Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/51

 three times on a plan and the first two times they rejected it. "The third time," according to a reliable trade union official, who is quoted by A. B. Wolfe in his Works Committees and Joint Industrial Councils, "they were given a space of time to think it over and during that period the company got busy thru its superintendents and bosses who told the men they had better vote to accept the plan, because if they didn't the company would shut down."

One expert on the technique of introductory methods, writing in Industrial Management, warns the employer that he "must be ahead of the game if he expects to win. Let him put it off until the unions are on the ground and getting better entrenched every day, and he will have the fight of his life when he wakes up and tries to put across an organization that leaves the union in cold storage."

A rather neat way of expressing it.

We find the corporations often using the "individual contract" or "yellow dog contract" to tie the workers down to the company union and prevent them while in the employ of the corporation from affiliating with the regular labor union. The Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation and the Interborough Rapid Transit Company of New York both use this type of contract in connection with their company unions.

When a worker takes employment with these companies he signs a contract to belong to the company union, and when he fills out his application to belong to the company union he, in turn, swears not to join the regular A. F. of L. street railway employees' organization. For example, the workers on the Interborough are compelled to join