The Dynamics Of Labor Organization In Industry

To discuss properly the topic, Dynamics of Labor Organization in Industry, it will be necessary to give a brief insight into the total pattern of the operation of the major labor unions, the Congress of Industrial Organization, and the American Federation of Labor. To further enlighten the reader and to aid in the introduction of the topic, the following statement from a student of the American labor movement is quoted: The American labor movement is unique; to an extent greater than labor unions in other countries, organized labor in America has retained confidence in economic action as a means of serving its end. At a time when English trade unionists have concentrated on electing labor governments, and when many European labor movements have become instruments of the Communist party politics, the American unions continue to stress the practical, less spectacular job of securing better wages and working conditions for their members within the framework of a fair economy and a democratic government. That does not mean that American unions are less dynamic than their European counterparts. In its struggle for more always more, American labor has employed clubs, shotguns, and dynamite. It is the hardest fighting, most violent unionism in all the world. Its fighting character has been shaped by the American frontier tradition, by the opposition of employers, and by the necessity of operating as a minority group in a hostile environment inhere every battle could easily turn into a fight for naked survival. The European mind has real difficulty in understanding that blood will be shed for the trifling object of putting a few more cents per hour into the pay envelopes, that ten workers will be killed in a contest with a company over simple union recognition, that over a million workers will be on strike at the same time, causing a creeping paralysis to spread over the economy, without these strikes being the advance guard of revolution. To the radical whose mind runs in the European pattern, it looks very much as if someone is missing a great opportunity. This passage gives a good overview of the emphases which the study will carry forward