Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/9

 of class collaboration which, tho involving regular trade unions, have in effect almost the same purposes as company unions.

The company unions discussed in this pamphlet are the familiar types, of company-installed works councils and employee representation plans, covering the workers of companies, large and small, ranging all the way from small clothing firms to the great steel, packing, and railroad companies.

Company unions are usually accompanied by other welfare, uplift, and cooperation schemes, which will not be treated in these pages both because they are subjects for separate studies and because they are not an essential accompaniment of company union plans. Many companies, such as the United States Steel Corporation, that have introduced stock ownership for workers, have no company unions. Other companies that have gone in for "representation" have not adopted stock ownership, thrift schemes, bonuses, and other "loyalty" and production stimulating devices. Some companies believe they can keep their workers "under control," and out of labor unions, by the application of the more obvious welfare poultices. Others, more thoro-going, believe their workers cannot be kept on the road of "sound economics" without some sort of "works council" scheme thru which they can have a "voice" in certain limited features of factory management. So we find all sorts of variations and degrees of paternalism in the gamut of personnel relations. In this study we confine ourselves to one phase of these relations, although occasional references will necessarily be made to other management devices now in vogue in American industry.