The decades between 1890 and the 1930’s mark a violent period of class conflict in the United States – a period of conflict provoked by the emergence and consolidation of both monopoly capital and the industrial proletariat. U.S. monopoly capitalism was developing at a startling rate. Having recently annexed or gained complete control over the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and other Pacific islands, the U.S. bourgeoisie competed for hegemony within the world capitalist system. And within the United States, industrial trusts and monopoly corporations replaced the individual capitalist firm, with large capital pushing small production into the background. Between 1900 and 1920, total invested capital increased five times, and the value of industrial products rose by even more. In the same twenty years, the number of people employed in industry doubled. Gigantic factories employed hundreds, even thousands of workers, whose oppression and exploitation grew hand in hand with increasing industrial productivity. And inevitably, as workers were brought together in huge pools of industrial labor, they resisted their oppression through independent political action and the formation of trade unions. Among these early organizations were the Knights of Labor, Euegene Debs’ American Railway Union, and the International Workers of the World (IWW) who said in 1908 that “a struggle must go on until the workers of the world take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.”5 The U.S. bourgeoisie, on the other hand, had been watching the earlier developing trade union movement in Europe very closely and prepared itself to respond to U.S. labor militancy. Two basic tactics were emphasized by the bourgeoisie in its overall strategy to control and exploit labor. One was the method of force and the other was the method of “liberalism” and cooptation. In 1910 Lenin wrote: … in every country the bourgeoisie inevitably devises two systems of rule, two methods of fighting for its interests and of maintaining its domination, and these methods at times succeed each other and at times are interwoven in various combinations. The first of these is the method of force, the method of supporting all the old and obsolete institutions, the method of irreconcilably rejecting reforms … The second is the method of “liberalism,” of steps towards the development of political rights, towards reforms, concesssions, and so forth.’ The U.S. ruling class did not want trade unions to exist in this country. Led by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), the ruling class fought with vengeance to prevent organized labor from growing. The blood of the workers at Ludlow, Coeur d’Alene, Homestead, Pullman, and in so many other places is vivid testimony to the brutality with which the bourgeoisie fought to prevent unionization and decent wages. But when they were unable to stop it, and when they saw the success of their European counterparts in defusing revolutionary movements, they moved quickly and effectively to the second strategy – a strategy of coopting and creating divisions within the working class. This article examines the steps of “liberalism” and reform taken by the bourgeoisie to channel the trade union movement into a safe direction, and explores why the trade unions themselves collaborated with the bourgeoisie in this effort. U.S. ENTERS A NEW CENTURY The conditions of the U.S. working class at the turn of the century were wretched. In 1900, the year that Andrew Carnegie made $23 million and paid no income tax, the miners in the anthracite regions averaged $240 for the year – about $4.60 a week. That same year women workers in New York’s clothing industry earned 304 a day. As Frederick Winslow Taylor began expounding the doctrine of “scientific management”* and workers’ wages became geared to performance, capitalists demanded 14-16 or more hours work per day, often at less than 104 an hour. In 1902 the World Almanac listed 4,000 millionaires in the U.S., while more than 10 million people lived in poverty. Many boys and girls under 14 worked from four in the morning until ten at night. If workers were injured on the job, they were thrown in the streets with no compensation. All workers feared the day when unemployment would turn them into beggars. 2 * “Soientific management” refers to the absolute dictation by management to the worker of the precise manner in which work is to be performed. Otherwise known as the “Taylor School,” it is the science of the management of others’ work under capitalist conditions. (See Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital, Chapter 4) The capitalists declared that these conditions were natural. “We accept and welcome … ,” declared Andrew Carnegie, “great inequality of wealth and environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of the few, as being not only beneficial, but essential for the future of the race.” 3 But labor did not agree, and a great upsurge in militancy took place. In 1901 a group of black and white trade unionists in New Orleans declared: On the other side stand the workers in their millions, without ownership in the means of life, without rights, defenseless, deprived by the State, press