RIVAL TRADE-UNIONS.
OF lateyears there has been, or has appeared to be, so considerable a development of the sentiment of solidarity among Trade-Unions that many persons are likely to have forgotten the possibility that those organisa- tions may be sharply divided from one another by strong mutual jealousy and rivalry. We have heard much of levies or subscriptions raised among the members of one Union in aid of a strike carried on by the members of another. We have heard not a little of that very singular product of late nineteenth-century economic and social conditions, the "strike in sympathy,"—the measure by which the members of one industry, who are not at all dissatisfied with the terms on which they are themselves working, are yet ready to throw up their work and wages for an indefinite period in order to promote in some way either a trade pressure or a development of public opinion,. favourable to the concession of the terms asked for by the members of another industry who are out on strike. And the sense of community, partly of interest and partly of obligation, which has thus found expression, sometimes pathetic, sometimes almost fantastic, among different classes of workers in our own country has overleapt national boundaries and brought about, among other results, those periodical international Congresses of Labour, of which the latest is to be held next week in London. There seems some strange irony in the con- junction, in time and place, with that gathering, of an obstinate struggle between two of the strongest and most influential of English Trade-Unions.
The circumstances of this most unfortunate conflict were plainly set forth in the Times of Monday. It appears that for some time past Messrs. Thornycroft and Company, of Chiswick, the well - known builders of torpedo-boats, have been specially busy in the production of what are known as water-tube boilers, an invention of the head of their firm, which has been largely adapted for marine purposes. Now the construction of these boilers, it is explained, is far from being the same thing as the construction of ordinary boilers. The latter is mostly, though by no means entirely, a process of bending plates and riveting them together, and that is the regular work of a class of mechanics who, in so far as they are Trade- Unionists, are represented by the Boilermakers' and Iron Shipbuilders' Society. On the other hand, the water-tube boilers consist mainly of a mass of pipes, and as pipe- work is the regular business of fitters, whose Union is that of the famous Amalgamated Society of Engineers, it was to workmen of that class, and not to the riveters or platers, that Messrs. Thornycroft naturally entrusted the making of their new speciality. At the outset, when the amount of work in that department was small, no objection was raised in any quarter. But some weeks ago the firm received a letter from the secretary of the Boiler- makers' Society requesting that the fitters engaged on the water-tube boilers should be taken off, and boiler- makers put on in their place. It is a remarkable illus- tration of the conditions under which such operations as theirs are now carried on, that this request was met not by a simple intimation that the firm would employ the men they thought best qualified in all departments of their establishment, but by an expression of their readi- ness to fall in with the wishes of the society as far as possible. Notwithstanding the inconvenience that must have been caused by a substitution, at a time when orders were pressing, of men who had to acquire, for men who already possessed, the special technical aptitudes needed, Messrs. Thornycroft, it is stated, agreed that they would transfer certain parts of the work in question to the boilermakers, " selecting those operators which best lent themselves to the change, but retaining the more difficult jobs, or, at any rate, those a fitter was more able to per- form than a boilermaker in the hands of the men engaged upon them." This surely was an arrangement both con- ciliatory and reasonable in its character. If, as may be the case, the probabilities are that the water-tube boilers will gradually oust those of the older kind from favour, for such reasons as greater safety, economy of fuel, facility for working continuously at higher pressure, or on other grounds, it is not unnatural or unreasonable that the men who have been hitherto employed upon boilermaking should be anxious to acquire, as far as may be, the art of constructing the new boilers, and so to retain, as far as may be, their prospect of a good livelihood. On the other hand, it was clearly unreasonable that from the beginning they should insist on making the new boilers throughout. The result of their doing so would inevitably be that the boilers of the water-tube pattern would not be made nearly so quickly as they were wanted, and that they would be much less satisfactory than if more expert hands were engaged upon those parts of their construction which in the opinion of experts so eminent as Messrs. Thornycroft require skill of a kind which the ordinary boilermaker cannot at present possess. These considerations in favour of the compromise offered by Messrs. Thorny croft appear irrefutable. And in the first instance it was ostensibly accepted. But it was soon found that, on the part of both sets of men concerned, there was no intention of allowing it to work satisfactorily. The boilermakers were not content without having the whole construction of the new boilers in their hands. The fitters, on their part, very naturally resented the partial loss of employment at good wages which they felt that they had been thoroughly well earning. And each set of workmen, it is said, applied themselves to the obstruction of the other. Thus, while the firm had to pay wages at an undiminished rate, the water-tube boilers for which their customers were pressing were not produced. An arbitrator was then called in to determine whose work the making of the new boilers ought to be, but the two con- tending societies could not agree on the reference. And so the work of the department concerned has been stopped for twelve weeks, the firm have incurred, or will shortly incur, heavy contract penalties for delay in the production of the new boilers, and it was stated that very possibly their whole establishment will be brought to a standstill.
It is difficult to imagine a situation reflecting more gravely alike upon the common-sense and the right feeling of English artisans. Either set will strike if the others are employed on the work in question, and both will strike if any one else is employed on it. Thus a firm whose enterprise and ingenuity are full of promise of employment to the skilled labour of their district, and indirectly of the country generally, and whose conduct in this dispute shows them desirous of making every reasonable concession to Trade-Union feeling, are in danger of paralysis. We trust it may not come to that, and that some moderating influences will be brought to bear that will lead both boilermakers and fitters to the acceptance of some fair compromise, or to loyal acquiescence in an impartial arbitration. But it is in the highest degree lamentable that such a. spirit as that evinced by the Chiswick dispute should have been manifested among men who might fairly claim to be of the elite of the English working classes. It is to such men as they that the country looks for an example of that temper of moderation and equity in the conduct of industrial affairs by which their peaceful and orderly progress may be assured. Short-sighted sectionalism among our Trade-Unionism will injure British industry quite as seriously as short-sighted refusal to make terms with employers. The older Unions for years past have for the most part been honourably distinguished for their avoidance of ill-considered demands upon capital. They are no less bound not to fall back into that narrow selfishness among themselves which crippled some of their early activities.
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