Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/61

 from the standpoint of organization, not a particle better off than the wobblies, even tho as individuals they may not be fired so quickly should their labor affiliation be discovered.

The "no discrimination" clauses of the company unions are as dead as the free speech Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution. The bosses mouth them both—and violate them both.

One of the officers of the Standard Gas Company of Oakland, California, which operates a company union, puts his no-discrimination pretense in a nut shell when he writes: "If any employee wishes he may be a member of a labor organization, but no interference in the affairs of the company is tolerated from outside." Which means that the worker may. be permitted to pay dues into a real union, but if the real union gets busy, by way of justifying its existence,—that is, tries to improve the conditions of the workers by collective action—then it is time for the trade union member to "take his time" and get out! This is the logic of no-discrimination as applied under the company union system.

The company union serves also as a convenient syringe thru which the most reactionary economic doctrines can be shot into the arm—and into the minds—of workers. On the railroads, where there has at one time existed a widespread sentiment in favor of the Plumb Plan and public ownership—in fact, two million organized railroad workers, as well as the A. F. of L., officially endorsed the principle—the company associations have been used to flood the employees with canned arguments showing the horrors of such a mildly progressive measure as government ownership of railroads. The Pennsylvania Railroad, thru its company-controlled