Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/57

 fool the workers, and was forthwith abandoned.

Another well known believer in "representation"—the S. S. White Dental Manufacturing Company—employed "operatives" to fight a strike of metal workers in its Staten Island plant some time ago. At the same time it possessed a Works Manager who could unblushingly deliver himself of the following sentiment, while writing of employee representation in Industrial Management:

Operatives X17, Y33, and S58—installed as labor spies—are fitting carriers of this good will!

The Sperry Gyroscope Company was another New York concern that employed Sherman Service spies while submitting a plan of representation to its workers. The workers innocently adopted the plan after they had been beaten as members of the regular machinists' union. However, when they attempted to use the plan to secure wage increases, the company refused to consider it and confined the operation of the plan to trivial matters within the plant.

A significant function of company unions, particularly those on the railroads, has been political lobbying on behalf of the most reactionary legislation sponsored by the railroad companies and powerful corporate interests. An example of this was the activity of some of the railroad company unions in petitioning for the Mellon scheme of income tax which has shifted a larger tax burden on to the worker and has lessened the amount paid by the millionaire class. Again, in 1924, in the case of the Howell-Barkley Railroad Bill, backed by the rail unions, and opposed by the Association of Railway Executives, the company associations proved