A multiplicity of craft unions, masses of ‘unskilled’ and unorganized workers, regional differences, ties to contractors, all of the issues facing the building trades today were faced one hundred years ago. We have work to do, comrades.

‘Towards Unity in the Building Trades’ by Joe Petersen from Labor Herald. Vol. 1 No. 4. June, 1922.

THERE is serious division of Labor’s forces in the Building Trades. Both nationally and locally our forces are broken up. We are finding it impossible to get common action, in the face of the most terrific attack which our unions have ever had to face. We are attempting to meet the situation with antiquated, 18th century methods of craft unionism, while the employers have united all their forces so that they act together in the entire industry. Due to the disease of jurisdictional disputes, our organizations are falling back before the enemy.

Wars between the unions over jurisdiction result from the craft divisions existing between us. When the process of building was simple and the employers were competing small contractors without great capital, then the divided craft unions had a chance to make a showing and obtain a few concessions. But the industry has been changing. In the process of building, a revolution has taken place. New methods have been introduced, new materials have become common, and machinery is playing an ever greater part in the industry. Today, while suburban building remains technically simple, the dominating factor in the industry is the standard city building of steel and concrete. The new elements brought in by this change, cut across our craft lines. This brings the craft unions into conflict. The amount of work being limited, each craft wants to get the lion’s share. We then have a mad scramble among them, often several claiming that the nature of the work places it under their jurisdiction. There is usually plenty of evidence on all sides, with nothing to decide between them but power. So they fight. The test of battle has for many years been the only one to receive respect. The result is a continual, bitter fratricidal struggle, with consequent loss of power and demoralization.

The Employers’ United Front

While we have been fighting among ourselves, the employers have been busy in another way. The rapid development of large and expensive machines in building, with the use of steel and other new materials, did not affect the bosses in the manner it did the unions. Instead, it became a power for unifying the employers against our organizations. More and more capital was required for machinery and equipment, greater sums were needed for building investment; it naturally followed that the industry came into the hands of the trust companies, great banks, and the agents of the Steel Corporation. Large construction has thus come to be directly controlled through the giant construction companies and banking interests, while the great bulk of small building is kept in line by the control of building loans.

This concentration of capital and financial control, has been going on for a long time. Following it has come the unification of the building trades employers into ever more powerful associations. These have continually been combining and amalgamating, until today the building interests have one organization, directing throughout the country the fight against the unions. The so-called Citizens’ Committee in Chicago combines practically all building interests, controlled and directed by the great bankers. In other cities the unions are similarly fighting the united power of the capitalist class.

Our Unions Lag Behind

The increased power of the employers has been forcing the unions to also close up their ranks. The bosses find, with each new step in their consolidation, that they have more power as against the workers. Their greed for huge profits immediately causes them to attack our wages and We resist one at a time working conditions with our craft unions, but find ourselves losing. Then we finally search for ways of acting together. For years the writer, who is a practical building tradesman has taken part in these efforts toward unity. Thus, although the workers’ organizations are continually lagging behind those of the capitalists, they are nevertheless constantly changing and coming gradually closer together.

During the years 1900-1910 there were many amalgamations brought about of closely related crafts. The movement gained great headway for a time, resulting, among others, in uniting the steamfitters and plumbers; the carpenters and wood workers; the granite cutters, polishers and rubbers; the stonemasons and bricklayers; the marble workers and several independent unions; and the hod carriers and the excavation laborers. The reactionary leaders did their best to head off the movement, but even they were forced to give it lip-service. Samuel Gompers, in addressing the marble workers convention in 1909, expressed the hope that all men engaged in the stone industry would soon be in one powerful organization. The movement culminated in the organization of the Building Trades Department of the A.F. of L., in 1908. This was a definite recognition of the common interests of all unions in the building industry, and a step toward unification.

The organization of the Building Trades Department was a very “radical” step. The writer remembers quite well the fights that raged around this issue. Many of the same arguments now used against the program of the Trade Union Educational League were then hurled against the idea of forming the Department. But in spite of the reactionary fulminations, the “radicals” of that day went ahead and established the Department.

The new body was intended to eliminate the worst features of jurisdictional wars, and to bring about greater unity between the various craft unions. It was a great step forward. At least it got the unions in touch with one another, and laid the basis for some approach to common action. But its results, especially under the pressure of the employers’ present organization, have not justified the high hopes placed upon it. It has exhibited the fundamental weaknesses of all federations. In moments of greatest crisis, when strength is needed most, it has a disconcerting habit of giving way, leaving the unions in dire confusion. The wars of jurisdiction rage The Department is only another field of battle. Union resources are still taken up more with fighting each other, than in fighting the employers. The bosses are also affected by these struggles; strikes over jurisdictional claims continue, and the “fair” employer is in the same danger of them as the “unfair” one. The net result for the unions is loss. Federation has not met the situation.

Two False Remedies

Efforts to change this situation have been many. Two of them should be pointed out, because, coming from widely different sources, they are equally false and dangerous to the workers. One is the effort of the employers to set up “impartial” boards to decide upon jurisdiction; the other is the program of dual unionism advocated by the I.W.W. and others. Untold mischief has been done by both of these quack medicines of unionism.

