarcation disputes, and to co-ordinate the efforts of the various sections of workers towards a higher standard of life and greater control over the conditions of their working lives. ”

“ And despite the efforts of the dualists to prove them static and unchangeable, American trade unions are travelling the same evolutionary route that the foreign unions have taken, although very much slower and more laboriously. At present they are quite generally in the federation stage of development. That is the meaning of the many alliances among them—the railroad federations, the printing, metal, building, and other trades councils—that exist in the various industries. The task of the militants is to develop the trade unions into the next stage, amalgamation ”

“ It is imperative that we shall have a clear understanding with the Trade Unions throughout the world. A step in that direction is to strengthen and bring into the International Federation of Trade Unions all the countries of Europe, and the work of your General Council during the year will be looked back to in years to come as contributing to the building up of an effective international organisation. ”

“ Trade union freedom includes the right to set up trade unions and to join the union of one's choice, as well as the right of trade unions to form confederations and to found international trade union organizations, or to become members thereof. ”

“ Organisation was, between 1904 and 1911, steadily extending in all directions, when the passing of the National Insurance Act, which practically compelled every wage-earner to join an “Approved Society” of some kind, led to a dramatic expansion of Trade Union membership, from which the various Unions of general workers, as they now prefer to be styled, obtained their share of advantage. ”

“ Fundamentally, however, the shortcomings of the political organisation of the Trade Union world are to be ascribed to its failure, down to the present, to develop a staff of trained political officers at all equal to those of the Trade Union organisers and Trade Union negotiators in the industrial field. ”

“ Whether we study the elaborate collection of Trade Union rules and other documents made by the Commission, or the personal evidence given by the leaders or advocates of Trade Unionism, we find from beginning to end absolutely no claim, and even no suggestion, that the Trade Union should participate in the direction of industry, otherwise than in arranging with the employers the conditions of the wage-earner's working life. ”

“ At other times the Trade Union appears to the bulk of its members either as a political organisation whose dictates they are ready to obey at Parliamentary and other elections, or as a mere benefit club in the management of which they do not desire to take part. In the long intervals of peace during which the constitution of the Society is being slowly elaborated, the financial basis strengthened, the political and trade policy determined, less than a half or perhaps even a tenth of the members will actively participate in the administrative and legislative work. ”

“ These exceptional statutory privileges for the protection of Trade Union officials in the exercise of their lawful vocation, and of “pickets” in the performance of their lawful function—in themselves a triumph for Trade Unionism—have ever since excited great resentment in most of those who are not wage-earners. Some friends of the Trade Unions expressed at the time the doubt whether the policy thus forced upon Parliament would prove, in the long run, entirely in the interest of the Movement ”

“ Together with the part which the unions are playing in the matter of directing the industrial life along the channels fixed by the programs of production, based upon the subjugation of private interest to those of society as a whole, comes their activity in connection with the basic element of production—labor. Therefore, the decisions of the central trade union associations are obligatory insofar as they bear on the questions of wage scales, inspection of labor, internal regulations within the factories, standards of production and labor discipline. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The right to form and — subject to the general right of a trade union to determine its own membership — freely to join a trade union will be guaranteed. These rights will exclude any prior control. Freedom of association for workers, including the freedom to strike, will be guaranteed, subject to limitations prescribed by law and consistent with international standards ”

“ We shall refer incidentally to half-a-dozen of the more important strikes of the generation; but nowadays it is not so much industrial disputes that constitute landmarks of Trade Union history as the steps, often statutory or political in character, by which the Movement advances in public influence and in a recognised participation in the government of industry. During the present century, at any rate, the action of Trade Unionism on legislation, and of legislation on Trade Unionism, has been incessant and reciprocal. ”

“ So long as each section of workers believed in the intention of the governing class to protect their trade from the results of unrestricted competition no community of interest arose. It was a change of industrial policy on the part of the Government that brought all trades into line, and for the first time produced what can properly be called a Trade Union Movement. In order, therefore, to make this movement fully intelligible, we must now retrace our steps, and follow the political history of industry in the eighteenth century. ”

“ The next thirty years were to see the legal position of Trade Unionism, actually in consequence of renewed assaults, very firmly consolidated by statute, and the Trade Union claim to participation in all public enquiries, and to nominate members to all governmental commissions and committees, practically admitted. Trade Union representatives have won an equal entrance to local bodies, from Quarter Sessions and all the elected Councils down to Pension and Food and Profiteering Act Committees; an influential Labour Party has been established in Parliament ”