TWO KINDS OF UNIONISM

Industrial Unionist, Volume 1, Issue 6, 1 July 1913, Page 3

TWO KINDS OF UNIONISM

A craft or trade union at best is

simply an association of wage workers formed for the purpose of gaining improved conditions as wage workers. While originally intended to unite, craft unionism actually keeps the workers divided. To take that much-quoted example, the Building Industry, we find a multiplicity of unions—carpenters’, plumbers’, scaffolders’, bricklayers’, iron workers’, etc,, etc., and various subdivisions. Or-

ganised as they are, in separate groups, they tie themselves up with separate agreements, thus making common action by the Building workers, as an industry, impossible. Craft Unionism is bad enough in countries where the strike is the recognised weapon, but here we have the added evil of an Arbitration system which, by encouraging dependence on officials, etc., saps the virility of the whole Labour movement because it develops docility in the rank and file. Compromise, which is encouraged under Arbitration, is the craft union official’s god. Many officials, recognising that an easier and steadier job is assured, and fearing to face a struggle, encourage Arbitration.

Craft unionism is out of date—a thing of the past. To be governed by craft union rules, methods and ideals is to be governed by the dead. It fails to keep pace with industrial development, and the longer it lasts the more impotent and hopeless it becomes. Its motto —‘ A fair day’s wage ’ ’ —is a recognition of the employers’ right to exploit labour. Contrast this with the New Unionism, which boldly declares for the whole product of labour for the labourer; groups the workers into industries instead of crafts; combines the industries into One Big Class Union; recognises that

an injury to one is an injury to all, and adopts up-to-date methods of warfare, and aims at ending the present insane social system by establishing an Industrial Commonwealth.—W.M.

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 when = ever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an in = jury to all.