The American Labor Conflict Over Industrial Organization
The American Labor Conflict Over Industrial Organization BIG ACHIEVEMENTS OF CRAFTSMEN CONTINUANCE OF CR4FT CONFLICTS ARBITRATION BOARDS A FAILURE BUILDING TRADES DISPUTES. . By THE...
...Taken literally, their propaganda leaves no room even for industrial unions like those in the needle trades, where craft organizations are included in the internationals, „ This criticism is conspicuous for its appalling ignorance of the "history of .trade unionsm and the important role played by craft organization...
...The nauseating exhibition at the Waldorf-Astoria * tragic mainly because most of those who witnessed it or read of it in the newspapers were not nauseated...
...Three gentlemen from three dictatorships—Fascist Italy, Nasi Germany, and Stalinist Russia—rose to explain and to glorify the "free press" in their respective national prisons...
...I re-assert most emphatically - that opposition is necessary for its educational and formative values...
...it is the kind of lying, that makes no sense but makes history...
...Among the purposes of the National Building Trades Council were to set up boards of arbitration, adjust jurisdiction disputes, and to guard the jurisdiction of member unions...
...It was not, mind you, a political burlesque by some ¦wisecracking playwright, but a solemn performance with official and semi-official spokesmen of three tyrannies in Jhe lead roles...
...Hypocrisy carried to these higher reaches achieves a sort of honesty of its own—honesty, as it were, turned inside out, rounded and perfect...
...It is a reality . . . one of the democratic liberties^ guaranteed by the Stalinist constitution...
...The effect of the "victory" has been grossly exaggerated...
...In memory they ran together, .they become one, an obscene parody on the idea of freedom...
...In his article Chase cites many examples of meaningless statements, among them a quotation from Hitler, and it is significant that Hoover made a statement strikingly like that of Hitler's...
...You will jiot find'anything in our pf"* which will offend the highest American tradition of known progress," echoes Umansky...
...Leave us alone," is the cry of the business oligarchs...
...One of the quotations is from Stalin and the other from Mussolini, but it makes not the slightest difference which is which...
...What is obvious is that in their own domain of almost exclusively craft unions, these organizations have not, been able to live in peace in their own building trades federation...
...The* author makes out a strong case against the use of language that conveys no intelligent meaning...
...The olympiad ai hypocrisy would have been diverting 'if it did not have such, tragic implications...
...It ignores the fact that-in all industrial countries it was the craftsmen in the mechanic trades, not factory workers, who were the first to organize . not only for better economic conditions, bat to batter down the old social and political barriers that kept all workers ander the rale of an old aristocracy...
...We must not confuse suck full-bodied and robust stuff with the garden variety ribs of everyday life...
...BUILDING TRADES DISPUTE IN the meantime, disputes in the building trades * had become acute and unions in these trades - began to set up a separate federation in 1897, which three years later President Gompers condemned as a dual organization, and for seven years "the Federation refused • to recognize it...
...Moreover, they developed the skilled technique of negotiation with the employing class that is essential to a growing and expansive unionism...
...f THE SPANISH STRUGGLE WHEN the Insurgent propaganda bureau jubilantly flashed td the world that the last Republican stronghold in Northern ?pajm had been captured, fascist sympathizers cheered the rebel "victory" as the beginning of the end for the democratic forces in that war-torn country...
...No, it was not Umansky...
...One marvels at the andsdry of these men in using a^word they have tried so long and so hard to drown in blood...
...In the latter year the Railway Employees' Department aad the Metal Trades Department were also created...
...It reported that several councils "had notified the officials of the Department that in order to settle local disputes, decisions had been rendered which when they tried to enforce them, the local representatives of the unions affected stated that they had been advised b'y the officials of their International Unions to disregard same...
...Upon the walls of Wuerttemberg Palace in Stuttgart the Nazis have hung maps, marked in red, which indicate German populations in French Alsace-Lorraine, small sections of Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark, portions of Poland and Czechoslovakia, spots in the Balkans, all of Austria, Italian South Tyrol and the larger part of Switzerland...
...In fact in some trades where no conflicts existed, the organizations have deliberately changed their claims to jurisdiction with no better reason than that other Organizations nave extended their claims...
...It is inconceivable that the Powers would permit Hitler's regiments to overrun that country, as it would be a threat to the rest of Europe...
...It must be evident to members, of unions, regardless of their affiliation, that the long persistence of these interunkm struggles is a serious handicap to...