and pulpit. It is against them that the weapons of the police and militia are directed … Individual unions must unite in one large league, which shall proclaim the unity of all and give mutual support. Soon thereafter will come the recognition of the fact that our whole society rests exclusively upon the shoulders of the working class, and that this latter can, by simply choosing to do so, introduce another and more just society. The class- conscious power of capital, with all its camp followers, is confronted with the class-conscious power of labor, the majority of the population. There is no power on earth strong enough to thwart the will of such a majority conscious of itself. The total membership in all trade unions doubled from 1897 to 1901 and then doubled again from 1900 to 1904, rising to 2,072,700. In 1900 there were 1,779 strikes, and more than double that number in 1903.5 THE NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION To combat this rising militancy the ruling class used the two tactics Lenin described above. The first was to try to smash it through the open-shop drive (an effort by employers to keep unions and union members out of their plants). This drive was led by small businessmen, organized into the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). The leaders included such men as Van Cleave, head of a stove-range firm; David Parry, owner of a small car factory in Indianapolis; Charles Post, a cereal manufacturer; and George Pope, owner of a bicycle firm. These small manufacturers and businessmen were the bitter opponents of unionism, and for a time, their efforts succeeded in slowing down the union movement. 6 But to the large industrialists, who wielded more power in the business community, it had become clear that organized labor was a permanent force. To prevent the rise of disruptive radicalism, some accommodation was necessary. These capitalists, from such basic industries as coal, iron, steel, building trades and railroads, joined together in 1900 with the head of AFL, Samuel Gompers, to form the National Civic Federation (NCF). Leaders of the Civic Federation included Mark Hanna, an Ohio industrialist and a commanding figure in the Republican Party, the banker Isaac Seligman, Secretary of the Treasury, Franklin MacVeagh, William H. Taft, and August Belmont. The NCF had the same goals as NAM – to undercut the growing class consciousness of the trade unions. But rather than smash unionism, these business leaders, according to historian Philip Foner, “sought to emasculate it, to ensnare the labor leaders into a conscious program of collaborating with the employers, robbing the workers of their vigor, militancy and the spirit of their class.”, The NCF hoped to reduce class conflict and institute cooperative relations between capital and labor. It sought to channel the trade union movement into a “responsible” direction, in order to control change and prevent the rise of socialism. In 1903, the NCF declared: Experience shows … that the more full the recognition given to a trade union the more business- like and responsible it becomes. Through dealing with businessmen in business matters its more intelligent, conservative and responsible members come to the front and gain general control and direction of its affairs. If the energy of the employer is directed to discouragement and repression of the union he need not be surprised if the more radically inclined members are the ones most frequently heard.’ The NCF understood that unions were here to stay, but it also recognized the need to mitigate class conflict as much as possible. Organizationally, therefore, it opposed the open-shop drives of NAM. Collective bargaining was posed as the savior of capitalism. As one member of the NCF stated: “The trade union also stands as a bulwark against the great wave of socialism … if the capitalists are wise, they will aid us in the effort to prevent injustice.”9 However, many individual capitalists within the NCF who accepted the theory of collaborating with the trade unions often rejected such plans in practice. This reflects the bourgeoisie’s strategy of using many methods and tactics at the same time to accomplish a given objective. While within the NCF they talked about labor-capital harmony, in their actions at the factories they tried to destroy trade-unionism. For example, the president and three directors of U.S. Steel were active in the NCF, and the Morgan interests which dominated U.S. Steel were the leading financial supporters of the NCF. Despite this, U.S. Steel became the model for the open-shop drive, and all but destroyed trade unionism in the iron and steel industry by 1909(which then remained unorganized for decades).’ 