TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TRADE-UNIONISM IN DANGER. TRADE-UNIONISM is in danger, but not from the attacks of the employers. Rather it is in danger from the inability of the members, or perhaps we ought to say the administrators, of the Unions to take note of the changes that are going on in the industrial world. At this moment the Union men employed in the engineering trade have before them certain final pro- posals made by the masters. If they accept these proposals the strike will end. If they refuse them it must continue. Now it is no good to pretend that the proposals of the masters are not a blow to Trade- Unionism as it is at present understood. They do inflict a very great blow on the Unions, and deprive them of a power of interference in the management of the works -which they have of late years claimed and enjoyed. It is true that the masters' proposals do not interfere with collective bargaining, and that they make no attempt to say, We will not recognise the existence of the Unions.' They distinctly recognise the Unions, and recognise them in their capacity of collective bargainers in the matter of pay and of the general conditions of labour. The masters, for example, propose as follows :—" Failing settlement by the local Association and the Trade-Union of any question brought before them, the matter shall be forthwith referred to the executive board of the Federation and the central authority of the Trade-Union, and pending the question being dealt with there shall be no stoppage of work, either of a partial or general character, but work shall proceed under the current conditions." To say that the men who propose this refuse to admit collective bar- gaining, or to recognise the existence of the Union, is absurd. The masters may not make the recognition exactly in the way desired by the men, but make it they do. But though the masters do not attempt to put a stop to collective bargaining, or try to consider the workmen only in isolation, their proposals, as we have said, undoubtedly do strike a heavy blow at the present notion of what a Trade-Union has the right to do. If the .masters' proposals are carried, the Unions will be practically confined to collective bargaining, and will have little or no ,power to enforce their special industrial policy in works where their members are employed. We will say at once that though our abstract sympathies are quite as much with the men as with the masters, we believe that this ,result would be most beneficial, not only to the general 'trade of the country, but also to the members of Unions, and so to the Unions themselves,—for after all the Unions exist for the men, and are not artificial persons with rights and privileges apart from those of the men who constitute them.
Our reason for thinking thus is easily told. We believe that of late the Engineers' Union has been interfering unduly in the management of works in which their mem- bers have been employed. When we say " unduly " we do not mean that the Union has been acting out of malice or .arrogantly, or out of pure pigheadedness. On the con- trary, they have been acting on an abstract theory,—though unfortunately a theory which is contrary to the interests of the engineering industry, and also to the interests of , the workmen. The Unions, that is, have not acted wickedly or without forethought, but only on a mistaken principle. Every Union is a corporation in fact and feeling, ;though not in law. Now corporations often tend to adopt a policy which is by no means the best policy for the majority of the individuals who compose the corporation. The corporation policy is the policy of the whole body, arrived at by a compromise between, or an amalgama- tion of, a number of interests. A Trade-Union acting as a corporation thinks not of the particular interests of the men in a particular shop, nor even of the interests of all the men at work, but of the interests of all the men who possess its membership. But every 'Trade-Union has on its books a number of unemployed members. It must think of these as well as of the men at work, but the Trade-Union's thought for them is to get them work. Hence the Trade-Union, though, doubtless, wanting to better the position of the men at work, also wants to get jobs for the men not at work. But the case of the men not at work always seems more urgent than that of those at work. Hence the Trade-Union's policy is always a policy of making more jobs. Note the result. The Union is, as we have just said, always trying to further a policy which makes new jobs and prevents the old jobs being diminished. Of course the best, and indeed the only, permanent way to make more jobs, is to improve the general condition of trade, and to start new factories and workshops,—to encourage the capitalist, that is, to come into the market and compete for labour. Unfortunately, however, the Trade- Union official does not believe in this method of making more jobs. He is very sceptical about the in- crease of factories and a brisker bidding for labour doing his members good. Practically he believes that trade is a. fixed quantity. His notion is that the only practical way of increasing the jobs available is to reduce the hours of labour and to prevent certain specially skilled and active men doing the work of two. The Trade-Union official argues : If one thousand men now do the work at such and such a shop by working nine hours a day, it will take eleven hundred and twenty-five to do it working eight hours a day. If, then, we insist on an eight-hour day we get in this single shop one hundred and twenty-five new berths or jobs. Again, if we speak to the hundred or so of exceptional men who now do double work, and make them work at the normal standard, we shall get another hundred places vacant.' Hence grows up the Union policy of short hours and a slow standard of work. Both make more jobs, and so more places for unemployed Union men. Again, new machinery, though not to be resisted absolutely, must only be allowed under rules which will ensure that its introduction shall not entail a diminution of jobs. When a new machine is introduced, if possible- things must be so arranged that the two or three men whose manual work it displaces shall be re-employed in working it. All this, of course, is not morally wrong; nor is it pure prejudice. It is done with an intention which is per se virtuous enough. That is the intention of providing work for the unemployed. But unfortunately it does not take account of universal facts,—of the fact that two