...His present insolent backing of his agents in Czechoslovakia has brought another danger to Europe...
...In the Nazi mind, all Germans who live in these regions— and they are estimated at 1 5,000,000—owe allegiance to the hairy ape who dictates in Berlin...
...In 1905 the convention declined to consider disputes unless the disputing organizations first v tried to adjust them and declared that if arbitration was acceptable, both organizations must "agree in writing to abide by the decision rendered...
...This situation is another important reason why the breach in Labor's ranks should I be closed...
...Champion number two quoted bis Leader's jao less inspiring words: "The open admission of our mistakes and their honest rectification can only increase the strength of our state...
...The laurels were carried off, in the opinion of this observer at least, bv the Moscow representative...
...The fact is that these gentlemen themselves are caught in the meshes of a complicated capitalism and they are as helpless to prevent an industrial storm or to control it when it comes as a man in a -frail boat is at sea...
...The latter took the words right out of the Russian's mouth with an assurance that in Italy "the vast and highly organized majority leaves but a very limited possibility of action to the opposition, constituting a very small minority indeed...
...Ilk makes war against Communist dictatorship and urges acceptance of its own without the slightest comprehension that civilized humanity wants no dictatorship of any kind...
...Freedom of th» press in my country is not a mere proclamation of a principle...
...Union conflicts continued and in 1906 the con'' vention urged holding "mutual conferences" to settle them, but apparently with few satisfactory results in the following years...
...ARBITRATION PROVES A FAILURE MEDIATION and arbitration have been attempted with poor results...
...Many thousands of Italian youth, fighting in the ragged Asturian peaks to take a city they knew nothing about, will never see their home country...
...Living high in their comfortable academic towers, they also know nothing of life in the trenches, of the tragic sacrifices made, aad of the real problems that face the workers in anion affairs and in industry...
...HooVer said: "You have the blood and the urge of your American forebears...
...J7XCEPT for an occasional reference to their particular* countries and their particular Due* or Fuehrer or Vbzhd, the three speeches were interchangeable...
...What Umansky did say was: "We have no opposition press and no political antagonism within the press...
...The Soviet press," he asserted in his very first pars*, graph, "was born free and remains free...
...otfc The principal task of the next few decades, it would almost seem, is to rescue these words and these ideas from the morass into which they have been dragged...
...These three unions organized a powerful 'triple alliance" to protect its member unions from jurisdiction raids and to obtain unity Of action of its local councils...
...As savages make a fetich of a totem pole, so words become fetiches...
...Words that once had ascertainable meaning"** have in recent years lost their identity and merges -*1*0 their opposites...
...President Williams...
...It would be tedious to follow the conflicts and upheavals in the building trades in the ensuing years, and to attempt it would require more space than can be allotted to it...
...If the politicians, njost of whom never had any real business experience, would give up their critical attitude toward business and leave it alone for a while, or even encourage it, conditions in this country would immediately improve,'* says one high New York banker...
...HFor the first time in its history it (our journalism) is now guided solely by the spirit of loyalty and .service to the: nation, which after all is the strongest case that can be made for any press...
...D'Annunzjp and Auhagen hemmed and hawed and wriggled uncomfortably, Comrade Umansky spoke out boldly and feioWv, with the unblushing assurance of long practice in political prevarication...
...All of them were singing the same sang in 1929 which they now sing, and in the ensuing years they were chanting a funeral dirge until the Washington Administration pulled them out of the wreckage...
...He left the inference that he knows how to assure the jobs...
...Those who heard the speech or who read it might well check it with an interesting article in November Harper's by Stuart Chase on the 'Tyranny of Words...
...Both statements fall into the category of hooey...
...In the meantime...
...And here I very nearly mixed His Excellency Umansky's rhetoric with .Comrade D'Annunzio's...
...Then there are proposals to be made in several legislatures for the incorporation of trade unions, including New York and Oregon...
...However, the Carpenters and several other unions held aloof from the Council for some years...
...j The building trades have the most pronounced craft type of unions, and here the union conflicts over jurisdiction have been continuous, resulting in splits and occasional dual organizations that have continued into the present year...
...This measure is also inspired by the same capitalistic interests...
...Where Messrs...
...THICK-HEAD NAZIS ^ERMAN Nazis have so far retreated into a mental state of paranoia that they are unable to understand other people...
...Indelacio Prieto in Valencia has solidified the Government lines from the French border down to Madrid so that it would take the entire Italian army to advance into Republican territory...
