The jobs may be different, but the tasks remains the same, and as urgent. As thousands of Starbucks workers strike today, it is useful to remember that in the 1920s the only industry in the U.S. where unions were a national power was the U.M.W.A. in coal. The vast majority of workers, especially industrial workers, were outside of unions and largely considered ‘unorganizeable’ by labor’s misleadership. It took the C.I.O. and a new kind of organizing to break through a decade after this fine Art Shields article, still relevant in all of its essentials.

‘Organizing the Unorganized’ by Art Shields from Labor Age. Vol. 15 No. 11. November, 1926.

The Union Label on Ford and Chev

When there is a union label on every flivver and every steel rail comes from a union mill; when every telephone girl has a union ticket in her vanity case and the convict mines of Alabama have been regenerated by the U.M.W. of A.: when a union blanket tucks the worker in at night and an organized Big Ben buzzes him out in the morning—then the labor movement can be happy that along about 1926 a serious beginning was made to organize the still non union industries of America.

And along with the others the labor reporters will be happy. For with eighty-five per cent of the American workers still unorganized a lot of his news stories have to do with unorganized fields. And coming into a non union town the labor reporter is not exactly made to feel at home by the coal and iron police, Burns detectives and even the company welfare workers.

Not that the welfare worker isn’t a nice fellow in his way. But his way is with the masters of the coal and iron police and labor spies and the other welfare workers who are helping him to sugar coat the bitter open shop pill. I had an illuminating experience with one while working for the Shell Oil Co. at Martinez, California, some years ago. I was one of a gang laying foundation for a research laboratory building while another gang was excavating for another building twenty-five yards away. The foreman of the other gang forgot to tell us that he was setting off a powder blast and i was knocked for a goal. As I came to I found the personnel manager picking me up and heard him murmuring: “Don’t worry, Arthur, we’ll take care of you.” Kind words, but no more compensation pay was given me than the law authorized and that was precisely nothing for the first week of the injury which was the only week i was out.

This spring I had another experience in the open shop oil industry. This time on the Atlantic Coast at the Standard Oil gates on the Bayonne “Hook”. McAlister Coleman and Sam Friedman and I were watching Louis Budenz, of Lasor AGE, distributing his magazine as the workers rushed through the gates. The magazine went like hot cakes as Louis yelled: “All about the company union.” According to the LABOR AGE articles, written by Dunn and Budenz, the Standard Oil company union is the bunk and kids the workers along instead of remedying grievances. And the men, eagerly grabbing the magazine and nodding their heads, confirmed this. But Mr. Coler, general manager for the “Hook” refinery went off into a barking rage when his big car stopped and he saw what was going. He told Louis that he’d be arrested. But Louis kept right on and came back other times, after writing Coler that he was coming.

All the poor Standard Oil manager could do then was to bend a little before the agitation and grant some concessions to the workers. Not much—some extension of vacation periods—but enough to allay the discontent a little he hoped and avert the danger of the strike that the workers had begun to talk about.

This incident serves to show how fragile the company union and other open shop protective devices are. They can’t stand up under intelligent criticism. They are full of holes for the organizer and agitator to put his fingers into.

It is a mistake to underestimate the strength of the open shop employer, but just as great a mistake to hold any superstitious exaggerated opinions of his power. Even such hard-boiled open shop giants as the Standard and Bethlehem Steel have at times been unionized in part. The oil industry has a history showing two Bayonne refinery strikes that indirectly won considerable concessions for the workers and a highly organized and for-a-time effective strike in the California producing fields that failed only because it was too localized and had not extended to the Mid-Continent and Gulf properties of the same corporations.

Get Ready for the Fight

That brings us to the essential task of national planning, of Surveying the Industry. The movement has to have all the necessary facts about the industry so that it does not waste energy and lose force by going at things blind. For the oil industry it would mean a survey of the producing field, to begin, a listing of the wells by barrel capacity so the union would know where to put on the screws to make the boss yield. In the refining end it would mean a listing of the oil refineries by location and capacity and nature of product and distance to market. It is, obviously, no use striking one refinery if another can meet the demands of the market without too great freight cost to the employer. In addition the unions must be well posted on such business facts as amount of stocks on hand; the general state of the market and the financial connections of the various corporations in the field. Much of this data can be found in standard reference books of the industry and the rest can be gained from workers in the plants, especially the engineering or technical men, who should be cultivated.

Labor organizations conducting a campaign into a difficult open shop field need to be as fully supplied with the facts about the enemy as any invading army. It is not enough to depend on the general fund of information that individual labor leaders may have. There must be exact and carefully tabulated data that will enable the organization to know what it is doing all the time and never to go at things blindly.