0 The significance of the NCF was not only that it brought the bourgeoisie together to map out a common strategy against labor, but that it sought and gained the support of labor representatives in those efforts. In 1906, AFL President Samuel Gompers, who also served as Vice-President of the NCF, declared, “I think I can without vanity claim to be one of the earliest members of the NCF. I had faith in it, I had faith in the idea,” that is that peaceful cooperation with the employers is beneficial to the workers, because “our best common interests are conserved by meeting [with the employers] in the conciliation board and our endeavors to bring about a common understanding upon contested points.”” This approach by the union leadership did not consider class conflict central. If labor maintained a hostile stance towards capitalism, negotiations would bog down. Many labor bureaucrats attempted to convince workers that their material success and progress were bound up with that of their employers. Mutual interests had to be recognized. The Secretary-Treasurer of the United Garment Workers, Henry White, one of the most ardent champions of the NCF, put it this way: Like the captain and crew of a ship, whatever differences there may be between them as to J. Pierpont Morgan, a born aristocrat, lunges after a photographer. treatments, both are equally interested in bringing the vessel safely into port. That is the truth we have been trying to impress upon employers and workmen alike. I Gompers and other labor leaders affiliated with the NCF believed that trade unions could only exist if the employers let them exist. And the employers could tolerate them only if they stayed within certain set limits: confined themselves to skilled trades, repressed militancy and radicalism, and maintained a “reasonable attitude.” Gompers felt that industrial strife brought disastrous effects on the unions as an institution and turned “public opinion” against them. Gompers’ association with men like Hanna led him to believe that industrial peace would reign, since the “men who control the wealth in this country are at bottom human and adaptable to the changed order of relations.” 1 CONTRACT UNIONISM The foundations of a unionism that would separate itself from the socialist movement were embedded during the first two decades of the twentieth century. From the premise of the abolition of class conflict, this type of unionism adopted the codes of business and accepted the outlook and goals of the businessman. This type of unionism has many names, pure and simple unionism, bread and butter unionism, business unionism, but the most appropriate name that exposes its essence is contract unionism. For, as explained in the introduction, it is the contract – negotiated by a collaborationist union leadership and enforced through the anti-labor legal web described in the next article – which legally limited the rank and file’s ability to fight back and pushed the development of economism within the trade unions. The idea behind contract unionism was to limit and harness the union’s power. Employers came to realize that collaboration with labor leaders could mean industrial peace, which would protect their profits. In many cases, wage increases granted as a result of collective bargaining could be passed on to the consumer, i.e., the workers themselves. The employer helped the union leader by granting a wage increase and the union leader helped the employer by signing a contract which guaranteed labor peace. Costly strikes were limited. When the union organized a whole industry then labor costs were taken out of the sphere of competition – all employers in the same sector paid the same scale. Once the contract was signed, the labor leaders became the enforcer striving to make the rank and file abide by the terms. The leaders of the Shoe Workers’ warned, for example, that “nothing can justify any union or member thereof for violating its contract or allowing it to be violated.” 14 Officers of the Window Glass Workers stated: “A contract, openly negotiated and freely entered into, must be faithfully carried out, else the whole doctrine of collective bargaining falls into disrepute and the trade union defeats the one great purpose for which it is instituted.” ” The actions of the United Mine Workers (UMW) provide a clear example of how contract unionism works: At the UMW’s 1902 convention, John Mitchell warned that ‘when the contract is made and signed, if we expect the operators to carry out those provisions that are advantageous to us, we, in turn, must carry out just as explicitly those provisions which are unfavorable to us.’ When such exhortations failed to produce obedience, more drastic measures were taken. To cite one of many examples, in 1904 when two locals failed to return to work as ordered by the Mine Workers’ officials, not only were their charters annulled, but the names of the members were placed on a UMW blacklist and sent to every operator and local in the district.” As the head of the UMW, John L. Lewis maintained that: “Trade unionism is a phenomenon of capitalism quite similar to the corporation. One is essentially a pooling of labor for purposes of common action in production and sales. The other is a pooling of capital for exactly the same purpose. The economic aims of both are identical – gain.” A policy of accommodation thus replaced one of struggle. Thie profit motive became essential to labor’s interest. The trade unions narrowed their sights from the interests of labor as a class to that of a single union or group of unions, thus ignoring the unorganized. One’s own union was put above all else, with labor solidarity diminishing. Crossing a picket line was a tactical, practical