Page:Jay Fox - Amalgamation (1923).pdf/38

 36 The next great step in the workers' march to industrial freedom is the formation of great departmentalized industrial unions in every industry.

Amalgamation will proceed in an orderly fashion. There need be no violent disturbance of the existing organizations, with their long-established customs, dues systems, etc. The process can go ahead in a steady progress, The first step in amalgamating the unions of an industry will be to call a convention of all the unions agreeing to amalgamate. These will resolve themselves into an industrial union, and elect a general executive board to which all the unions taking part turn over their international business. For the time being all these unions will remain practically intact, each one becoming a department in the amalgamated union. When other unions decide to come in they simply elect their quotas of delegates to the general executive board and take their places as departments in the big union. The proposition is simplicity itself. There is no suggestion of throwing the crafts together in a confused mass.

This first step, by joining the unions under one head, accomplishes the main aim of amalgamation by actually uniting the workers' forces. Later on, when the workers come to thoroughly appreciate the value of industrial organization, the final stage of amalgamation can be accomplished by a gradual standardization of dues and benefits systems, and by a reduction in the number of departments. In the metal trades, for example, the 24 craft departments will eventually be reduced to five, in about the following order: Department No. 1, to include metal miners, smeltermen, and blast-furnace workers; No. 2, iron, steel, and tin workers; No. 3, mechanical trades; No. 4, unskilled workers; No. 5, technical and clerical workers. In the railroad industry the 16 crafts will eventually be cut to six departments, as follows: No. 1, engineers and firemen; No. 2, conductors, brakemen, and switchmen; No. 3, telegraphers, signalmen, and dispatchers; No. 4, clerks, station agents, freight handlers, express and baggagemen; No. 5, boilermakers, blacksmiths, machinists, electricians, carmen, sheet metal workers, stationary firemen; No. 6, maintenance of way workers. The same principle will apply to the other industries. With such departmentalized unions,