Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/66

 primitive forms. Now the employers, especially in the trustified industries, are departing from this program and are organizing their workers in the peculiarly American form of organization properly dubbed company unions.

The economic basis for the growth of the company union movement is found in the fact that the American imperialists, in their aggressive fight for world domination, have an imperative need for cheaper production and a docile working class. Through company unionism the employers seek to achieve these ends. The very breath of life of company unionism is to increase the efficiency of the workers. In all the deliberations of these organizations, this leading motive is never lost sight of. But closely associated with it is the ever-present effort to blur class lines and to prevent the growth of class consciousness and trade union organization amongst the workers. Company unionism is the brain product of the modern industrial engineers, whose aim is to at once raise the productivity of the workers and to demoralize them that they cannot effectively fight against their exploiters.

The rapid growth of company unionism is a striking evidence of the failure of conservative trade unionism. It is significant that company unionism has its stronghold in the trustified industries, such as meat packing, steel, electrical, textile, railroad, general transport, public utilities, agricultural machinery, etc. It is exactly in these industries that the failure of the trade unions to adopt policies and organizational forms that would fit them to fight effectively against modern organized capital, has registered most disastrously for the working class. Old line trade unions, organized on the basis of crafts and following the customary reactionary policies, could not live in these industries. The bureaucrats at the head of the unions have fought bitterly and effectively against the amalgamation of the unions, the organization of the unorganized, the formation of a labor party, and the adoption of various other measures that would make the unions real fighting organizations. The result has been annihilation of the trade unions and the growth of company unions. The reactionary trade union officials are the real organizers of the company unions.

An especially menacing feature of the company union movement is the pronounced tendency of the trade union