...The A. F. of L. convention in 1907 resolved its fears of dual unionism by passing a resolution to admit the Building Trades Council as a Department of the Federation, and the Department was creaked in 1908...
...The parlor and pent-house "radicals" have contributed nothing bnt ignorance and confusion to the presenj dispute in the Labor Movement...
...A one-party election in which opposition is equivalent to suicide is accepted as a new and higher sort of "democracy...
...The simple concept of a free press has been so maimed that pepP" actually listened to the nonsensical ^sophistries of the tlu*^ spokesmen for three oligarchies - without laughing--aoo* without weeping...
...simply denied the existence of such restraints in Russia...
...f. ; . * • THE central crime of the enthroned hypocrisies of Europe ' and Asia, it almost seems, is that they have battered *¦ meaning out of such words and concepts as rev«otion» socialism, freedom, progress...
...annual report is littered with, reports of jurisdiction disputes which, he said, "is still the paramount issue" in . the Department...
...Hoover used three in the words "blood," "urge" and "forebears," but his speech is littered with such meaningless abstractions...
...The work of the early organized mechanics for decades in this and other countries paved the way for other workers to organize...
...As a politician...
...Who said anything about a rebel victory...
...They want a just return for their labor...
...no longer antagonistic classes in our country and no foundation for any opposition to the firmly established Socialist order...
...What is significant of this united fighting spirit 'of our ruling magnates of capital is its danger to the organized workers of ' the nation...
...A BIG DANGER AHEAD QUR readers will find much of interest to them in the story The New Leader carries on the front page regarding a coming capitalist-inspired newspaper propaganda against any legislation by Congress regarding wages and hours...
...HOPES OF PEACE DASHED 11/E may now resume consideration of juris« diction problems in the early days of the A. F. of L. In the convention of 1903, President Gompers referred to the convention of 1902 as the' "peace convention" which had failed to realize hopes of peace...
...In 1912 the Miners introduced a resolution favoring organization by industries, which was rejected, and the Scran ton Declaration of 1901 was reaffirmed by a vote of 10,934 to 5,929...
...Where the others excused a lew nunot restraints on their press and their journalists on the ground that theirs are totalitarian countries, Umansky' (for many years himself an official press censor...
...By THE EDITOR PENTHOUSE RADICAL VIEWS BEFORE proceeding further with this review of craft fights over union jurisdiction in the A. F. of L., it is necessary to guard against misunderstanding...
...also in instances it...
...it is creative lying in the tradition of folk tales and fairy tales and the cosmic delusions of the race...
...The Nazi dictator referred to his Aryan heroes, "in whom flows heroic blood" and who ^will not fail...
...I must check back in aW notes, because they all made the self-same point...
...Two years later there was a great increase in jurisdictional disputes, and in 1930 international unions, "contractors and the Department organized a Board of Trade Claims, not to arbitrate but to formulate the question to be arbitrated, but this Board was weakened because the Bricklayers withdrew from the Department in 1927, the Carpenters in 1929, and the Electrical Workers in 1931...
...Four years ago the Carpenters and Ironworkers were involved in a jurisdictional dispute in Washington and work on a $10,000,000 government building waa at a standstill...
...And yet high office and power are won by experts in this art of saying nothing!____ WHERE THE NEWS ENDS J^JOTdHING Alice found beyond the looking-glass was ! quite as fantastic as the scene enacted a few weeks ago on a platform in the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York...
...Insurgent General Franco lost millions of dollars in munitions, food, ships, planes and other war material, including the cream of his fascist corps...
...Moreover, it was only yesterday that they were pillorying all union leaders, including those now heading the C.I.O., as "betrayers" of Labor...
...Newspapers in which every column is policed pass for a brand of "free press...
...He added: "During the early part of this year jurisdictional disputes wen so . prevalent that they were a real menace to the building and construction industry...
...We do not have them because there are...
...A system in which the workers are more brutally exploited than uB' der capitalism, tied to their jobs and muzzled and gjvcn °* word in the conduct of their lives, is touted as "socialism...
...The rebel drive against Bilbao was, stopped for ninety days...
...They insolently demand that Germans in all other countries should accept the Nazi "culture" that has burnt the books of great German scholars, that has brought the tortures of the concentration camp, and made a brutal gangster dictator...
...He has the courage of his lack of convictions...
