An informative overview of the organizational state of the German labor and moves to industrialism and amalgamation in the first years of Weimar.

‘Toward Industrial Unionism in Germany’ by Paul Hoyer from Labor Herald. Vol. 2 No. 10. December, 1923.

ONE of the burning issues in the German labor movement today is that of industrial unionism. That is the German workers have long gone beyond the stage of discussing whether or not industrial unionism is desirable. Industrial unionism as a goal has been accepted by the whole General Federation of Free Trade Unions; the only point of debate is, how rapidly the transformation from the trade to the industrial organization shall take place.

The militants in the German labor movement achieved a notable victory a year ago last July, at the triennial congress of the General Federation in Leipzig. Besides the usual items of business common to every labor convention, four major problems had been placed on the agenda for exhaustive discussion: works councils and their relation to the unions; industrial unionism; “Arbeitsgemeinschaften” and economic councils; and labor legislation. On each of these topics the discussion was initiated by a speaker designated by the Executive Board, who with the approval of the board brought in a resolution covering the particular subject in hand. The first move of the militants was to insist that a second speaker, known to hold opposing views, be appointed for each of these subjects. In this they were successful.

Now, in connection with the subject of industrial unionism, the board had appointed Fritz Tarnow, president of the Wood Workers’ union, to prepare the discussion and to present a resolution. That resolution reaffirmed the belief of German labor in industrial unionism as a final goal, but made it quite plain that “a general, sudden, and arbitrary reorganization of the trade unions is neither purposeful nor practicable.” According to the resolution, “The congress declines to favor mandatory measures for the creation of new forms of organization; rather does it leave it to the individual organizations, by mutual agreement to bring about such changes as may seem expedient to those concerned.”

This resolution seemed altogether too milk-and-water-like to the more aggressive trade unionists. Headed by Robert Dissman, president of the Metal Workers, they introduced a resolution which went through with flying colors, though in opposition both to the administration and to the committee on resolutions. This resolution declared that “a fundamental change in the form of union organization is necessary.” It charged the executive with drafting, within the shortest practicable time, a “plan for the organic development of industrial unions.” More than that, it called by name the inter-related industries, the component trades within which should, in its opinion, be linked together in industrial units. These included the following: the metal industry, building, graphic arts, transportation and communication, textiles, public works and civil service, farming (including wine cultivation and gardening), forestry, the leather industry, and the food industry.

What made the whole situation at the triennial congress the more interesting was the fact that Tarnow, who held the brief for the trade or craft principle, is himself president of a union that comes close to being an industrial union, in that it constitutes an amalgamation of eleven unions in the wood working industry (such as carpenters, wheelrights, turners, etc.); and that the Dissmann resolution, when presented to the chairman of the convention, bore the signature of a number of labor leaders–the heads of large organizations who were usually classed as rather conservative. The communists in the convention had introduced a resolution of their own, even more mandatory in character than that of Dissmann, but they refrained from pushing it when they saw that the Dissman version had a good chance of prevailing over the Tarnow-Administration resolution.

Since that convention, practically every convention of individual trade unions has been face to face with the problem of deciding whether for it, too, the time has come to join with other related trade unions in making one industrial union. I shall speak about the results of these referenda later on. For the present, a word or two should be said about the present position of the German trade union movement from an organizational standpoint.

It is a significant fact that the eight million organized workers in Germany are grouped in only 46 national unions. That figure in itself shows what a process of amalgamation has already taken place. Take, for instance, the Metal Workers’ union, which now embraces all but two trades that have anything to do with the metal industry (namely, the coppersmiths and the engineers and firemen, who have thus far declined to come into the fold). As I have shown in a previous article, the Metal Workers’ union is an amalgamation of 35 trades unions. Or take the clothing workers. Their union embraces 25 trades having to do with the making of men’s, women’s and children’s clothes of every description, besides a number of specialties such as millinery, embroidery, suspenders, ties, and even lamp shades. Or, again, the building trades workers. Their union represents an amalgamation of such trades as the masons, the glaziers, the pottery workers, the stucco workers, etc. Other unions which represent amalgamations of allied trades in the same industry are the following: bakery and confectionary workers, factory workers, lithographers, wood workers, transport workers, employes in municipal and state undertakings (such as power plants, gas works, etc.), choir singers and ballet dancers, hotel employes, and workers in the food producing industry.

