Part 11 (2/2)

The meeting ended inauspiciously. The founders and molders seemed not to be able to settle their difficulties. Each side stood fast on its own principles and the arbitration committees regularly became deadlocked.

The question of a minimum wage was the most important issue. From 1899 to 1902 several joint conventions were held to discuss the wage question. In 1899 a settlement was made, which, however, proved of short duration. In November 1902, the two organizations met, differed, and arranged for a sub-committee to meet in March 1903. The sub-committee met but could reach no agreement.

The two organizations clashed also on the question of apprentices. The founders contended that, because there were not enough molders to fill the present demand, the union restrictions as to the employment of apprentices should be removed. The union argued that a removal of the restriction would cause unlimited compet.i.tion among molders and eventually the founders could employ them at their own price. They likewise failed to agree on the matter of cla.s.sifying molders.

Owing to the stalling of the conciliation machinery many strikes occurred in violation at least of the spirit of the agreement. July 1, 1901, the molders struck in Cleveland for an increase in wages; arbitration committees were appointed but failed to make a settlement.

In Chicago and San Francisco strikes occurred for the same reason.

It was at last becoming evident that the New York agreement was not working well. In the autumn of 1903 business prosperity reached its high watermark and then came a sharp depression which lessened the demand for molders. Early in 1904 the National Founders' a.s.sociation took advantage of this situation to reduce wages and finally practically abrogated the New York agreement. In April, 1904, the founders and molders tried to reach a decision as to how the agreement could be made effective, but gave it up after four days and nights of constant consideration. The founders claimed that the molders violated the agreement in 54 out of the 96 cases that came up during the five years of its life; and further justified their action on the ground that the union persistently refused to submit to arbitration by an impartial outsider the issues upon which the agreement was finally wrecked.

An agreement similar to the New York one was concluded in 1900 between the National Metal Trades' a.s.sociation and the International a.s.sociation of Machinists. The National Metal Trades' a.s.sociation had been organized in 1899 by members of the National Founders' a.s.sociation, whose foundries formed only a part of their manufacturing plants. The spur to action was given by a strike called by the machinists in Chicago and other cities for the nine-hour day. After eight weeks of intense struggle the a.s.sociation made a settlement granting a promise of the shorter day. Although hailed as one of the big agreements in labor history, it lasted only one year, and broke up on the issue of making the nine-hour day general in the a.s.sociation shops. The machinists continued to make numerous agreements with individual firms, especially the smaller ones, but the general agreement was never renewed.

Thereafter the National Metal Trades' a.s.sociation became an uncompromising enemy of organized labor.

In the following ten years both molders and machinists went on fighting for control and engaged in strikes with more or less success. But the industry as a whole never again came so near to embracing the idea of a joint co-partners.h.i.+p between organized capital and labor as in 1900.

(4) _The Employers' Reaction_

With the disruption of the agreement systems in the machinery producing and foundry industries, the idea of collective bargaining and union recognition suffered a setback; and the employers' uneasiness, which had already steadily been feeding on the unions' mounting pressure for control, now increased materially. As long, however, as business remained prosperous and a rising demand for labor favored the unions, most of the agreements were permitted to continue. Therefore, it was not until the industrial depression of 1907-1908 had freed the employers'

hands that agreements were disrupted wholesale. In 1905 the Structural Erectors' a.s.sociation discontinued its agreements with the Structural Iron Workers' Union, causing a dispute which continued over many years.

In the course of this dispute the union replied to the victorious a.s.saults of the employers by tactics of violence and murder, which culminated in the fatal explosion in the _Los Angeles Times_ Building in 1911. In 1906 the employing lithographers discontinued their national agreement with the lithographers' union. In 1907 the United Typothetae broke with the pressmen, and the stove founders with the stove mounters and stove polishers. In 1908 the agreements between the Lake Carriers and Lumber Carriers (both operating on the Great Lakes) and the seafaring and water front unions were terminated.

In the operation of these unsuccessful agreements the most serious stumbling blocks were the union ”working rules,” that is to say, the restrictive rules which unions strove to impose on employers in the exercise of their managerial powers in the shop, and for which the latter adopted the sinister collective designation of ”restriction of output.”

Successful trade unionism has always pressed ”working rules” on the employer. As early as the first decade of the nineteenth century, the trade societies then existing tried to impose on the masters the closed shop and restrictions on apprentices.h.i.+p along with higher wages and shorter hours. As a union advances from an ephemeral a.s.sociation to a stable organization more and more the emphasis is s.h.i.+fted from wages to working rules. Unionists have discovered that on the whole wages are the unstable factor, going up or down, depending on fluctuating business conditions and cost of living; but that once they have established their power by making the employer accept their working rules, high wages will ultimately follow.

These working rules are seldom improvisations of the moment, but, crude and one-sided as they often are, they are the product of a long labor experience and have taken many years to be shaped and hammered out.

