Page:William Zebulon Foster - Strike Strategy (1926).pdf/17

 This betrayal of the unskilled by the skilled (and of one group of skilled workers by another) is an ever-present and menacing danger at. all stages of a strike struggle. It must be combatted by applying the above-stated three-phased policy of education, organization, and a defense of common interests.

The skilled workers must be taught the utter folly of their short-sighted policy, for the history of the American labor movement goes to show that this policy in the long run also sacrifices the interests of the skilled workers. They must be shown their identity of interests with the unskilled. The masses of unskilled must be brought into the unions in spite of the opposition of the right wing bureaucrats. Their interests must be loyally defended.

The demands of the strikers must fit the needs of all groups, and this must be adhered to at all costs. Uniting the skilled and unskilled workers, under present conditions in American industry, into an unbreakable unit of strikers is one of the greatest tasks of our strike strategy. But it must and can be accomplished by systematic application of the foregoing principles.

To unite the many nationalities employed in American industry, with their maze of different languages, religions, national prejudices, etc., into a solid, rebellious proletarian mass, constitutes a major problem in strike strategy. The most difficult phase of it is to unite the American-born workers with those who are foreign-born. (For practical purposes we will state the problem thus although, to be more accurate, it is to unite the Americans and the foreign-born workers of the earlier immigrations with those workers of the later immigrations).

The Americans are mostly skilled workers. They commonly hold the best jobs and are favored in many ways by the employers. They are the element most bribed by