Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/28

 and Financial Chronicle as saying, "If we had been 100 per cent right in our dealings with labor, labor would never have organized … in my opinion employee representation substitutes a better method and will prevail." A better method of robbing the workers!

Of all the many die-hard enemies of labor among the railroads the Pennsylvania System probably ranks first. And foremost among the union-hating members of the Railway Executives' Association stands the head of its Labor Committee and the President of the Pennsylvania—Brigadier General W. W. Atterbury. We may single out the Pennsylvania as the outstanding railroad company union plan altho, as we have seen, there are more than 60 railroads which have set up company committees to supplant some of the standard labor unions previously recognized.

The story of the Pennsylvania’s assault on the shop crafts' unions, the clerks' organization, the maintenance of way brotherhood, the telegraphers, is the story of abrupt refusal to deal with unions representing anywhere from 75 to 90 per cent of the men in these classes, of the holding of bogus elections in violation of the order of the Railroad Labor Board, of the boycott of these elections by the mass of the workers, of company committees instituted in spite of this boycott, of "bargaining" carried on between these committees—representing a fraction of the workers—and the company's personnel department, of conferences and conventions of these handpicked committeemen, of piece work introduced and wage classifications adjusted to the wishes of the company. It is a story of union men attempting to stand up against this ruthless offensive, of furloughs terminated, of men discharged,