Industrial Unionism.

Maoriland Worker, Volume 2, Issue 20, 21 July 1911, Page 17

Industrial Unionism.

The Difference Between Industrial Unionism and Trades Unionism.

DON'T MISS THIS.

Tbe term Industrial Unionism is used to express a modern form of labor organisation whose jurisdiction is not confined to any particular trade or craft, but is co-extensive with tne industrial development, and embraces tho entire working class. Industrial unionism is tho outgrowth of trade unionism and expresses the highest form of industrial organisation the working class has yet attained. As its name implies this form of unionism contemplates the organisation of industries in their entirety, uniting all employees within the same economic body, subdivided into a number of departments equal to and corresponding with the several trades or general occupations in which they are engagedIn organising the workers along the lines of their general industrial interests rather than their particular craft interests, it is claimed that the friction due to overlapping craft jurisdictions is obviated and that a higher degree of solidarity and efficiency is thus secured in the interests of all. Tho industrial union in its present form came but recently into existence, the trade union having preceded it, the latter dating back to a time near the beginning of industrial life in Great Britain, about the middle of the eighteenth century. The Earlier Unions. The earlier unions were confined principally to the skilled trades, and hence were called trade unions. These unions were built up on tht«*-basis of the skilled use of the tools used in the several trades during the period of handicraft in industry, and later on were loosely joined together in a federation of trades, without, however abridging their autonomy or invading their separate jurisdictons. Organised upon this basis, each craft was left free to negotiate its own wage scale and enter into agreement with the employer upon terms most advantageous to itself regardless of other crafts that might be employed in the same industry. The results that followed in the way of disastrous strikes resorted to by one or more crafts because of having failed to obtain a satisfactory agreement, while others employed in the same industry, perhaps in the identical factory, remained at their "tasks, in •cooperation with the non-union element which had displaced their own fellowworkers, paved the way for industrial organisation. Trade Merges into Industry. The trade union rose with the modern trade and flourished with it, the foundation of both being the skilled use of certain tools in the making of certain commodities for market use. This stage of the industrial development prevailed for many years, but has oiow been largely superseded, and is rapidly declining before the march of industrial evolution made manifest in the concentration of capital, the displacement of the small shop by the great factory, the {handicraft tools by steam-driven machinery, the segregated trade by associated industry and competitive 'effort by cooperative labour. Along the same line the trade union of the past is now expressing itself more 'and more in industrial unionism. Industrial unionsm, having evolved from the lower primal forms of trade unionism through the successive stages of the industrial development, and adapting itself to present industrial conditions and their tendencies, has encountered serious opposition on the part of trade unionists as well as the employing class, the former tenaciously adhering to the craft form of organisation and resisting all attempts to materially change it, and the latter opposing it mi account of its aggressive nnd revolutionary character; but, notwithstanding this, the new unionism has made -advance during the past two or throe years, and its nrinciy>!e« have now come to "be generally recognised by the progressive elements of the labor movements. Greatly as the industrial unior " differs fr<->m tho trade union (struct irnlly tho difference in their tendencies and ultimate objects is still more radical and far reaching. "Whereas, the trade union occupied itself mainly with establishing and maintaining satisfactory wage scales, hours of labor and working class conditions, industrial unionism, based upon the mutual economic interests of all workers and the solidarity arising therefrom, aims rot only at the amelioration of the indus-

trial condition of the workers, "but at the ultimate abolition of the existing productive system, and the total extinction of wage-servitude. It is in this fundamental principle that industrial unionism is most radical and revolutionary in contrast with the earlier trade union forms of industrial organisation. The Inevitable Outcome. The concentration of capital and the highly complex productive mode of the present day, grouping in vast industrial establishments thousands of workers engaged in scores of different trades, and forcing them into closer and closer co-operation, based upon the minutest division of labor, have tended to obscure, or perhaps totally obliterate, the lines that once so sharply defined the skilled trades, and in this interweaving of the tirades the jurisdictions of the several unions based upon them have overlapped each other, and this has been the prolific source of the increasing friction between many of the larger unions which have approximately reached their maximum of growth and aro jealous of maintaining the prestige of an expanding membership regardless of the effect upon a rival union which may lay claim to jurisdiction over the same craft tor division thereof- Following the lines of least resistance the tendency of these unions, so fax as external forms are concerned, is toward industrial unionism, and this is undoubtedly the form t>hat will ultimately supersede the trade union of the present and past. Not only in the matter of organic form and fundamental aim does industrial unionism differ from trade unionism, but also in the matter of tactics and methods. Quite as revolutionary as the ultimate end of industrial unionism, are the tactics its adherents have adopted for its realisation. Political Action The trade unions of the present and past have with rare exceptions eschewof political action in any independent capacity as an organised body; have accepted, in the aggregate, the prevailing industrial system as finality, subject only to such, modifications as might be effected through the power of organised "effort in the amelioration of conditions, and have uniformly affirmed, in express terms or by clear implication, an indentity of economic interests between the employing and the employed classes. In contradistinction to this conciliatory and non-political attitude of the trade unions toward the existing wagesystem and the capitalist class, it is the declared principle of industrial unionism that the wage-workers 'have no interests in common with (capitalists; that, in fact, their material interests are in conflict, and it is its declared purpose to abolish the wage-system., and supplant it by a system of industrial co-operation in which the workers themselves shall have full control for their own benefit, and to this end they recognise the necessity of organising tlie political as well as the economic power of the workingclass, and of the harmonious exercise of both by such means as will make industrial unionism the medium of attaining industrial democracy.—American "International Socialist Review."

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