German labor as represented at the Leipzig triennial congress, however, thought that 46 unions were still too many, and they also realized that further amalgamation in itself would not necessarily lead to industrial unionism. As Dissmann pointed out in his argument, a considerable number of metal workers were employed in connection with the mining industry. These workers would have to be relinquished by the Metal Workers’ union and turned over to the miners, in whose union, of course, there would have to be a metal workers’ sub-section. Again, it was pointed out in the debate that the shoe makers might be considered either as belonging in the wearing apparel workers’ industrial union (in much the same manner, for instance, as the wig makers have suggested affiliation with the clothing workers), or they might be considered as a necessary part of the leather workers industrial union.

Or again, take the railroad workers: should they belong to the transport workers’ industrial union or to the “industry” of workers engaged in state undertakings? It was because of this necessity of defining each industry in question that the executive was charged with working out a practical plan. I understand that a special committee is at work on this problem, but that it has not yet made its full report. The militants insisted, however, that the necessity of definition and even of arbitrary assignment of individual unions or union members to this or that industry does not militate against the plan of industrial unionism itself. Once the industries have been agreed upon and the unions and parts of unions that should be regarded as belonging to them, then each industry will be completely covered and the sad spectacle avoided of twenty or thirty union representatives, each salaried by a different organization, coming before the same boss or group of bosses in a given industry, with often conflicting demands!

I come now to the steps that have been taken in the direction of giving effect to the Leipzig resolution. The first important convention after the Leipzig congress was that of the clothing workers. Their convention at Munich in July, 1922, which I had the good fortune personally to attend, voted by an overwhelming majority to amalgamate with the hat makers and furriers. Unfortunately the hat makers, who held a referendum last September, failed to register a necessary two-thirds vote for the measure. The furriers, however, voted in favor of amalgamation either with the clothing workers or with the leather workers, however the national federation might prefer.

The clothing workers were less enthusiastic about the proposition that, after the furriers and hat makers had joined them, they should in turn amalgamate with the textile workers and make one large industrial union of the textile industry. As was pointed out repeatedly in the discussions, two different groups of capitalists control the clothing and the textile industries. If the employers who manufacture the textiles were also engaged in making the fabric over into wearing apparel, say the clothing workers, then of course our interests and those of the textile workers would be identical. In the general trend toward concentration in Germany, they acknowledge, the possibility that the two groups of industrials may unite is not at all unthinkable. But until and unless such interlocking takes place on the employers’ side, there is no point to bringing textile and clothing workers under one hat.

I have gone somewhat into detail about the clothing workers’ position, because it shows on the one hand that German labor is beyond the stage of debating whether or not industrial unionism shall take place, but that on the other there is division of opinion as to just what the term “industry” shall comprise.

Other conventions followed. The building trades union decided boldly on January 1, 1923, to start in as an industrial union, no matter how many or how few of the allied trades still outside the amalgamation might come in by that time. Result: the glaziers and the pottery workers joined them by the appointed time, while the roofers and asphalt workers declined, and the painters, though favoring the industrial union idea, found that many of their members were engaged in industrial plants and not in the building industry, and that therefore, until the whole German trade union movement is reorganized on an industrial basis, it was unwise for them to give up their organization and merge with the “Baugewerksbund.” The chimney sweepers, the wood workers, the factory workers (who are a union of workers at linoleum, wax cloth, wall paper, artificial flower, and feather manufacture) held aloof.

Another organization which decided to go over to an industrial basis was the Transport Workers’ union, which met in the fall of 1922. It decided to start in on January 1, 1923, under the name of “Deutscher Verkehrsbund,” and to embrace everything that was identified with the transportation and communication “industry.” It was especially anxious for the railroad workers (who, by the way, are organized in one union and not, as in the United States, in 16 organizations) to join them and thus practically to make an all-embracing industrial organization possible; but the railroaders are still holding off, partly because of the fact that they are state employes and do not see exactly to what commitments their affiliation with workers in non-state enterprises may lead them.

As far as the graphic arts are concerned, it should be noted that there are now four unions for the graphic trades–the printers, the book binders, the lithographers (including photographers, engravers, xylographers, etc.), and the apprentices in these three branches, who are organized in one union. These four unions have for several years maintained a joint council, somewhat like that now obtaining for the various unions in the clothing industry of America. This joint council performs many of the functions which the executive of an industrial union of the graphic trades would perform. But actual amalgamation has thus far been prevented by the action of the largest of the four, the printers’ union, which insists that such questions as the sick and death benefits must first be regulated and brought to a uniform basis, before amalgamation is practicable. In point of fact, the four unions have already taken the step of revising their by-laws so as to make them practically the same for the four bodies. Amalgamation and reorganization on an industrial basis is apparently well under way.