Since their purpose is protective, they can best be cla.s.sified with reference to the particular thing in the workingman's life which they are designed to protect: the standard of living of the trade group, health, the security of the worker's job, equal treatment in the shop and an equal chance with other workmen in promotion, the bargaining power of the trade group, as a whole, and the safety of the union from the employer's attempts to undermine it. We shall mention only a few of these rules by way of ill.u.s.tration. Thus all rules relating to methods of wage payment, like the prohibition of piece work and of bonus systems (including those a.s.sociated with scientific management systems), are primarily devices to protect the wage earner's rate of pay against being ”nibbled away” by the employer; and in part also to protect his health against undue exertion. Other rules like the normal (usually the eight-hour) day with a higher rate for overtime; the rule demanding a guarantee of continuous employment for a stated time or a guarantee of minimum earnings, regardless of the quant.i.ty of work available in the shop; again the demand for the sharing of work in slack times among all employes; and further, when layoffs become necessary, the demand of recognition by the employer of a right to continuous employment based on ”seniority” in the shop;--all these have for their common aim chiefly the protection of the job. Another sort of rules, like the obstruction to the splitting up of trades and the restrictions on apprentices.h.i.+p, have in view the protection of the bargaining power of the craft group--through artificially maintaining an undiminished demand for skilled labor, as well as through a reduction of the number of compet.i.tors, present and future, for jobs. The protection of the union against the employer's designs, actual or potential, is sought by an insistence on the closed union shop, by the recognition of the right of appeal to grievance boards in cases of discharge to prevent anti-union discrimination, and through establis.h.i.+ng a seniority right in promotion which binds the worker's allegiance to his union rather than to the employer.

With these rigid rules, partly already enforced on the employer by strikes or threats to strike and partly as yet unrealized but energetically pushed, trade unionism enters the stage of the trade agreement. The problem of industrial government then becomes one of steady adjustment of the conflicting claims of employer and union for the province of shop control staked out by these working rules. When the two sides are approximately equal in bargaining strength (and lasting agreements are possible only when this condition obtains), a promising line of compromise, as recent experience has shown, has been to extend to the unions and their members in some form that will least obstruct shop efficiency the very same kind of guarantees which they strive to obtain through rules of their own making. For instance, an employer might induce a union to give up or agree to mitigate its working rules designed to protect the job by offering a _quid pro quo_ in a guarantee of employment for a stated number of weeks during the year; and likewise, a union might hope to counteract the employer's natural hankering for being ”boss in his own business,” free of any union working rules, only provided it guaranteed him a sufficient output per unit of labor time and wage investment.

However, compromises of this sort are pure experiments even at present--fifteen to twenty years after the dissolution of those agreements; and they certainly require more faith in government by agreement and more patience than one could expect in the partic.i.p.ants in these earlier agreements. It is not surprising, therefore, that the short period of agreements after 1898 should in many industries have formed but a prelude to an ”open-shop” movement.[67]

After their breach with the union, the National Founders' a.s.sociation and the National Metal Trades' a.s.sociation have gone about the business of union wrecking in a systematic way. They have maintained a so-called ”labor bureau,” furnis.h.i.+ng men to their members whenever additional help was needed, and keeping a complete card system record of every man in the employ of members. By this system occasion was removed for employers communicating with the business agents of the various unions when new men were wanted. The a.s.sociations have had in their regular pay a large number of non-union men, or ”strike-breakers,” who were sent to the shop of any member whose employes were on strike.

In addition to these and other national organizations, the trade unions were attacked by a large and important cla.s.s of local employers'

a.s.sociations. The most influential a.s.sociation of this cla.s.s was the Employers' a.s.sociation of Dayton, Ohio. This a.s.sociation had a standing strike committee which, in trying to break a strike, was authorized to offer rewards to the men who continued at work, and even to compensate the employer for loss of production to the limit of one dollar per day for each man on strike. Also a system was adopted of issuing cards to all employes, which the latter, in case of changing employment, were obliged to present to the new employer and upon which the old employer inscribed his recommendation. The extreme anti-unionism of the Dayton a.s.sociation is best attested by its policy of taking into members.h.i.+p employers who were threatened with strikes, notwithstanding the heavy financial obligations involved.

Another cla.s.s of local a.s.sociations were the ”Citizens' Alliances,”

which did not restrict members.h.i.+p to employers but admitted all citizens, the only qualification being that the applicant be not a member of any labor organization. These organizations were frequently started by employers and secured cooperation of citizens generally. In some places there were two a.s.sociations, an employers' and a Citizens'

Alliance. A good example of this was the Citizens' Alliances of Denver, Colorado, organized in 1903. These ”Citizens' Alliances,” being by virtue of mixed members.h.i.+p more than a mere employers' organization, claimed in time of strikes to voice the sentiment of the community in general.

So much for the employers' counter attacks on trade unions on the strictly industrial front. But there were also a legal front and a political front. In 1902 was organized the American Anti-Boycott a.s.sociation, a secret body composed mainly of manufacturers. The purpose of the organization was to oppose by legal proceedings the boycotts of trade unions, and to secure statutory enactments against the boycott.

The energies of the a.s.sociation have been devoted mainly to taking certain typical cases to the courts in order thereby to create legal precedents. The famous Danbury Hatters' Case, in which the Sherman Anti-Trust law was invoked against the hatters' union, was fought in the courts by this a.s.sociation.

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