A History of Trade Unionism in the United States

by Selig Perlman

(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' Association 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 assaults 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 Typothetæ 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 apprenticeship along with higher wages and shorter hours. As a union advances from an ephemeral association to a stable organization more and more the emphasis is shifted 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 classified 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 illustration. Thus all rules relating to methods of wage payment, like the prohibition of piece work and of bonus systems (including those associated 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 quantity 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 apprenticeship, 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 competitors, 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 establishing 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 participants 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' Association and the National Metal Trades' Association have gone about the business of union wrecking in a systematic way. They have maintained a so-called "labor bureau," furnishing 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 associations 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 class of local employers' associations. The most influential association of this class was the Employers' Association of Dayton, Ohio. This association 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 Association is best attested by its policy of taking into membership employers who were threatened with strikes, notwithstanding the heavy financial obligations involved.

Another class of local associations were the "Citizens' Alliances," which did not restrict membership 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 associations, 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 membership more than a mere employers' organization, claimed in time of strikes to voice the sentiment of the community in general.