And at the same time there must be accurate knowledge of the grievances of the workers; their wages; their job conditions; the company union and its failure to remedy grievances brought before it. The organizing unions must have these facts so clearly in hand that their literature and speeches will hit the target. And also the unions entering a new field must know all about the open shop workers who are calling them in:—what languages they read and speak; through what fraternal societies they can be reached when other means fail. And special attention should be paid to interesting, not only the women workers, but the wives of the men in the shops, whose morale will fail if the family at home does not understand what it is about and back them up.

United Action, Central Bodies and Publicity

A hopeful indication of a new efficiency was seen at Detroit in the recommendations that President O’Connell of the Metal Trades Department made towards the organization of the automobile industry. O’Connell believes that as far as possible the automobile workers should be organized according to industry and not bound in separate unions by disappearing craft lines. Jurisdictional disputes he says must be waived if the drive is to be united and vigorous. It is hoped that when the conference of interested international union leaders meets to plan the auto drive that O’Connell’s recommendations will be followed.

Next in importance to a unified industrial union in organizing the worker is the support of the union men and women of other industries. That support can most logically be given through the central labor unions of each automobile city; the state federations, and the American Federation of Labor itself. What the central labor unions do in a local way, the A.F. of L. can do nationally. The central labor unions of Detroit, Toledo, Indianapolis, Cleveland and the other automobile centers, can raise funds, hold mass meetings and parades and swing community sentiment generally for labor. No one who saw the inspiring giant parade led by the Passaic Central Trades and Labor Assembly, welcoming the woolen strikers into the A.F. of L., can fail to realize what a tower of strength such a central organization can be to strikers. In similar fashion, the Detroit central labor union, with its 20,000 affiliated building tradesmen, printers and so forth can be of vital assistance to the Ford workers when they make their demands.

Publicity has to be well organized to put over the drive. But the last few years have seen so much well directed labor publicity that there is good reason to believe that this bet will not be overlooked. The local capitalist papers can be forced to use a useful amount of news favorable to labor if the unions crack the whip over them. At Passaic, for instance, when the papers found they were losing big gobs of circulation by their extremely unfair strike news they changed their tune somewhat. But dependence on the capitalist papers is a shaky matter and what counts most is a hard hitting local labor press. Detroit and Toledo and Cleveland have weekly labor papers authorized by the central labor unions that may be expanded into daily papers when the Labor Movement rises to its feet in earnest as it must during an auto drive. In the palmy days of the Seattle labor movement, when the shipyards were going full blast, the circulation of the Union Record peaked up towards a hundred thousand. The exuberant labor spirit brought a rousing sentiment for the workers’ daily and the shipyard man who attempted to patronize the “TIMES” or “P.I.” newsboys as he was leaving the gates got cutting looks from his companions.

Union Label on Ford and Chev

The prospect for an automobile drive is the most encouraging news that has come down the pike for a long while. And now that this big prospect is before us, it is pardonable if we dream ahead a little further. When the automobile factories are filled with union men and every Ford and Chev bears the union label it will be illogical to put scab tires on the beasts and to manufacture their engines and bodies out of scab tin and steel. So, “On to Akron” and “On to Pittsburgh” will be the next cry. And then how aggravating to run scabby gasoline through a union carburetor, and so we come to the necessity of unionizing the oil refineries and the drilling crews.

If this is optimistic, let us have more optimism. To the bow wows with the old song that it can’t be done. Ford would not have gone on the five-day week if he felt no forebodings of unionism, nor Gary, earlier, have shortened the 12-hour workday. Brother Coler at Bayonne would not have trotted out those vacation concessions to the Standard men if he hadn’t felt the open shop crown a little insecure after the way he saw the workers responding to the agitation.

The open shop workers are not prosperous, contented workers. That is the arrant nonsense that is all right for a Darty Maru delegation from England to feed to the Rothermere newspapers. But it is a joke as measured by the facts here in America where the Empire State of New York can boast an average weekly factory wage (of fulltime workers) of only $27 or $28 a week, with the textile industry batting down to $18 to $20. How a family man, or even a live bachelor, can be prosperous on that misses our guess. And even if his wage averaged twice as much what is the satisfaction of being sweated to death by speed engineers and stooled on in shop and at club and home by the Sherman Detective Agency or some other experts on industrial relations?

More of the good things of earth for the workers—not merely for the 15 per cent now organized but for the whole 100 per cent.

A car for every worker and a union car at that!

Labor Age was a left-labor monthly magazine with origins in Socialist Review, journal of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Published by the Labor Publication Society from 1921-1933 aligned with the League for Industrial Democracy of left-wing trade unionists across industries. During 1929-33 the magazine was affiliated with the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) led by A. J. Muste. James Maurer, Harry W. Laidler, and Louis Budenz were also writers. The orientation of the magazine was industrial unionism, planning, nationalization, and was illustrated with photos and cartoons. With its stress on worker education, social unionism and rank and file activism, it is one of the essential journals of the radical US labor socialist movement of its time.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborage/v15n11-nov-1926-LA.pdf