Page:William Z. Foster -Organize the Unorganized.djvu/17

 sighted quarrels and base our policy upon the interests of all the workers in the totality of the unions involved.

Then there is the situation, common in many industries, where a score of unions, most of them with little or no organized membership in the industry, claim jurisdiction over the workers of their respective trades in the industry. The left wing cannot support such ridiculous jurisdictional claims, nor can we wait until these reactionary unions decide to amalgamate with stronger and more basic unions in the industry. Sometimes it will be necessary, in such situations, for the left wing to ignore the claims of these dog-in-the-manger unions, and support the basic unions at the expense of the weaker ones.

Thus, for example, in the steel industry, we must at this time insist that the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel & Tin Workers take in all workers in and around the steel mills regardless of the claims of a score or more of other unions for certain categories of these workers. Also, in the metal industry generally, we must more and more apply such a policy with regard to the Machinists' Union.

In thus precipitating amalgamation from the bottom, and the realignment of the unions according to industrial lines, we must, however, take care not to provoke open jurisdictional struggles between the unions.

In the general problem of our left wing attitude towards the A. F. of L. and the independent unions, the T. U. E. L. policy must be: in industries with strong unions, we shall build up these organizations; in industries with no unions or with incurably decrepit unions, we shall form independent organizations and then affiliate them, or seek persistently to affiliate them to the A. F. of L. This is the basic program which the necessities of the present situation dictate.