Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/43

 among the workers telling them whom it would be good to vote for, and the photographers snap pictures to tell the world of another "popular election at Forstmann's." As for wages, they are set by the company and announced to the Assembly. Should the management decide upon a reduction, the Assembly accepts it without question. Its interests are over minor matters of ventilation, baseball teams, and the annual picnic. A company magazine, printed in several languages, helps to keep the workers gulled. An unusually venal city administration and a squad of motorcycle policemen lend aid, when necessary, in deporting union "agitators" from the city. The woolen companies are thus kept safe for the "F. & H." type of understanding and good will! (For further light on the results of Passaic company unionism read the reports of the woolen and worsted workers' strike now—May, 1926—in progress in that city. The company "assembly;" or "suckers' union," as the workers call it; is being employed to break the strike).

The Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company, since absorbed by the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, introduced some years ago a plan of representation which in some of its provisions illustrates the "catch" in other such plans. The company, as usual, reserves the right to hire, suspend, and discharge men. And what are the excuses the company needs to discharge a worker? They are mentioned in the printed constitution. Guilty of any of them, he is liable to "immediate discharge without notice."

(a) "Disloyalty to the United States Government by act or utterance" (any trade unionist who perhaps suggests that Calvin Coolidge is not as wise as God Almighty);

(b) "Refusal to obey a reasonable order of