Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/67

 bureaucracy to accept its principles and practices and to transform the trade unions into company unions. This tendency expresses itself through the so-called B. & O. Plan and the "new wage policy" adopted by the American Federation of Labor at its recent convention. Refusing to militantly fight against the employers, the trade union bureaucrats are surrendering to them by entering into agreements with them to raise production and to abolish strikes. The adoption of the B. & O. Plan was a long step in the direction of company unionism and class collaboration generally. Already sections of the employers and the trade union bureaucrats foresee a practical merging of the trade union and company union movement. In such a consolidation the demands of the reactionary bureaucracy would be comparatively simple. Neglecting the interests of the workers as usual, their principal demand would be for the maintenance of some sort of a dues-paying organization which would serve to pay their fat salaries and to finance their labor banks and other trade union capitalist schemes. In return for this concession, they would defend the interests of the employers even more militantly than now against the insistent demands of the masses in general and the left wing in particular. The occasional outcries of the bureaucrats against the company unions cannot hide the fact that these same bureaucrats are tending strongly in the direction of accepting company unionism.

The fight against company unionism must be made a special point of business by the trade union movement. To destroy the company unions is an essential part of the great task of organizing the unorganized millions in the industry. The slogan must be, "Destroy the Company Unions and form Trade Unions." If necessary we must penetrate the company unions when they have a mass following and disintegrate them from within, utilizing the resultant movements among the workers for the inauguration of wage and organizing campaigns. The experience during the movement of the steel workers in 1918–19, as well as among other groups of workers, shows clearly that the workers will not only demolish the company unions, but also use them as starting points for the formation of real trade unions.

But the fight against company unionism must be accompanied by a militant struggle in the unions against its first