problem rather than something that was never done. Depending on the circumstances, sometimes you crossed and sometimes you didn’t. The individualist philosophy of the robber barons – every man for himself – was adopted by the trade union bureaucrats and became the guiding principle of contract unionism. These leaders would fight for their own members, but would let the unorganized fend for themselves. Because of this philosophy the gap between skilled and organized workers on the one hand and unskilled and unorganized workers on the other, became wider than in any other country in the world. “Every union for itself,” superceded “wages solidarity” which meant that the wages of the unskilled and poorly organized (usually third world or women workers) continuously lagged behind the rise in the cost of living.’ 8 The establishment of collective bargaining and contract unionism meant that labor leaders no longer became fighters for the class, no longer champions of labor’s rights. On the contrary, labor leaders became mediators between employers and employees – and the enforcers of the signed contract. The Teamsters talked of how the “Ideal Labor Leader” often must “act as a mediator between employer and employee, and he must necessarily know the business of both and must keep faith with both, which is at times difficult.” The labor leaders of business unions saw themselves as sellers of a human commodity. As the Teamsters journal went on to say: “You sell labor to employers. I will assume you sell on the best possible terms, but you sell. Labor is the commodity you sell. Like hot dogs.” ” Thus, instead of fighting together with the workers, the business union operates in isolation from the workers. Instead of advocating unity and class solidarity, the business union occasionally delivers more money, and a degree of security to their own members. Instead of viewing the workers in their union as part of an oppressed class, the bureaucrats teach that only through uniting with the profit system, rather than through opposing it, can they gain benefits. WORLD WAR I AND THE POST WAR ATTACK ON LABOR During World War I, the class collaboration tendencies within the labor movement consolidated. The union bureaucrats accepted the war policy of the capitalists and identified the interests of workers with those of the employers. One month prior to the entrance of the U.S. into the war, the AFL adopted a patriotic declaration pledging their total support to war policies. To overcome left-wing resistance to the war, Gompers and the AFL formed the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, to fight for a pro-war stand within the trade unions. 2 ” The primary factor consolidating the class collaboration tendencies within the trade unions during the war years was the actions of the government. To endorse and support the “commonality of interests” between workers and employers, the Wilson government brought labor representatives into the most important federal agencies set up during the war. Labor bureaucrats eagerly sat on such boards as: the Advisory Committee of the Council of National Defense, the Fuel Administration Board, the War Industries Board, and the Mediation Commission. 2 ‘ In 1918, the National War Labor Board (NWLB) was set up to mediate conflicts that might adversely affect war production. Through the NWLB, the employers demanded class peace and the labor bureaucrats agreed. They also agreed not to organize in industries that were not yet unionized. Through the NWLB, labor leaders also agreed not to strike and to help the government suppress those who dared to strike. Gompers declared that “a man who is a Multi-ethnic clothing workers strike for an eight-hour day and the right to a closed shop. traitor to his country is on a par with the scab in his trade.””‘2 He and the AFL approved of the persecution of the left and helped the state in its repressive operations. With the labor movement effectively shackled by its own leadership, the industrialists were able to rake in record profits from the manufacture and sale of munitions and war supplies, and from the export of U.S. foodstuffs and other essentials of war. There were a few rare exceptions to the collaborationist war policy among the trade union leadership. Eugene Debs opposed the war and consequently was imprisoned. The IWW stood consistently against the war, a stance which gave employers the opportunity to label IWW members as traitors. The government, in alliance with the employers in the western states (where the influence of the IWW was greatest), attempted to destroy this organization of militant unionists.” 