No Time Agreements

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 3, 1 April 1913, Page 1

No Time Agreements

—'•saces——--Ask the average worker whether the cost of living tends to rise or to fall, and the answer will be that it tends to rise. The same gentleman, also, will admit that, in agreements made with the boss, a period should be decided upon during which no further advance in wages shall be demanded. Now, why in the name of reason should a worker agree to accept a certain rate of wages for a specified length of time when he admits that the purchasing power of those wages is falling every day ? He acknowledges that the cost of living rises continuously, yet he agrees to accept wages that shall not rise in like proportion. To make a time agreement with an employer, and fulfil it, is to have the worker merely a punching bag for the boss to pummel. V irtually, the worker agrees to bare his breast for the bosses’ kpife, for the cunning brain of the inventor is ever devising new means of reducing the wages list, scrapheaping labour, swelling the unemployed army—that most fertile source of the workers’ worst enemy, the scab. And the boss is always ready and eager to pounce on any new scheme whereby the above results may be attained. The time agreement is a condition most desirable to the boss. Its real object is not a guarantee of good faith on his part, as his philosophers demonstrate; rather is it his cunning method of preventing that thing which hurts him most, that all-powerful weapon Labour holds in its two hands, the giant that will eventually - crush him—the Social General Strike.

idr. Worker, if you were an employer, and had under your thumb, say, one thousand men, organised into ten unions, each with a separate agreement, would you have those agreements expire all on the same date ? Why, certainly you would not ! For then you would have to deal with the whole lot at the one time. You would have a big strike pending, for, you know, the workers always fall back on their trump ace—the Strike. No, you would certainly have each agreement expire on a date as widely separated as possible from the rest, so as to prevent any joint action on the part of the various unions. You, as an employer, would see to that. Well, then, since you are not an employer, but a worker, and. therefore, against the employer, why do you make time agreements with him and thus debar yourself the opportunity of. having the help of your mates in the other unions, when you demand better conditions? Don’t you want their help ? You certainly need it. Your mates need you. Aren’t you prepared to help them ? A man who won’t stand bv his mates is no man at all. The I.W.W. says—” NO TIME AGREEMENTS ! ! !”—AH.

The interests of the working class can be upheld only by an organisation formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all.