The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 6, 1927, Page 9

The Problem of Organizing the Unorganized aati from the great attempt in the steel indus- try led by William Z. Foster very little has been done in the post war years to organize the enor- mous masses of unorganized workers in the U. 8S. A. In fact the number of-organized workers has con- -siderably decreased since the war and there are now less members within the folds of organized labor than before the war. The crisis the workers are going thru in the coal and garment industries is likely to reduce the num- ber of organized a good deal more. It is too early to predict the outcome of the renewed open shop onslaught, of which there are many indications of the 1920-1923 type, upon organized labor. We can safely say, however, that conSidering the present strength of the employers and the character of the A. F. of L. leadership, the effect will be quite dis- astrous and will cut down considerably even of la- bor’s present strength. All of which forces the ques- tion of organizing the unorganized, as the first or- der of business before the militants throughout the country. It must be clear to every one that it is not any more a matter of passing resolutions to put labor orgartizations on record, for there is hardly any or- ganization that has not passed such resolutions, or can be made to do it ever again at each convention. Yet we know that during this present prosperity period practically nothing was done. Instead of or- ganizing the unorganized the union treasuries have been invested in labor banking and all sorts of fi- nancial ventures in exploitation of industry and fi- nancing best described in what is known as labor capitalism and class collaboration. It would be a mistake to assume that the reason the trade union bureaucracy does not move forward on the organization of the unorganized is simply because they don’t want to, or that the union treas- uries have been frozen up in investments. The real cause is that the trusts and capitalist combinations have become altogether too strong to be fought by the present type of leadership. They are too capital- istically self-seeking and too cowardly to face the problem and hence all the resolutions remain a dead letter. s The first step in organizing the unorganized in modern American industry would be amalgamation, Labor Party, simultaneous with the building up of big consumers co-operative movements. In brief, utilization of all the forces and methods of modern struggle of labor that go with highly centralized and efficient modern capitalism. The leadership of the American trade unions is as far removed from the above proposed methods as we are from feudal- ism. It prefers’ to let the unions drift to disaster on the line of least resistance, self-aggrandisement and personal profit, instead of adopting modern pro- gressive policies. When we look closely into the matter of the few minor organiaztion campaigns that have been carried on by the bureaucracy we find that in most in- stances this fitted in with the competition polities of the employers and the class collaboration policy of the bureaucracy. The large bosses with whom the trade union bureaucracy is in many instances asso- ciated using the union to drive smaller competitors out of business and sometimes even playing the game of big capitalist politicians to bring pressure against their political adversaries, ete. It must be frankly stated that even with modern By JOSEPH ZACK methods on the part of the existing labor movement the problem of organizing the unorganized in the U. S. A., the country of the most. powerful capital- ism, the task would be a very difficult and enormous one. As it stands now it is enough to make one, Yet the left wing inside and must undertake this task and in doing so be consci of the fact that it will have to fight not only the powerful capitalist combines, but in addition the trade union bureaucracy itself. stagger in despair. outside the A. F. of I The two outstanding obstacles any campaign of importance will meet with is terrorization and dis- charge of those workers that show any union ac- tivity inside the plants; second, once a strike be- comes effective the political interference and ter- rorization by the local state or federal government, arrests, jail sentences, frame-ups, deportations, etc. Quite often the political suppression manifests itself in the very early stages of the organization cam- paign, as is quite natural. The capitalists controlling the government, as they do, go on the basis of an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of trouble. The extensive industrial spy system makes the work- ers suspect the fellow next to him and even if there is some success in one plant there is the whole trust to fight, with sometimes dozens of plants and hundreds of millions of capital behind it. Retail methods will not do in such cases. Attempts to openly enlist the workers into unions at the early stage of the campaign are usually futile. The only ones that do not fear to join them are the stool pigeons, who quite often get control of the local unicn thus formed. The organization formed inside the plant, mill or mine, must by the very nature of things function secretly and will usually be very small in number with the leading circle being unknown to most of The Ballad of the Subway Digger The day dripped heat and the éarth oozed sweat and the subway digger hadn’t had his dinner yet and he wanted it bad. It was damn hot, too, but you couldn’t stop your diggin’ till the whistle blew. So he kept on diggin’ and his back got sore, . “God! WH rest now if I don’t get any work no more!” He threw down his shovel and he lay down to rest . . a rotten beam fell down on him and smashed in his chest. —EDWIN ROLFE. z the participants; meeting separately in small groups of 3 or 5 and be very careful whom they admit into these groups. An illustration of the effectiveness of such group work can be given from a secret union group in 6 parts of 5 members in each part formed in the various departments in the Durant- Hunt, Hays Radiator plant in New Jersey. This group published a four page plant paper which was distributed in front of the gates by workers not working in the plant. The first distributors were immedjately arrested, so were the second, then the company began to discharge wholesale on suspicion, 1] the group members except two, one rehired. Then the company stool yuted a circular calling the workers to g that the radicals wonvid respond first and thus get discharged. The seert machine inside fooled this maneuver and only = few stool pieons began to walk out. All the ‘iz the factory paper appeared regularly with a circulation of nearly 2,000. The company got paricky and forced a lock- out of all the workers in thz plant, then rehiring all over individually. It missed most of the members of the group and the paper kept on appearing with inside information about the happenings in the plant. This time the company called to its assistance, Hilfers, then state secretary of the A. F. of L. in New Jersey to get in touch with the union group, which sent a committee to see him, as they con- sidered the time ripe for a strike move. Immediately after this conference with Hilfers many of the in- side group got discharged. Again the A. F. of L. leadership proved its value. It saved the company from the “reds.” Had the strike really come. police, injunctions, gangsters with riot guns and tear gas, deputized by the sheriff would have repeated the Passaic stuff. No matter how difficnlt this and other instances show the semi-secret or secret work to be there are ways to carry on. The greatest obstacle is really not the terrorism inside the factory. the threat of discharge, etc.. but the nolitical interferences of the authorities in behalf of the employers and against the workers. Any attempt at organization of any importance at all meets immediately with the most repressive measures. It becomes at once a political struggle with all the blows aimed at the workers We need but remind ourselves of the march of the West Virginia miners to organize the open shop mines. Then the federal injunction against the min- ers under Psurherty. more recently the Passaic no- lice brutalities and the thousands of arrests in the recent garment strikes, down to the injunctions for- bidding even anv attempt at organization, such as the injunction obtained by the New York traction trusts forbidding, the union from doing anything that may even tend towards organization of the sub- way workers. Civil liberties established by the constitution, hy Jaw and made part of every day life by custom are heing ignored by the authorities in-innumerable in- stanees when labor’s interests are involved. For the past. few years laws are being put on the statute books to oppress labor, Ifke the numerous anti- syndicalist laws. There is the Watson-Parker law on the railroads outlawing strikes. There is the U. S. supreme court decision outlawing sympathy strikes like in the Stone Cutters’ Union case. The police, judicial, state and federal authorities in actual prac- (Continued on Page Six) ae ah P ww <€ € ®a- Poll “Come right in boys, we need you to keep the men from organizing” —_. om