Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 19.djvu/459

* TKADE UNIONS. 401 TRADE UNIONS. METHODS .ND POLICIES OF TR.DE VNIOXISM. Trade Unionism and Monopoly. Probably no social institution in existence represents the move- ment away from the old economic policy of laissez- faire more concretely and forcibly than the trade union. Almost, every method or policy adopted by the trade unions is in essence a ref.nilation of competition. The essential function of the trade union is collective bargaining; and the first con- dition of successful collective bargaining on the part of the trade union is that it shall secure substantial control of the efficient supply of labor. In securing and maintaining such control two policies are adopted: a policy of inclusion and a policy of exclusion. To obtain control of a particular trade in a particular jurisiliction. the utmost eflort will be made to bring into the union every etl'ectivc competitor for the work to be done in that jurisdiction. Once having con- trol, there is the strongest temptation, if not a real necessity, for limiting the supply of crafts- men by regulation of apprenticeship and other means. The great majority of trade unions prosecute the work of organization vigorously and incessantly. In the beginning trade unionism was sporadic and instinctive, and the national union was the product of the amalgamation of two or more self-organized locals. At present organization is deliberate, systematic, and pro- ceeds from the top down : the local is the child rather than the parent of the national. Even the exclusive uni(ms like the Window Glass Vorker.s enter heartily into the work of organizing the great mass of unskilled workers, because with the increasing use of machinery this body con- stitutes a constant menace to all trades. The organization of wage-earners is the special work of the Federation of Labor. In 1902, for instance, the Federation employed fifteen salaried organizers, who gave their whole time to this work : 39 others who devoted from one to six months of their time to organization; and nearly 1.000 volunteer organizers who were paid for each new union organized by them. The expenditure for organization alone wa.s over $3G,000: and new charters were issued to 1-t national and international unions, 6 State branches, 127 central unions, and S77 local trade and federal labor unions. Eestkiction of Membership. In almost every American union the applicant for admission nnist be accepted by the local which he desires to enter, and in voting upon applicants a minority of the members — in some important unions as few as three blackballs — are usually sufficient to ex- clude the candidate. At present, however, in the majority of American unions, the terms of ad- mission are purely nominal. Entrance to. Trade. Trade union regula- tions concerning the entrance to a trade fall under four heads: apprenticeship, limitation of bo.y labor, progression within the trade, and the ex- elusion of women. The limitation of boy labor will be treated with the limitation of apprentice- ship, while the regulation of promotion within a trade is not a question of great practical impor- tance in American unions, except perhaps in the union of the Post Office Clerks, where for obvious reasons the regulation of promotion becomes the main object. The exclusion of women is no longer attempted by American or English unions, the only case to the contrary in the United States known to the writer being that of the Upholster- ers' International Union of North America. Nevertheless, only a small ])rop(ution of the female bread-winners are organized. In Great Britain, for instance, in 1901, the women and girls constituted oidy 0.2 per cent, of the mem- bers of trade unions and were found in only 14-t out of the 1.250 unions, though the census of occupations showed that the female bread-win- ners were nearly one-third as numerous as the males. The Regulation of Apprenticeship and Boy L.iBOR. The regulation of apprenticeship was not in origin a trade union policy : it was introduced, ado]ited, and sanctioned by statute law at a time when the trade union did not exist. Consequently, although the trade unions indorse the regulation of apprenticeship with striking unanimity, and still regard it as an ideal, such regulation is at present enforced only in an insignificant number of trades and seems to be disappearing. The apprentice system is nuich less prevalent in the United States than in Great Britain: and in the latter country in 1897 ilr. and Mrs. Webb esti- mated that o"ut of the 1,490,000 memliers of the trade unions only 90.000 belonged to unions which were actually able to enforce apprentice regulations. The desirability and expediency of the regulation of apprenticeship by trade unions is extremely questionable. An examination of the apprenticeship regulations of the few Ameri- can labor unions which are able to enforce them plainly shows that the educational motive is de- cidedly a minor one, while these regulations ex- ercise no perceptible effect in checking child labor under any given set of conditions. On the other hand, the unions which have acquired sufficient power to regulate apprenticeship have evinced a strong disposition to restrict unduly the number of apprentices. A wide examination of the ap- prenticeship regulations of American unions shows that the average period of apprenticeship is more than three years and the average number of apprentices to journeymen somewhat less than one to ten. Finally — and this fact seems con- . elusive — the restriction of membership to work- ^nien who have been apprenticed is not necessary to the successful operation of the imion. The I'nited Mine Workers, the Locomotive Engineers, the Carpenters and .Joiners, and in fact most of the large unions, in practice if not in theory, are completely 'open.' Monopolistic Alliances Between Trade I'nions and Employers' Associations. The evil possibilities of the policy of exclusion are well il- lustrated in occasional compacts between trade unions and combinations of manufacturers in which the two organizations combine to monopo- lize a certain industry for the benefit of both. In the Birmingham (England) Metal Trades these 'alliances,' as they are called, were common about 1897-98. The essential feature of the Birmingham alliance was an agreement by which the employers bound themselves to employ none but union men. in return for which the latter agreed to work for no manufacturer who sold his product at prices less than those formally adopted by a 'wages board' composed of an equal number of employers and employees. For every advance in price there was to be a proportionate, though not an equal, advance in wages. Monopolistic alliances of this kind are rare and as a rule not lasting.