Trade union

“ 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. ”

“ For now that Trades Unions are becoming universal, and each artisan has to pay prescribed moneys to one or another of them, with the alternative of being a non-unionist to whom work is denied by force, it has come to this, that the right to labor is a Trade-Union right, which the Trade Union can sell and the individual worker must buy! ”

“ The trade union of to-day is far less exclusive, far less monopolistic than it was before the appearance of the Knights of Labor and the new unions of England. Most important of all, the trade union now realizes the truth of that fundamental thesis of the Knights of Labor—that machinery is fast obliterating the line between the skilled and unskilled trades—and devotes a large share of its strength and funds to the organization of the lower classes of labor. ”

“ If we take the organizational structure of the trade unions we will see that the unions, from narrow craft organizations, are turning into wider units and later into industrial unities. This process is very slow. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether in the making, the confirming, or the administering of laws, the trade unions form the most important channel through which the wishes of the workers can be expressed. Organized labor does not speak only for trade unionists; it necessarily, in almost every case, speaks for the unorganized as well, partly because the needs of both are usually the same, and partly because there is no possible method by which the wishes of the working people can be ascertained, save through the accepted representatives of the organized portion of the workers. ”

“ Responsible and cautious leadership of the Trade Union Movement was becoming increasingly necessary. The growth of the great national Unions, alike in wealth and in membership, and the manner in which they subscribed in aid of each other’s battles, had aroused the active enmity of the employers. To counteract the men’s renewed strength, the employers once more banded themselves into powerful associations, and made use of a new weapon. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Whether or not we are to see all the rival and sectional Unions in each industry amalgamating into a single “Industrial 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. In short, although financially distinct Trade Unions remain, on the whole, as numerous as ever, the number of separate negotiating [Pg 554] bodies, so far as concerns matters relating to an industry as a whole, becomes steadily smaller. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ But, as the commissioners on trade unions have pointed out, it is found desirable to conjoin the objects of a friendly or benefit society with it, because by that means additional members and funds are obtained, and the authority which the union as a trade society has over its members is thus augmented. The leading aims of all trade union ism are to increase wages and to diminish the labour by which it is needful to earn them, and further to secure a more equal distribution of work among the workmen in any given trade than would be the case under a regime of unrestricted competition. ”

“ On the contrary, the most advanced Trade Union leaders were never tired of asserting that their members must enjoy the full standard conditions of employment, whatever arrangements the employers might make with regard to the other factors of production; or however unskilful employers or groups of employers might prove to be in the buying of the raw material, or in the selling of the commodities in the markets of the world.
With the opening years of the twentieth century we become aware of a new intellectual ferment, not confined to any one country, nor even to the manual working class. ”

“ XIII TRADE UNION IDEALS AND POLICIES Trade unionism does not embrace the whole of industrial democracy, even for organized labor and even were the whole of labor organized, as we hope one of these days it will be, but it does form one of the elements in any form of industrial democracy as well as affording one of the pathways thither. ”

“ The combination of friendly benefits with trade objects was destined to be hotly attacked twenty years later by the more ardent spirits in the Trade Union world, as leading to inertia and supineness in respect of wages, hours, and conditions of labour. ”

“ The annual Trades Union Congress continued to meet, and to appoint its standing Parliamentary Committee. In short, though many individual Unions disappeared, and many others saw their balances absorbed and their membership reduced, the trials of 1879 proved that the Trade Union Movement was at last beyond all danger of destruction or collapse, and that the Trade Union organisation had become a permanent element in our social structure. ”

“ The Trade Union world was, therefore, in 1892, in the main composed of skilled craftsmen working in densely populated districts, where industry was conducted on a large scale. About one-half of the members belonged to the three staple trades of coalmining, cotton manufacture, and engineering, whilst the labourers and the women workers were, at this date, on the whole, non-Unionists. ”

“ 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 machin- ery, 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. ”

“ As a matter of fact, the getting and enforcing of legislation is, historically, as much a part of Trade Union function as maintaining a strike. [668] One Trade Union at least, which no one ever dreamt to be illegal, the United Textile Factory Workers’ Association, has existed exclusively for political action, and had no other functions. [669] This kind of Trade Union action is even antecedent in date to any corporate dealing with employers. ”

“ The management of industry, a complex function of many kinds and grades, will, as we see it, not be the sole sphere of either the one or the other set of partners, but is clearly destined to be distributed between them—the actual direction and decision being shared between the representatives of the Trade Union or Professional Society on the one hand, and those of the community in Co-operative Society, Municipality, or National Government on the other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To the idealistic and active-minded Trade Union official in particular, weary of the perpetual haggling with employers over fractional changes in wages and hours, the prospect of becoming the representative of his fellow-workers in a self-governing industry, with all the initiative and responsibility that such a position would involve, was decidedly attractive. ”

“ Trade Unionism, and even to wholesale poaching among the membership of other Unions ; and it produces in the Trade Union world a type of " business man " more concerned for numbers than for raising the Standard of Life of the members he has enrolled, or for co-operation with other Trade Unions for their common ends. ”

“ The trade union, itself the product of industrial evolution, is subject to the laws of change, and the union that may have served some purpose a quarter of a century ago is now as completely out of date as the tools of industry that were then in use. ”

“ The establishment of such great trade friendly societies as the Amalgamated Engineers had created, in some sense, a new school of Trade Union officials, face to face with intricate problems of administration and finance. ”

“ Many labor unions suffered a considerable decline in members. The Typographical Union lost about ten per cent. of its membership, the Brotherhood of Carpenters about fifty per cent., while the Cigar Makers with a highly developed system of benefits lost only one and one half per cent. The trade unionists naturally regard it as peculiarly desirable that the members should not abandon the organization when the difficulty of maintaining wages and conditions is greatest. To hold in hard times what has been gained in good times is a vital point in trade-union policy. ”

“ But during this period, also, there were not lacking men, even among the prominent trade-union leaders, who characterized the trade union as exclusive, and warmly advocated the formation of broader organizations which would elevate the masses by other means than the strike and the regulation of apprenticeship. ”

“ The really useful material for Trade Union study is to be found in the publications of the Trade Unions themselves—the innumerable editions of rules, the thousands of annual and monthly reports, the voluminous lists of piecework prices, the intricate working agreements, the verbatim reports of conferences, delegate meetings and proceedings before Conciliation and Arbitration Boards—which are ignored by the British Museum, and are practically never preserved in local public libraries. ”

“ In 1913-14 there was an outburst of exasperated strikes designed, we may almost say, to super- sede Collective Bargaining to repudiate any making of long-term agreements, to spring demand after demand upon employers, to compel every workman to join the Union, avowedly with the view of building up the Trade Union as a dominant force. ”

“ The trade union 1 forms the foundation upon which the whole edifice of the American Federation of Labor is built. Like the Federation, each particular trade union has a tripartite structure: there is first the national body called the Union, the International, the General Union, or the Grand Lodge ”