One of the many special obstacles to organizing marine transport workers. How do you have, and operate, a union on board a ship with a new crew brought on at every port, and being at sea, and away from your union representative, for months at time? A seaman suggests a solution.

‘Ship Committees–A Problem in Organization’ by Card No. 804943 Industrial Pioneer. Vol. 1 No. 3. April, 1921.

ALTHOUGH seafaring-men, generally speaking, are dissatisfied with the conditions under which they work, no great attempt has been made by them to secure an improvement.

They have nothing but contempt for their various craft unions, and very rarely do they attend the meetings.

Charges of graft have been leveled at their officials. Some go so far as to assert that their unions are governed by graft, although no concerted move has been made to back up this claim.

Supposing the assertion to be correct, it constitutes a reflection upon the intelligence of the rank and file which permits such a state of affairs to exist.

Our unions are abject failures. We cannot get away from the truth of that statement. Why are they failures? There are two reasons:

1) The lack of interest shown by the membership in their own affairs, and

2) The manner in which the unions in this industry are organized.

We know how impossible it is for a big majority of the rank and file to attend union meetings, did they so desire. Of what use is a union, constructed as at present, to workers who are at sea nine months out of twelve?

It has taken us a long time to recognize this. It is unnecessary for me to enlarge upon the abominable conditions under which we labor. They are too well known to need any further elaboration.

Recognizing the faults of the present form of organization it is incumbent upon us to lay dawn a constructive program for a union of workers in the shipping industry. A union that is to be of any use to its members must be so organized that it enables the whole, or any section of the rank and file to act immediately the occasion demands it. The present unions do not make provisions for this. It is a common thing for seafaring-men to wait months at a time ere they reach the home port and place their grievances before their unions.

Even then there are, as a rule, so many complaints before the union that it is well-nigh impossible to get any satisfaction. As a consequence we have to suffer under these injustices indefinitely. If by taking our grievances to the present unions begets us no satisfaction the only logical thing for us to do is to handle our grievances ourselves.

That we may do this we must organize on all ships, a committee, elected from the rank and file of the crew. For effectiveness we must make this committee a real ship committee, that is, it must be thoroughly representative of all the workers aboard a particular ship. The committee must, therefore, be comprised of delegates from each department, namely, the stewards, oilers, wipers and firemen, and the deck departments.

The committee shall negotiate during a dispute with the ships officers on behalf of the crew.

No agreements can be arrived at between the committee and the responsible ship’s officers unless they have first been ratified by a mass meeting of the rank and file of the ship.

By adopting the above procedure we are enabled to overcome the old difficulty of attending union meetings. Besides, this would give to the rank and file a direct voice in their own affairs, which would permit them for the first time in the history of this section of the working class to absolutely control their own union.

One of the greatest faults of the old style unions is the permanency of its officials. The average union official becomes job-conscious after a while and hates like hell to have to relinquish office and go back to the daily grind of toil under a boss. He schemes to retain his job and stoops to the lowest depths in his endeavours. He plays to the ignorant in the union and eventually becomes reactionary and a menace to the welfare of the rank and file.

With the ship committee operating we will have no use for delegates.

When a worker signs on a ship he, along with the rest of the crew, takes part in electing the ship committee that is to function for him during the trip.

He sees that it is to his interest to support this committee in times of a dispute, and it will therefore be comparatively easy to line him up into the union.

The committee shall collect dues and contributions. Where, then, lies the necessity of delegates? We know that, the way it works out now, before a man can get a job on a ship he must first join a union. If he has not the necessary cash he cannot get the job. Consequently he starves, besides having a hatred of the union. When a strike is declared the boss finds it very easy to get this man to scab.

The boss is very clever in granting us preference, because it is a double-edged weapon in his hands to be used against us whenever we rebel.

He will threaten to withdraw the preference clause on occasions, and if this ruse fails he will call upon that group of workers who were prevented thru lack of funds from joining up, to assist him in breaking this union that had denied him the right to work.

Of course, these arguments are very plausible, but the fact remains that the bosses get by with them.

However, difficulties such as these will be thrashed out at meetings of the various ship committees, and the great benefit that will accrue from a discussion of issues similar to the above will manifest itself in the growth of understanding of the fundamental principles of the working class movement.

What a blessing it will be to do away with that army of officials now battening and fattening on the working class! When they are back on the job, working as we have to work, they will soon drop that office-chair philosophy.

Of course, someone will say, “We must have some officials.” That is certainly true, but as a great proportion of the work will be done by the ship committee, which, by the way, functions in an honorary capacity, very few officials will be required.

A general secretary and some assistants could do the secretarial work, while all disputes affecting the general organization could be handled by a special committee elected for that purpose.

In other words, we could elect a committee every twelve months who will constitute a general executive board of the union and whose function it will be to keep in touch with all ship committees and direct negotiations with the bosses during a dispute. This board or committee would not receive renumeration except upon occasions when they would be in session directing a dispute or doing work necessary to the general welfare of the union.

The election of this executive board and the general secretary, etc., should be conducted much in the same manner as the ship committee election, namely, by the vote of the rank and file of the workers on all ships.

The ship committee would direct the voting on each ship and would be the medium through which all matters relative to the organization are made known to the rank and file.

The general organization should have its headquarters at the port where the majority of its membership are in the habit of signing on, and branches should be established in all other seaports.

When we have abolished this hydra-headed unionism of today and replaced it with one union of seafaring-men we will be a force to contend with.

A body of men organized as we then will be will have no need of going, cap in hand, to our “masters” begging for the right to live.

And when we have taken the step in this direction we will be able to perceive and understand that we are but a part of the transport industry, and there will be born within us a recognition of the necessity of further coordinating our forces by forming the One Big Union of Transport Workers.

Our real objective then shall be, not higher wages, shorter hours or better conditions on the job, but the complete taking over of the whole transport industry and conducting it in the interest of the working class.

We workers have starved so long in this land of plenty that we are beginning to think a lot. We have developed “a new mentality”. We are no longer satisfied with what our masters are pleased to give us.

And we can see no other solution of this problem than the complete expropriation of these billionaires who have made their wealth out of the sweat and blood of us workers.

Aye, even if we “go down to the sea in ships” the profits still flow into “their cursed unsatiate tills.”

But if we are to achieve the wonderful objective that we have in mind we must first make the initial move, namely, the forming of ship committees.

The fight will be a long and a hard one, but there are plenty of workers who, if they do not thoroughly understand, at least are sympathetic, and if at the beginning we can bring together all intelligent workers we can do very effective propaganda work and give to the average worker a line of thought that will lead him out of the mental wilderness that he finds himself in. The shipping industry is practically a virgin field as far as propaganda is concerned and these workers are rotten ripe for a change.

The onus is upon us, and so let us begin at once by forming committees on our ships, which will be the nucleus of the One Big Industrial Union of the toilers of the sea.

The Industrial Pioneer was published monthly by Industrial Workers of the World’s General Executive Board in Chicago from 1921 to 1926 taking over from One Big Union Monthly when its editor, John Sandgren, was replaced for his anti-Communism, alienating the non-Communist majority of IWW. The Industrial Pioneer declined after the 1924 split in the IWW, in part over centralization and adherence to the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) and ceased in 1926.

Link to PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/industrial-pioneer/Industrial%20Pioneer%20(April%201921).pdf