2 The war years brought the labor bureaucrats and the employers closer together than ever before. Gompers came to endorse the efficiency production plans as developed in the Taylor school. And working on the government boards with the capitalists brought him to see the world even more explicitly from their point of view. The railroad baron, Daniel Willard, President of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the first head of the War Industries Board, stated in 1916 that he found himself and Gompers “in very full accord concerning most questions of fundamental importance.” He made the statement after he and Gompers had served together on the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense. 2 4 Emerging from the war as the world’s fastest ascending imperialist power, the U.S. ruling class launched an offensive against trade unionism. Labor responded with great militancy, and beginning with the 1919 Steel Strike there occurred what was then called the greatest series of labor struggles in U.S. history, lasting until 1923. But it was a defensive struggle against “the most self-confident employer groups in the world” whose main ally turned out to be the labor bureaucrats themselves. Post-war militancy primarily took the form of unauthorized and therefore “out-law” strikes against existing contracts – and against the contracts’ defenders, the labor bureaucrats. A dramatic example of these strikes was in the railways, where a switchman strike in April 1920 tied up the Chicago railway yards for two weeks. In this case, the union officials rushed in with cadres of scabs and joined with the government and the employers to break the strike. And to insure against repetition they made sure that the “ringleaders” were refused employment. Another example was the Seattle General Strike which was brought to an end by the concerted effort of the union officials who were worried about the breach of contract by their locals.2s “GOOD TIMES” COOLIDGE The upswing of U.S. imperialism during the 1920’s brought with it a massive propaganda campaign to convince workers that their interest resided in cooperating with the employers to increase production at minimum costs. “Oceans of slick propaganda,” according to William Z. Foster, proclaimed the magic formula of “mass production and high wages.” A planned economy with “scientific management and long range planning” promised workers profit sharing and stock distribution, group insurance, regular employment, and old age pensions. A “people’s capitalism” would blossom forth, they were told, and workers with high wages would buy up control of industry. America had cured its inner contradictions; no more industrial crisis or mass unemployment. “Ford has superceded Marx,” the employers boasted. They talked about American principles of “the inalienable right of every American to enter any trade or business he chooses, to accept employment under conditions satisfactory to himself without interference from the union business agent.” The closed shop was labeled unAmerican, and the real aim of the ideological offensive was clearly the destruction of unionism.”27 The employer class, however, was moving on many fronts. In the Supreme Court in the 1921 Coronado case, unions were held responsible for damages to employers resulting from labor disputes. Following the case, a series of anti-labor decisions revoked the immunities from injunction procedures granted unions by the Clayton Act of 1914.2 During the 1920’s the Rockefellers, like other leading industrialists, were busy figuring out how to maintain industrial peace. Specifically, John D. Rockefeller Jr. set up Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., an organization based on the assumption that labor relations was a field to bear watching, and the best opportunity for influencing its development was in the realm of management counseling. In its sales pitch, it stressed that a satisfied labor force meant more profits and that any increased costs from accommodating the human weakness of laborers would be more than counterbalanced by increased efficiency and contentment. 29 Next, Rockefeller funded an Industrial Relations department at Princeton University in 1922, and went on to develop similar programs at other major schools. In fact, every institute of industrial relations set up at a mng/or university in the interwar years was funded by the Rockefellers. Having earlier rejected class struggle and consolidated a position defining a mutuality of interests between the bosses and the workers, the AFL leadership had no problem accepting the new propaganda flourish of bourgeois ideology. In 1924, after then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover gave a speech advocating capital, labor and government working together in “autonomous associational bodies,” Samuel Gompers observed that Hoover’s views “match perfectly the policy and philosophy of the AFL.” 3 0 The AFL had stopped growing, stopped organizing, and yielded to the policies of collaboration and company unionism which tripled between 1919-1927. In fact, the AFL actually turned its unions into instruments of the capitalists’ production plans. 