Page:Jay Fox - Amalgamation (1923).pdf/28

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The amalgamation movement is growing steadily among the building trades workers, due largely to the work of the International Committee for Amalgamation of the Building Trades. For many years these skilled workers, strategically situated, went along upon an individualistic basis with each craft fighting its own battle regardless of the interests of the others. In 1908, they formed themselves into the loosely-constructed Building Trades Department of the A. F. of L, to which 16 of the 17 important national craft unions are now affiliated. This federal form of organization has failed completely to bring about solidarity of the building trades workers. Time after time the employers have smashed the organizations by playing Off one set against the other. The present situation in Chicago offers a typical example of this division inherent in craft unionism. Judge Landis, foisted upon the unions as an arbitrator, handed down a decision which half the organizations accepted and half rejected. Result, the movement is split in the middle. Trades which prided themselves a few years ago upon their sterling unionism are now openly working with Landis-award strike-breakers under police protection. The lessons from this and hundreds of similar incidents in the history of the building trades workers are beginning to be understood, and throughout the industry the movement is rapidly growing to supercede the present loose and ineffective federative system by the amalgamation of all the unions into one solid organization.

Like the workers in all other industries, those in the printing trades are suffering from craft division. Split into six organizations, comprising only 145,000 out of the 291,000 who are employed in the industry, the printing trades workers are increasingly helpless before the "open-shop" drive of the employers. The loose federations amongst them are powerless to bring about real solidarity, even as this is the case in other industries. Most of the large printing plants of the country are non-union, including Rand-McNally & Co., Curtis Publishing Co., Doubleday, Page & Co., etc.

The national 44-hour fight, begun on May 1st, 1921, and still going on, has emphasized the weakness of craft unionism in the printing trades. Only two of the organizations, the International Typographical Union and the Photo-Engravers, have been able to make anything