A rather interesting situation obtains with reference to the trades that have to do with the manufacture or preparation of articles of food and drink. There, the bakery and confectionery workers by a large majority as far back as 1921 voted in favor of uniting with the brewery and mill workers and with the butchers and meat market workers. The meat workers also voted in favor. Likewise the brewery and mill workers. But when it came to carrying out what all favored, it was found that really the hotel workers and the workers in cafes and restaurants, too, belonged to the “industry”–or at least the persons who have to do with cooking and serving. Negotiations were begun with the hotel and restaurant workers’ union, but without result. The brewery and mill workers, tired of waiting, then simply started out by themselves under the name of “Lebensmittel and Getraenkearbeiter” (Workers in the Food and Drink Industry), and they have left the door open for this nucleus to become an industrial union. In Berlin the situation has advanced to the point where on October 5, 1922, the Hotel and Restaurant Helpers, the Bakers, and the Butchers adopted a resolution in joint session after a number of preliminary conferences, in which they call attention to the fact that practically all trades in question favor amalgamation and the creation of an industrial union, and in which they urge that the policy of dilatoriness be abandoned and effective measures be at last taken to bring about what everybody concerned desires. Meanwhile the communist group among the tobacco workers is agitating for this trade, too, to be amalgamated with the Food and Drink Workers’ Industrial Union when this is consummated.

The leather industry is well on the way toward industrial unionism. A recent referendum of the saddle makers, upholsterers and leather pocket (brief cases, etc.) makers carried the day for those favoring amalgamation with the shoe makers and leather workers. The shoe makers, too, while disinclined toward the idea of amalgamating with the clothing workers for forming a wearing apparel workers’ industrial union, are reported in favor of joining with the leather workers. Their president, Joseph Simon of Nuremberg, has long been a champion of industrial unionism.

As far as the miners are concerned, it is obvious that all who have to do with actual coal digging are already in one union. But to make the union an industrial one, it is also necessary that machinists, carpenters and other non-coal-digging workers in the mining industry be joined to the miners. Once the whole German labor movement goes over to the industrial basis, some of the unions that now hold on to their members engaged in the coal industry will be quite ready to yield them up to the miners’ federation.

The above analysis reviews the situation in the principal industries and trades of Germany. When once the various combinations that I have outlined above are effected, most of the 46 unions in the German movement will have disappeared and a few industrial unions will have taken their place. Certain unions, like that of the machinists and firemen or of the ship carpenters, will simply be divided up among various industrial unions and disappear. The machinists and firemen, for instance, will belong to the metal workers, or the miners, or the municipal and state workers, depending upon where the individual machinist or fireman works. The ship carpenters will probably be divided up between the metal workers and the building trades. It is perhaps rather natural that both these unions should thus far have been unalterably opposed to industrial unionism. Their trade union will disappear completely!

That leaves, then, only a number of small unions to be considered within the scope of this article. There are, for instance, the fire department workers. But these will naturally belong to the municipal and state workers’ industrial union. There are the musicians on the one hand, and the chorus singers and ballet dancers on the other. The least they can do is to amalgamate in one union. Perhaps they should join with the movie operators. Just where to put the chimney cleaners I leave to the General Executive Board of the German Federation to figure out. The barbers have themselves suggested that they belong into the wearing apparel workers’ industrial union, since the cut of one’s hair is quite as vital to one’s apparel as is the cut of one’s clothes! The gardeners would probably, under the industrial scheme, be amalgamated with the land workers (farm hands).

To sum up: industrial unionism is beyond the theoretical stage in Germany. The German labor movement is face to face with the concrete problem of how to transform from a trade to an industrial basis. The German has a faculty for going at everything rather slowly and deliberately, but also thoroughly. But in the case of the organized workers’ movement, the capitalists themselves are compelling speed, for German industry is rapidly falling into the hands of but a few men and trusts. To this concentration of capital and management, the German workers see full well, they must answer by a concentration of their ranks along industrial lines.

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/v2n10-dec-1923.pdf