LABOR ORGANIZATIONS

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor

LABOR ORGANIZATIONSSource: Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (FEBRUARY, 1920), pp. 256-263Published by: Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of LaborStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41825668 .

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LABOR ORGANIZATIONS.

Fifty-First Annual Trades-Union Congress, Great Britain.

A

FULL Britain),

report held

1 of at the

Glasgow Fifty-first

September Trades-Union

8 to 13, Congress

1919, has (Great

just Britain), held at Glasgow September 8 to 13, 1919, has just been received by this Bureau. This congress was made up

of 851 delegates representing 5,283,676 trade-unionists, " the largest representation of organized labor that this or any other country has witnessed." The chairman of the congress was Hon. J. H. Thomas, M. P., of the National Union of Railwaymen, and the secretary was Hon. C. W. Bowerman, M. P., of the London Society of Compositors. The second day was devoted to a discussion of the report of the parliamentary committee, which dealt with a large number of sub- jects, among which were the International Labor Conference, the labor provisions of the peace treaty, international labor legislation, and the proposal for the amalgamation of all unions. The report on the last mentioned was not very definite, and it was decided to con- tinue the work along this line. A resolution subsequently presented to the congress instructing the parliamentary committee to take action on the question of an amalgamation of all trades, with a view to the organization of wTorkers under one heading, was lost.

On the third day the question of nationalization of the coal mines came up for discussion, and a resolution was adopted instructing the parliamentary committee to interview the Prime Minister and in the name of the entire labor organization to insist upon the Government's adopting the plan of national ownership and joint control of the industry recommended by the majority report of the coal commission. The resolution rejected the Government's scheme for the governance of the industry " as a scheme contrary to the best interest of the Na- tion." The vote on the resolution was 4.478,000 for and 77,000 against.2 1 Report of Proceedings at the Fifty-first Annual Trades-Union Congress, hold in St.

Andrews Hall, Glasgow, on Sept. 8 to 13, 1010. London, 1019. 408 pp. 3 For discussion of the situation in the British coal industry see Monthly Labor Re-

view for May, 1019 (pp. 100 to 114) ; August, 1019 (pp. 78 to 86) ; and October, 1010 (pp. 23 to 30),

256 [5601



LABOR ORGANIZATIONS. 257

The congress adopted a large number of resolutions, among which may be mentioned those -

Recommending that hours of labor of persons employed on manual labor should not exceed 44 per week and that systematic overtime should be declared illegal.

Demanding that the Government provide pensions for mothers " on the principle of schemes now in operation in many of the States of America."

Recommending the abolishment of the present poor-law system and the adoption of a measure sitch as will " secure relief in all cases where necessary without the deprivation of citizen rights and without the stigma of pauperism."

Protesting against the Government's delay in dealing with the question of old-age pensions, and demanding that the act be amended so as to provide a pension of £1 per week for all persons 60 years of age and upward.

Indorsing the attitude taken by the woodworking trade-unions in refusing to accept the system of payment by results as a condition of employment in the furniture trade.

Demanding the repeal of the conscription act and the immediate withdrawal of the British troops from Russia.

Recommending that the parliamentary committee urge upon the Prime Minister the necessity of instituting a national scheme of col- lective death insurance by which families arid individuals may be pro- vided with adequate funeral benefits.

Favoring the adoption of the metric system. Calling upon the Government to deal with the shortage of dwelling

houses " by making it compulsory for local authorities to prepare and carry out immediately adequate housing schemes in their particular areas " and " by the Government making grants free of interest, as will enable local authorities to erect suitable houses at a reasonable cost to the people."

Demanding complete nationalization and control of the land. Instructing the parliamentary committee to urge the Government

to prepare and elaborate within a period of two years a definite policy of State purchase and management of the railways and all other forms of transport and their administration by the State under pro- vision which will assure that those who are engaged in the industry shall have a direct share in determining the conditions under which it is to be carried on.

Declaring for nationalization of shipping, shipbuilding, and ship repairing.

Calling upon the Government to deal with unemployment " (a) by regulating national or local work so as to provide for additional em-

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258 MONTHLY LABOR REVIEW.

ployment during seasonable or local fluctuations of trade," and "(&) by providing adequate maintenance, and by organizing schemes of useful work and of training with full' maintenance for all workers who can not find suitable employment."

