Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/56



No matter how ingratiating the words of the employer, the introduction of a company union is not considered inconsistent with the use of undercover men and espionage operatives. As is well known to students of American industrial relations, the spy practice is extremely common in this country. Such railroads as the Santa Fe, the New Haven, and the Pennsylvania are very substantial clients of the labor spy agencies whose first purpose is to undermine such unionism as the road cares to destroy. At the same time these companies are superlatively unctuous in their brotherly expressions toward their employees when introducing company unions. Indeed, it was the suave Sherman Service, Inc., leading American industrial spy agency, that received a huge retainer from the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad in 1922 to install a suitable company union among the shop crafts strike-breakers on the road. Sherman Service drew up the constitution and by-laws of the plan, sold it to. the men thru its undercover operatives, and reported all opponents of the plan to the company which promptly removed them from the payroll!

In the same manner a certain Boston agency a few years ago, was caught in negotiations with the National Spun Silk Company of New Bedford. This detective organization promised to install an attractive company-controlled union with House, Senate, and Cabinet functioning in the most accepted "constitutional" fashion. All for the purpose of offsetting the union drive of the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America. Such a company committee plan was adopted for a while. When the emergency passed, and the union had been driven away, the agency plan was no longer needed to