Page:William Zebulon Foster - Strike Strategy (1926).pdf/79

 union agreements do not and cannot put an end to the class struggle, not even temporarily. The struggle between workers and employers goes on under such agreements, although it takes different forms than strikes. We must realize this fact and learn to fight effectively under these agreements. Under present conditions trade union agreements are technically necessary to the maintenance of organized relations with the employers.

It is idle to speak of mere oral agreements in connection with such vast and complicated industries as railroads, coal mines, and many others. What the left wing must learn is how to prevent the many evils often connected with trade union agreements and how to fight the employers successfully even while in contractual relations with them.

The A. F. of L. upper bureaucrats make a fetish of the sacredness of trade union agreements. They never cease harping upon the solemn obligations of the workers to live up to their contracts scrupulously. Nor do they stop at open strikebreaking where the workers goaded by the employers, strike before the official expiration of their agreements. Some of the worst betrayals in American labor history have taken place this way. Recent cases in point were Berry's furnishing men to take the place of the striking New York union pressmen, and Lewis' treachery in driving the Nova Scotia coal miners back to work to scab on the striking steel workers of the British Empire Steel Corporation.

The contract policy of the reactionary trade union leaders plays directly into the hands of the employers. It keeps the workers bound hand and foot by the union agreements, while the employers violate them whenever the opportunity presents itself. The employers consider trade union agreements cold-bloodedly from the sole standpoint