...The same claim is also extended to Germans living in the United States and LatinAmerica, and the blood-smeared Hitler has his agents in these countries organizing td promote his fantastic claims...
...It is in a higher dimension, a nobler key...
...The steady decline of industry in general in the past two months and the flurries in the stock market in recent weeks are also serving as an excuse, for the same powerful interests to insist that further labor and social legislation be abandoned and capitalist press opinion is echoing this cry...
...Thus a "supreme court' of the building industry," the National Board of Jurisdictional Awards, was set up in 1919, but the Carpenters withdrew after the first % year when an award did not suit this union...
...The Italian deficit, boosted sky high by the Abyssinian invasion and the intervention in Spain, is now 7,000,000,000 lire...
...It took a most modern, motorized army of over 100,000 trained and thoroughly equipped troops, under the guidance of aa international fascist high command, scores of powerful German and Italian bombing and pursuit planes, hundreds of tanks, cannon and anti-aircraft guns, fifty-five days to take Gijon away from some forty or fifty thousand Asturian miners, who were armed merely with their favorite weapons—the dynamite stick—and a love for liberty...
...Friedrich Ernst Auhagen, a German lecturer - and Constantine A. Umansky, charge d'affaires of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, all made contributions to the theme of "A Free Press in the World Today" at the New York Herald-Tribulne^FoTuni on current affairs...
...Many of them went to jail in the period when they were fighting for a legal status foe organised workers under the law, and to them credit is due for much of the legislation that has benefited the whole working class...
...Thickhead Nazis will yet learn this...
...The Carpenters offered to reaffiliate in 1927 if the adverse award was set aside, but this could not be done without repudiating the National Board...
...was besieged with complaints from all parts of the country rfqaeeting settlement of the same...
...A dispute 1 would appear at the least provocation, and -the Department...
...The Executive Council of the Department also reviewed much of the interunkm strife...
...One of the doughty champions of freedom of the press -quoted his-ineffable leader to this effect: "We do not deny tiie right of opposition...
...No count has been taken of the terrible toll the northern campaign has taken of the native Spanish soldiers who died for General Franco...
...Until tuey have been restored to some semblance of clean rae,V"n' and washed of the clotted blood, the best energies and M**1 instincts of mankind will be diverted and squandered am the defense of reaction disguised as progress, slavery dressed up as freedom, exploitation posing as socialism...
...Captain Ugo V. D'Annunzio, son of the Italian poet...
...Which of the three said this...
...the growth of the unions, and that unity of action is made difficut and often impossible, rligh officials of responsible national and international unions have added their opinion to the facts...
...Pledges made in that convention "to cease hostilities and to abide by the awards of impartial arbitration or of decisions reached by the convention itself," he said, "have rendered conditions, if possible, still worse...
...Union was striking against union, and the quarrel brought idleness to thousands of workers...
...disclosed in this brief survey...
...Progress, freertom-^fciouthed hy emissaries from three prison states, an* solemnly applauded at the WaJdwtAstoria...
...There is a parlor Bolshevik cult, including a section of the literary fry, that sweepingly condemn all craft organization...
...The German stampede back to -the Middle Ages passes for a "revolution" and the reaction, slavery, race hatreds are labeled "progress" so* "national socialism...
...was, reported that the presidents of a few of our affiliated International Unions had directed their local officials not to recognise decisions rendered locally or by the officials of the Building and Construction Trades Department...
...Most important of all is the 10 per cent capital levy Mussolini has had to impose updh a grumbling Italy to offset the terrific cost of financing the northern drives...
...Santander protected its starving, over-swollen population for another three months, and then Gijon—with 250,000 refugees packed into a city which in normal times never housed more than 78,000 people—held back the crack Insurgent army until winter settled over a bloody Spain...
...Repudiation was effected by the Building Trades Council withdrawing from the Board...
...BUILDING TRADES IN 1937 "THE proceedings of the Building and Construc* tion Trades Department convention in Denver in 1937 show that the internecine strife continues...
...While the workers are divided into two federations in conflict with each other, the enemy is taking the initiative on all fronts against the working masses...
...Hoover is the equal of any in failing to communicate any definite ideas...
...Mark that the Italian law protects high officials and institutions of friendly countries, as well as its own," boasts D'Annunzio...
...These particular phrases are from the lips of the Nazi official...
...THE ART OF SAYING NOTHING J-JERBERT HOOVER told the nation Tuesday night that "Our people want jobs...
Vol. 20 • October 1937 • No. 44