Requesting that the National Insurance Act be amended to provide (1) for an increase in the sickness benefit to £1 per week for the first 26 weeks ; and 10s. for the remainder of the sickness or disable- ment; (2) for an increase in maternity benefits to £3: (3) for medi- cal service and drugs to be available day and night continuously, and for the present system of payment to doctors to be revised, the cost of such increase to be met by the employers and the State.

Declaring that the Workmen's Compensation Act should be so amended as to provide among other things that workmen who are totally incapacitated through accidents arising out of and in the course of their employment be paid compensation equal to full earn- ings before the accident ; that payment of compensation shall be made from the date of incapacity ; that compensation be paid to all persons incurring or contracting injury, disease, or disability in the course of or arising out of employment.

The next annual meeting of the congress will be held at Ports- mouth in September, 1920.

Development of Woman-Labor Organization in

Germany During the War.

IN buscher and a special

various discusses

article publications

the

in Soziale on

Praxis,1 woman

of labor, based

Dr. on

labor

official Charlotte

statistics Leu- and various publications on woman labor, Dr. Charlotte Leu-

buscher discusses the development of woman labor organization in Germany during the war. The author says :

The organization of gainfully employed women may be effected in two ways : Either in unions with exclusively female membership, or jointly with male fellow workers. While the former principle of organization is prevailing among salaried employees and in numerous higher callings, the combining of male and female workers of the same occupation is by far the most frequent form of organization among manual workers. Only the sectarian trade-unions of women workers and the Christian Trade Society of Women Home Workers form an exception to this rule. It is only natural that common organization of men and women is the predominant form of organization, because women are being employed in the same occupations as men and in many instances have replaced men, and owing to this fact it is in the interest of male workers to include the female workers in their organizations. It was therefore to be expected that the increased employment of women during the war, and particularly their invasion of occupations hitherto exclusively exercised by men, would find expression in an increase of the female membership of trade-unions. To be sure, it had to be taken into account that a large number of the woman workers who during the

1 Soziale Praxis und Archiv für Volks Wohlfahrt. Berlin, Aug. 14, 1919. [562]




war had taken up industrial employment with the intention of discontinuing such employment later on would show neither inclination nor understanding for belonging to a labor organization. Moreover, the favorable condition of the labor market during the war and the facility with which wage increases were obtainable made many a woman worker believe that the joining of a labor organization would involve merely a useless expenditure. Finally, it should be kept in mind that during the war the trade-unions worked with a greatly reduced staff and under difficult conditions, and were therefore prevented from carrying on an energetic propaganda among newly employed woman workers.

An official compilation recently published in the Reichs- Arbeits- blatt 1 indicates the fluctuation during the war of the female membership of the three most important trade-union groups, the central federations of the Free (Social-Democratic) Trade-Unions, the Christian Trade-Unions, and the Hirsch-Duncker societies. This compilation shows that the* female as well as the male membership had decreased up to the end of 1915. Beginning with 1916 the former is again increasing, while the latter showed the first signs of an increase in 1917. At the end of 1917 the number of female members in the trade-union groups referred to was 382,231, as against 255,149 at the end of 1913. The increase was therefore equivalent to about 50 per cent. In 1913 the average annual female membership formed 8.6 per cent of the total membership, while the corresponding percentage for 1917 was 22.2. Up to the end of June, 1918, the Free Trade-Unions report the largest increase in female membership, viz., an increase of 138,941, equivalent to 62.1 per cent. Membership figures for the entire year 1918 are not yet available for all labor organizations, but the figures so far published by individual federations indicate that during the last year of the war labor unions experienced a further rapid increase in their membership in general and in their female membership in particular. Thus, the Factory Workers' Fed- eration, which is affiliated with the Free Trade-Unions and is chiefly recruited from the ranks of unskilled labor, has doubled its female membership during 1918. At the end of that year it had 88,319 female members, who formed 37 per cent of the total membership. It is a noteworthy fact that 42,211 female workers enrolled as members of this federation during the last quarter of 1918. The extent of

. the female membership in the most important federations of the largest trade-union organization, the Free Trade-Unions ( Freie Gewerkschaften ), at the end of 1917 as compared with the end of 1913, is shown in the following table.