and two make four, and not five. If the Union officials would allow the master to pay only the same wages-bill for eleven hundred and twenty-five men working eight hours as for one thousand working nine, a smaller daily wage to each man, the policy of more jobs would not matter. But this is the last thing they will agree to, for that would be inflicting an injury on their members at work. Hence they try to make more jobs, and yet to keep the pay the same. But as a rule this simply means ruin to the trade. Practically no industry has a superfluous fund out of which a sudden cash demand can come. An extra demand of this kind cannot be made without dislocating it altogether. To keep the saleable product or output what it was before, and yet ask for the pay of one hundred. and twenty-five extra men per day, must mean ruin. Think where the extra pay is to come from, if it is to come at all. Out of the sale of the product by increasing its price ? Impossible ; people will not buy the product at the enhanced price. Then out of the share of remuneration paid to capital ? No, because capital is hired like any other commodity, and if not paid its market price presently moves elsewhere. Of course, the capitalist can be squeezed for a time ; but ultimately a new charge put on an industry in obedi- ence to an abstract policy ruins it. The masters, then, feel that, come what may, they must resist the interference of the Union when it is exerted to carry out the private policy of the Union, the policy not of making the best bargain for the men at work, but of artificially manufacturing jobs in order to find room for men not at work,—men, too, who very often are not at work because they are inefficient. Here we have reached the real rock-bed of the struggle. The masters are fight- ing an interference in the management of their works which is not really claimed in furtherance of collective bargaining but of the abstract policy of the Union. The masters say, in fact, Keep your own unemployed your- selves ; don't foist that duty on us, and in doing so ruin the trade which supports us both.' For this, the masters in the engineering trade are fighting, and must continue to fight. They will not tolerate a form of interference which in the end must ruin any industry. If the men are wise they will recognise this fact, and will abandon the policy of job-making for men who have not got jobs for the far wiser policy of simple collective bargaining. They will recognise, that is, that the Union must concentrate its efforts on making the best bargain possible for the men who are at work, and not attempt to create new jobs for their unemployed. By all means let the men be kept by their fellows—that is, let the workers mutually insure against being out of work—but do not let a great business question be complicated by an attempt to make the master bear the cost of out-of-work insurance. The way to get new jobs and more jobs is, as we have said, to increase the total volume of trade. Let the men encourage capital to come in freely and compete for labour, and the value of labour will soon rise in the auction-room. Whoever heard of throwing stones at possible bidders ? Again, let the men encourage every invention which will cheapen production. Cheaper pro- duction means a cheaper product, and a cheaper product a greater demand for the product, and a greater de- mand for the product a greater demand for labour. If only capital can be got to flow into a trade and production can be made cheaper there will be no risk of jobs falling off. What really kills jobs is de- creased production in proportion to the men employed, and a remuneration of capital below the market rate.
Of late this, stated nakedly, has been the policy of the Unions. If they are wise they will, as we have said, abandon it. If they do not, the Trade-Unions, and especially the Engineering Union, are in great danger of destruction. The engineering trade is ceasing in many of its almost innumerable branches to be a skilled trade. Machines now supply the skill of the artisan, and hence, if the masters are pushed to the wall, their factories will not be closed, but the machines will be worked, not by skilled men, but by labourers. This tendency to sub- stitute a skilful machine worked by an unskilled man for a skilled man is a great danger to a Union composed of skilled men anxious, and rightly anxious, to retain the wages of skilled men. The proper course for the men is to recognise this danger, and to make the trend of the trade as little hurtful to them as possible. But this is to be done by concession, not by pursuing a cast-iron policy. We are in favour of Unions, believing them to be necessary to the proper organisation of trade, but we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact that a Union, like every other institution, which refuses to look facts in the face, and which acts as if things were what they ought to be rather than what they are, is doomed. If the Engineers' Union is wise it will recognise that it no longer has a monopoly, or anything approaching a, monopoly, of the chief com- modity required in the engineering trade ; that it is an institution whose basis of power has been modified by the development of inventions ; and that, in view of these facts, it must abandon the attempt to regulate the course of the industry. Even if it abandons the claim to inter- fere in the management of the works, and sticks to its " last " of collective bargaining, it will have great and im- portant functions to perform, and will still retain immense powers. What it cannot and must not do is to try to interfere in the management of the works, not in accord- ance with the material interests of the men actually at work, but in obedience to an abstract social policy,—the policy of providing the unemployed of the trade with work. There was, we must repeat once more, nothing per se wicked or criminal in that policy, but it was a policy which was in reality hopeless, for it was certain in the end to ruin any industry to which it was applied. It forgot the cardinal fact of all industrial life,—the fact that the men at work in a factory are partners in that factory, and so directly interested in its success. Anything that ruins it must ruin them. The men not at work in the factory, but out of work, are not partners, and if an attempt is made to run the factory in their interests there can in the end be but one result,—the destruction of the factory and the ruin of all the partners, great and small.
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