The Great Steel Strike and its LessonsFoster, William Z.
History
The Great Steel Strike and its Lessons
Foster, William Z.
Steel Strike, U.S., 1919-1920; United States Steel Corporation
As a justification for the Amalgamated Association officials' action in
quitting the joint campaign, word is being sent through the steel
industry that henceforth that organization will insist upon its broad
jurisdictional claims and become an industrial union in fact, taking
into its ranks and protecting workers of all classes in the steel
industry. But no one familiar with the Amalgamated Association will take
this seriously. It is a dyed-in-the-wool skilled workers' union, and has
been such ever since its foundation forty-five years ago. Its specialty
is the "tonnage men," or skilled iron and steel making and rolling
trades proper. All its customs, policies and instincts are inspired by
the interests of this industrial group. It has never looked after the
welfare of the mechanical trades and the common laborers, even though
for the past few years it has claimed jurisdiction over them. In its
union mills it is the regular thing to find only the tonnage men covered
by the agreements, no efforts whatever being made to take care of the
other workers. It is true that during the recent campaign, due to the
stimulus of the National Committee, laborers were taken in; but of the
way they were handled, probably the less said the better. The incidents
related in Chapter X are typical.
That the men now at the head of the Amalgamated Association will upset
these craft practices and revolutionize their organization into a bona
fide, vigorous industrial union is incredible to those who have seen
them in action. But even if the miracle happened, even if they got rid
of their mid-nineteenth century ideas and methods, adopted modern
principles and systems, and put on the sweeping campaign necessary to
organize the industry, it would not solve the problem. The other unions
in the steel industry are not prepared to yield their trade claims to
the Amalgamated Association, and any serious attempt by that
organization to infringe upon them would result in a jurisdictional
quarrel, so destructive as to wreck all hope of organizing the industry
for an indefinite period. The unions would be so busy fighting among
themselves that they would have no time, energy or ambition to fight the
Steel Trust.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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