The movement for a national board to arbitrate jurisdictional disputes was launched by engineers and employers. The proposal for such a board, composed of architects, engineers, employers and employees, was brought before the Atlantic City convention of the Building Trades Department. One delegate, speaking for the adoption, said that he believed it would go far toward eliminating the radical element from the building trades. The proposition was adopted. The organization which this same delegate represented is now out of the Department because of defiance of this board of awards.

Differences between the unions cannot be settled by any outside agency. They must be eliminated by the growth of solidarity inside, and the unification of the various unions. Instead of solving problems of jurisdiction, the board of awards has been a tool for further dividing the workers against one another. Those unions which, like the Carpenters’, refuse to accept its decisions are obeying a fundamental instinct of the trade union movement not to allow non-workers to dictate solutions to their problems.

The program of building new “ideal” unions, to replace the imperfect craft unions, has been one of the chief evils of the labor movement. Disgruntled and rebelling elements have thought to take a short cut to solidarity, by breaking away and starting all over. Actions of this kind have done nothing but increase the confusion and weaken the labor movement. Today it is plain to all intelligent men, that progress cannot come in this way. Every one of the many efforts in this direction has failed, and dual unionism is dead in the building trades. The militant union men have learned to be on the watch for this tendency, and to root it out in its beginnings.

For Building Trades Unity

The way out of our present mess lies along the road of amalgamation, the unification of all building trades workers for common action on wages, hours, and policies in the industry. One union covering the entire building trades is required.

Such a plan will not mean wiping out craft lines, wherever these meet some need of the workers. Instead, it will take the form, outlined in 1913 by the famous Tveitmoe resolution adopted by the Building Trades Department but not carried out, which groups together the closely related crafts, such as the mason trades, pipe trades, iron trades, wood-working trades, etc. In a Building Trades Industrial Union these groups would form departments, under the general executive which would have supreme power on questions of wages, hours, disputes, etc. Within these departments the old craft units could be retained as sections and separate locals, so long as wanted to handle purely craft matters. Related crafts will also have the machinery for handling their own peculiar problems, in the departments. But in the struggle against the bosses, they will all be united under one executive committee, concentrating the entire power of the building trades workers.

The technical obstacles to this program are not great. Unlike the railroads, the building trades (with the exception of helpers and laborers) are very close together in wage scales. The adjustments necessary are easily provided for by the department and craft sections. The advantages are so evident and so immediate, that they completely overshadowed any little objection that may be raised.

A great source of weakness today is the thousands of workers in the small towns, where there are not enough of their craft to make a live local union. The small-town worker is just as good material for unionism as the ordinary union man in the city, but he does not have the association of numbers of his fellow craftsmen to keep him in line, as the city worker has. Imagine what would happen to our great city local unions if they were divided up into little groups of three or four, or even 15 or 20. The organization would die out. That is what happens, particularly in the smaller crafts, when you leave the large centers.

The Building Trades Industrial Union could immediately rally all these workers to the union. The cities like New York, Chicago, and the like, would need little change in the local unions. The next smaller cities could unite the little fragments of locals together according to groups thus giving them size and strength and a feeling of power. The little towns could have department locals, or even one local of all building workers in the villages, even if there should be only one or two in each craft, and have a fair size local union which could be alive and healthy. Consider that this would eliminate the entire supply of scabs, relied upon by the bosses in fighting the union, and judge the value of such a united organization in increasing our power. Every building trades worker in the country would soon be a union man with a paid up card and membership in a live local.

Greater power for the union, that is what amalgamation means. The employers are out to smash our unions. They do not discuss the right or wrong of it–they have the power. The only thing that will save our unions and defeat the bosses is greater power. When, instead of a score or more of executive committees at the top, each making a different decision and pulling different ways, we have one committee uniting in itself the combined power of the building workers, then we will stop our retreat and move forward to new victories. Amalgamation is the road to that goal.

Take this up in your union and urge action be taken to get all our unions together, for the purpose of consolidating their forces. Get your local union to act; take it to your district council; then put it up to your international executives and conventions. Demand that your officials take action. Vote for those union men for office in your union, who stand for this program. Help to defeat those who oppose it. Discuss the question wherever building trades workers get together, and make this the dominating issue in the entire industry.

The Labor Herald was the monthly publication of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), in immensely important link between the IWW of the 1910s and the CIO of the 1930s. It was begun by veteran labor organizer and Communist leader William Z. Foster in 1920 as an attempt to unite militants within various unions while continuing the industrial unionism tradition of the IWW, though it was opposed to “dual unionism” and favored the formation of a Labor Party. Although it would become financially supported by the Communist International and Communist Party of America, it remained autonomous, was a network and not a membership organization, and included many radicals outside the Communist Party. In 1924 Labor Herald was folded into Workers Monthly, an explicitly Party organ and in 1927 ‘Labor Unity’ became the organ of a now CP dominated TUEL. In 1929 and the turn towards Red Unions in the Third Period, TUEL was wound up and replaced by the Trade Union Unity League, a section of the Red International of Labor Unions (Profitern) and continued to publish Labor Unity until 1935. Labor Herald remains an important labor-orientated journal by revolutionaries in US left history and would be referenced by activists, along with TUEL, along after it’s heyday.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborherald/v1n04-jun-1922.pdf