Page:Program of the Trade Union Educational League (1927).djvu/10

 10 from a total of 26 millions, are in the trade unions, and even this small percentage is principally in the less-developed less-mechanized industries. The trade unions must, at all costs, be made to include the increases of workers in the basic and key industries, such as steel, automobile, rubber, textiles, chemical, transportation, mining, which are now either partially or entirely unorganized, Special efforts must be put forth to organize the unskilled women, youth, Negro, and foreign-born workers. Wherever possible, the unorganized must be brought into the existing unions; where no unions exist or where the existing unions refuse to organize the masses, the progressive workers must organize new unions, and struggle for admission into the general labor movement as well as fight the immediate battles of their members. The struggle for organization will develop a militant policy and fighting leadership. It will shift the labor movement's center of gravity from the lighter, competitive industries into the heavy and key industries. The fate of the labor movement depends upon the accomplishment of the tremendous task of organizing the unorganized.

(b) A fundamental weakness of the labor movement is the prevailing system of craft divisions, to which the present reactionary leadership clings so desperately. This craft division is so extreme that in some industries the workers are required to separate themselves into 50 different organizations, as a condition of joining the labor movement. It is little wonder the masses of workers, especially in modern industries, cannot be organized by such obsolete machinery. The existing craft unions must be amalgamated into powerful industrial unions, departmentalized to meet the needs of each section, but also centralized upon the principle of a single union authority for each shop, each employer and each industry. In the great industries, now unorganized, industrial unionism must be the principle of their organization from the beginning, as the only system which can successfully withstand the opposition of the employers.

(c) The destruction of the inner-union democracy, now being practiced (packing conventions, expulsions, disfranchisements, fraudulent elections, gangsterism, etc.), must. cease. Restore the full rights of the membership to nominate and elect their own leaders; establish free speech in the unions; open the union journals to the membership. The excessive power of the officials must be curbed; their enormous salaries, which make capitalists of many of them, must be slashed. Corruption, which now