Page:Program of the Trade Union Educational League (1927).djvu/6

 6 they have broker down almost completely the machinery of inner-union democracy; they have not stopped short of destruction of whole trade unions in order to destroy the opposition to their surrender-policy. In this war against the workers, the officialdom are collaborating closely with the police, the employers, and the capitalist-controlled courts, including the use of injunctions which place the unions under the control of the hostile capitalist courts. Step by step the trade union members are finding their organizations taken out from their control and aligned with their enemies, the employers.

The left wing in the labor movement has the task of exposing the treacherous policies of the present officialdom; of bringing before the working class a comprehensive and realistic progressive and militant trade union policy, for the labor movement as a whole and for each separate industry and locality; of developing a new leadership for the labor movement around this program and wresting control of the trade unions from the reactionary officialdom; and, above all, of bringing about the organization of the unorganized workers, more than 20 millions of whom are ignored and neglected by the reactionary officialdom. This program is fundamental to meet the present crisis.

The great masses of workers are exploited, underpaid, and discontented. Harassed by speed-up systems, low wages, unemployment, and industrial autocracy, they only become increasingly ready for organization and militant action. Passaic and Colorado prove this. Likewise the discontented members in the unions. The task of the left wing is to give organization, program and general leadership to this eventually irresistible mass and to break up the capitalist offensive by a counter-offensive of the workers.

The present trade union policy of collaboration with the employers, which is the surrender of the workers' interests, must be replaced by a policy of aggressive, militant class struggle. The unions must be built up, developed and used as a mighty instrument for the struggle against the employers along the lines of the following general program:

(a) Progressive decrease of the hours of labor is fundamental in the program of the working class. Progress in this direction has, however, been checked, and hours of labor, with a few excep-