SMASHIING UNIONS.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 January 1922, Page 7

SMASHIING UNIONS.

THE AMERICAN WAY. San Francisco, Nov. 25. The financiers, manufacturers, and wholesalers have been in a monster combination with the object of smashing organised labor in America, and in this effort they have partially succeeded. They have introduced what they style, “The American Plan,” which aims at killing all forms of labor organisation, and the manner in Which they managed to introduce the system of virtual slavery was through the poocess of the various chambers of commerce allying themselves with materials and men, and when the necessary materials in the building industry were denied all those who would not subscribe to -the American Plan, the construction concerns were crippled and eventually had to submit. Wages have been drastically cut, and another reduction is impending, but there are signs that the workers will not further tolerate this strangling treatment from the capitalistic class. The dissatisfied workers are secretly organising on an improved basis, and they have cleared their ranks of agitators and professional trouble-makers who for long have misled them.

The former organised -workers are now working under the guise of “The Rank and File,” which is an organisation of workers purged of all agitators and where official salaries are cut to vanishing point. There will be no more excessive dues to enable, high-salaried walking delegates to flaunt around the cities in high-powered automobiles. These delegates are now busy walking the streets seeking work for themselves, and the Rank and File societies are gathering in educational halls incidentally improving themselves in their various crafts, besides watching jealously their interests between master and worker. It has been a terflfle knock for the old organised concerns who have seized the properties of the old unions from the Rank and File, who claimed the paraphernalia as they had seceded bodily from the organisations, leaving only the overthrown officials, who were agitators of the most advanced class. The courts have backed the officials and the Rank and File have started anew on their own resources.

Instead of paying excessive dues for membership in a union, these Rank and Filers now pay a very nominal sura monthly and have a soberer constitution, devoid entirely of these oldtime agitators, who misled the membership and frequently betrayed them in conflicts with masters and men. In this direction, the high cost of organised union membership has been largely reduced.