1 Reichs- Arbeitsblatt. Berlin, Feb. 24, 1919, pp. 149ff.

[563]




TOTAL AND FEMALE MEMBERSHIP OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FEDERATIONS OF THE GERMAN FREE TRADE-UNIONS AT THE END OF 1<H3 AND OF 1917.»

; Kr.d oí 1913. End of 1917. j Increase

Female mem- Female mem- bershlp. bership.

Federation. _ . , _ . . female Total _ . , Total _ . . member- member- Per member- Per ship ^ sl,|p- N'um- sh'P- Sum- WlTover i N'um- be™ mem- *££

Sum- be" mem- total i«l3. mem- mem- bership. torship.

Bakers and confectioners j 28,754 4,656 10.2 7,296 2,457 33.7 - 47.2 Miners 101,986 110,454 847 .8 +100.0 Brewery and flour-mill workers 51,317 1,436 2.8 17,316 1,947 11.2 + 35.6 Bookbinders 33,377 16,596 49.7 20,266 14,746 72.8 - 11.1 Printers 15, «34 8,572 53.8 7,702 5,907 75.4 - 32.3 Factory workers 207,300 26,026 12.6 110,584 40,456 36.6 +55.4 Butchers 6,557 397 6.1 2,929 1,257 42.9 +216.6 Municipal workers 53,925 1,547 2.9 32,984 6,923 21.0 +347.5 Glass workers

18,251 945 5.2 7^361 800 10.9 -15.3 Woodworkers 193,075 7,470 3.9 90,237 18,456 20.5 +147.1 Hatters 11,927 fi, 016 50.4 8,616 6,367 73.9 + 5.8 Furriers 3,952 1,316 33.3 1,444 681 47.2 - 48.3 Leather workers 16,481 2,085 12.7 7,752 2,795 36.1 + 34.1 Metalworkers... 544,934 27,373 5.0 392,030 83,266 21.2 +204.5 Pottery workers 16,972 3,679 21.7 5,077 2,612 51.4 - 29.0 Saddlers 14,855 1,029 6.9 15,306 6,717 43.9 +552.8 Tailors 48,712 8,857 18.2 25,470 12,923 50.7 + 45.9 Shoemakers 44,363 8,665 19.5 17,453 7,738 44.3 - 10.7 Tobacco workers 31,713 15,449 48.7 27,706 16,958 61.2 + 0.8 Upholsterers 10,164 182 1.8 2,570 734 28.6 +303.3 Textile workers 138,079 54,113 39.2 75,253 55,465 73.7 + 2.5 Transport workers 220,427 9,201 4.0 64,725 14,967 23.1 + i>2. 7

1 Reichs-Arbeitsblatt, Berlin, Feb. 24, 1910. p.

Granting that the actual number of organized woman workers seems small in view of the extraordinary increase of employment of women during the war. and although the gain in female membership does not by any means offset the great falling off of the male membership of German labor organizations, the increase of the female membership up to the end of 1917 by 50 per cent is nevertheless noteworthy. It may. moreover, confidently be expected that when the official membership figures of German labor organizations for 1918 are published they will show a further considerable increase in the percentage of female membership. Up to the end of 1917, the trade-unions covering occupations for which there was great demand in war industries show the largest increases in female membership, which go far beyond the average increase. In the Federation of Metal Workers of the Free Trade-Unions, for instance, the female membership at the end of 1917 was 83,266 as compared with 27.373 at the end of 1913, an increase of 204.5 per cent.

Another fact worthy of mention is the increased participation of woman workers in strikes and lockouts. In labor disputes initiated by the metal workers' federation, for example, the participation of woman workers rose from 2.663 (4.6 per cent) in 1914 to 470,460

1564]




(29.8 per cent) in 1917. In those initiated by the German Wood Workers' Federation, 1838 (7.4 per cent) female workers partici- pated in 1914, and 38,650 (24.8 per cent) in 1917. It must, however, be admitted, that of the latter number only 17,791, or 46.1 per cent, were organized.