3 ‘ The collaborationist policies of AFL leadership combined with an aggressive open-shop drive by the employers to leave most of the AFL unions in ruins. Thus by the mid-1020’s, most of the unions which survived the assaults on labor were used by the leadership to promote capitalism and repress militancy. These unions, controlled by collaborationist leaders, had become themselves “institutions of class collaboration.” DEPRESSION AND RADICALISM The depression, which began with the crash of 1929, hit labor hard. By the summer of 1932, labor’s average weekly earnings had declined from $25.03 to $16.73. Between 1929 and 1933 overall labor income had declined by 48 percent, from $51 to $26 billion. Unemployment surpassed the ten million point. The mood in the country became bitter, and angry workers began demanding justice. Hundreds of thousands of unemployed demonstrated on March 6, 1930 in New York, Detroit, and other cities. Hundreds of thousands more were involved in two national hunger marches in 1931 and 1932. Washington was occupied for three months in 1932 by veterans seeking their govenment bonus. These men were surrounded by the army and forcibly evacuated, leaving two men dead and a number wounded. The eviction of hundreds ,of tenants, often years behind in their rent, was prevented by spontaneous and mass demonstrations. Farmers improvised militant tactics to defend their land, and to stop foreclosure on their neighbors’ farms. Another tactic was to hold the bidding down on foreclosed farms to some ridiculous sum – $1 or $2 – in order to return the farm to its owner. 3 2 Years later, Franklin Roosevelt would boast that he had saved the U.S. from revolution. A militant spirit was sweeping the land, and this was particularly true within the trade unions. The class collaborationist union leaders were finding it more and more difficult to maintain control over their membership – particularly newer members. These members had a highly belligerent attitude toward employers and the coopted officials and began making legitimate demands. An example of this militancy was the miners’ strike in Illinois in February 1932. The District 12 miners had gone out on strike to prevent further wage cuts. After three months, the district president and operators agreed on a new wage scale and a partial six-hour day, but the miners rejected the agreement. With John L. Lewis, the employers negotiated another agreement embodying further small concessions. To his dismay, Lewis found the situation out of his control – he couldn’t get the men back to work. The decision of the membership, at a huge meeting in the center of the district, was to continue the strike. Thousands of miners formed an automobile caravan and descended upon the mines and shut them down. These miners, together with representatives from Indiana, in September formed the Progressive Miners of America, which represented around 30,000 miners and rejected the class collaboration policies of Lewis and the UMW. Rank and file militancy brought renewed efforts by trade union bureaucrats to retain tight control over the unions. After bitter struggles with the communists and socialists in the 1920’s and early 1930’s, John L. Lewis, the future founder of the CIO, succeeded in gaining the power (through the UMW constitution) to suspend or remove any officer or appointed employee for insubordination or “just and sufficient cause … and [to] appoint such organizers, field and office workers as may in his judgment be necessary.” Thus Lewis quickly gained control of 21 of the 31 districts in the UMW which were then run by his appointees and lost their autonomy.3 Another example of UMW history illustrates how the first seeds of contract unionism were planted as trade union leaders collaborated with the employers in an effort to control the rank and file. In February 1926, Lewis signed a five-year pact for the anthracite miners which gave the union the check-off of dues but left the wage scale unchanged. This pact gave no benefits to the workers, but gave the union, in addition to the dues, the power of assessment and fines. This was a weapon in Lewis’ hands against the militants. “In the five year period from January 1, 1919 to January 1, 1924, miners of District 12 of the UMW paid some $107,000 in fines for striking ‘illegally’ and for loading dirty coal. These fines were divided equally between the union and the Illinois Bituminous Coal Operators’ Association.” Leaders of other unions also employed similar tactics, but by the early 1930’s even the dismissal of radicals, and the dictatorial control of the unions could not stop the growing militancy and consciousness among the working class. A wave of strikes engulfed the country, until by 1934 close to one-seventh of the total labor force became involved in the conflicts. In the automobile industry, workers at the Fisher Body Co. began to revolt with a call for a strike to secure recognition, a wage increase, and a thirty-hour week. In San Francisco, the longshoremen in July 1934 demanded union recognition, control of hiring halls, and higher wages. The strike spread to other trades until more than 125,000 were involved and San Francisco was paralyzed. And there were violent confrontations in the textile industry, with textile workers on strike in twenty states by September 1, 1934. To overcome this growing class struggle, the bourgeois State directly intervened to guarantee the further functioning of contract unionism. Thus, the principles of contract unionism that were embedded in the early decades of this century survived the depression and deepened over time. The following article explores in detail the role of the State in upholding class collaborationism and the last article discusses labor-management institutions of the 1970’s which propagate the ideology of “class peace.”
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