Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/13

 leaders had given up the strike weapon in the most essential war industries, and were closely collaborating with the government. Later, a few of these committees were dropped, having served their war purposes, but the majority of them remained, and other employers, who had seen them applied during wartime, under the supervision of government boards, began to introduce them with no outside or governmental supervision to interfere with the employer's complete control over his workers.

A fairly thorough survey of company unions ("works councils," as they call them) made by the National Industrial Conference Board—a federation of American employers' associations which carries on research and propaganda on behalf of the employers—shows the following increases in the number of councils, and workers represented in them, since 1919:

As the Conference Board concludes, "this represents a rapid and practically continuous growth from 1917 to 1924." The number is reported to have decreased in 1925, and one might venture the guess that there are now no more than 800 of these company unions actually functioning, embracing over a million industrial workers.

The 814 above mentioned were included in some 212 separate systems of "works councils," some of which cover many separate business organizations. As we shall note later this number also includes only a few of the railroad companies which are known to have established one form or another of "independent unions," and "divisional representa-