That organization of woman workers has lagged far behind that of their male fellow workers may be attributed chiefly to the unrespon- sive attitude of the former toward efforts at organization, above all to the lack of understanding and interest for trade-unionism of the majority of the women who are doubly burdened by occupational work and their household duties, and, secondly, to the fact that most women look upon industrial employment as a mere transitory stage in their lives. The reasons which cause the trade-unions to put obstacles in the way of extensive organization of woman labor are much harder to analyze. They may be due to the inward attitude of the trade- unions in general and of male workers in particular to the problem of woman labor. In a series of articles in Sozialistische Monatshefte dealing with the problems of industrial woman labor, Max Quarck, a member of the Reichstag, attributes the small success of the efforts for organizing woman labor to the fact that the trade-unions do not give sufficient consideration to the interests of woman workers, and that the male workers show little understanding of their fellow workers of the other sex and frequently assume even a hostile attitude toward them. These imputations of Quarck were emphatically re- pudiated in the same journal by a number of prominent trade-union leaders. But the perusal of some of the articles written in defense of the trade-union point of view makes it evident that although the trade-unions can not be accused of consciously neglecting the interests of woman workers* male organized labor looks with disfavor upon the extension of woman labor and above all upon the branching out of women into fields of industrial labor hitherto considered the exclusive domain of male workers. They either fear that an influx of female labor will overcrowd the labor market and lower wages or that cer- tain occupations Will prove injurious to women, or consider it un- desirable from the point of view of the working classes that an increasing number of women who have to attend to household duties should seek industrial employment.

To-day there are only very few trade-unions which on principle disapprove of industrial employment of women and consequently do not look favorably on organization of woman workers. But their attitude is due to reasons inherent in the nature of their trade. Thus, the Federation of Building Trades Workers, which in the summer of 1916 made an investigation into the extent, nature, and wages of

1565]




woman labor, resolved not to organize woman workers employed in their trades during the war. This resolution was based 011 the asser- tion that work in the building trades is unsuited for women; that, therefore, the endeavor should be made io dispense with woman labor as soon as possible; and that nothing should be undertaken that could be looked upon as promotion or approval of such labor. A like disapproving attitude toward woman labor has always been manifested by the miners' organizations of Germany. Although during the war they have allowed women to be employed in work above ground, they are advocating complete prohibition of the employment of women in mining. The number of organized women in mining has therefore remained insignificant even during the war. The nonmilitant waiters' organizations are on principle opposed to permitting women to join their unions because they see competition by unmoral means in the employment of barmaids and waitresses. It is, however, obvious that the apprehensions quoted here, which are justified to a great extent, and are by.no means inspired by narrow- minded trade jealousy, are liable to produce discord within the trade- unions with respect to their attitude toward the problem of woman labor and thus check their zeal in promoting die interests of woman workers. But even if this should not hold good in so far as the directorates of the trade-unions are concerned, it can not be denied that the unfriendly attitude of her male fellow workers has kept many a woman worker from joining a labor organization.

A number of trade-unions have acknowledged the growing impor- tance of woman labor by developing their benevolent institutions - above all, through the introduction of maternity insurance. As propaganda among working women for the idea of organization the Cen- tral Federation of the Free Trade-Unions since 1916 publishes a women's trade-union journal {Gewerkschaftliche- Frauenzeitung) and several federations issue women's supplements to their journals.

The future of the organization of woman workers naturally is closely connected with the development of woman labor, which can not be surveyed to-day. At the present time there 'is a marked retro- grade movement of woman labor, owing to extensive dismissals of woman workers in war industries and the general stoppage of pro* duction due to lack of raw materials and fuel. One must, however, reckon with the fact that in the future the pressure of economic conditions will force many more women than before the war to seek gainful employment in industry. Whether labor organizations will succeed in gaining and holding these women as members can not be predicted. A further development of the benevolent institutions of the trade-unions, with a view to the special interests of female mem-

[3083




bers, especially the general introduction of maternity insurance, as proposed by Paul Umbreit, would certainly attract a larger number of women to the trade-unions. In any case it may be assumed that the strong participation of woman workers during the war in wage movements has had the result also that a great many of the unorgan- ized woman workers have become familiar with the nature of trade- union action. Therefore, it may be confidently expected that in the future women will be more inclined than formerly to active participation in labor disputes«

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