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Factory Politics in Britain and the United States: Engineers and Machinists, 1914–1919

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Jeffrey Haydu
Jeffrey Haydu
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The priorities of British and American trade unions center predominantly on the economic rewards received by union members. Collective bargaining and strikes typically focus on how much employers must pay for labor (in wages, pensions, and other benefits) rather than on how the labor, once purchased, may be used. Basic decisions regarding the organization of production are not considered by most unionists as legitimate issues for negotiation. Disputes over working conditions do arise, of course, but rarely concern securing for labor the rights of management. They involve instead efforts to protect jobs and work practices from encroachment by employers or poaching by other unions. In short, labor's goals are largely economistic, defensive, and sectional.

Type
Work and Social Roles
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , January 1985 , pp. 57 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

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References

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5 For my purposes, the “labor process” refers to the social and technical organization of production and how this organization influences relations of workers to their work, their workmates, and management. Especially relevant here are the skill levels “required” by production techniques, how workers are assigned to specific tasks or machines, how they are supervised, and how they are paid.

6 This peculiarity is convenient for comparative purposes. The analysis emphasizes how contrasting union, industrial relations, and government conditions shaped engineers' and machinists' responses to challenges at work. It is thus useful to examine a British case where workshop practices more closely resemble those in the United States.

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11 The need to organize specialists and thus protect the economic position of union members is a common refrain in the Machinists' Monthly Journal and the Amalgamated Engineers' Monthly Journal. See, e.g., the editorial in Machinists' Monthly Journal (July 1903), 537.

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21 As of 1914, in firms belonging to the Engineering Employers' Federation, 60 percent of employees were skilled engineers, 20 percent semiskilled, and 20 percent unskilled. Yates, , Wages and Labour Conditions, 32s.Google Scholar In Detroit in 1891, by contrast, the roughly corresponding figures for metal-industry employees were 39.8, 30.6, and 29.6 percent, respectively. Meyer, Stephen, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908–1921 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1981), 46.Google Scholar The figures have been adjusted to exclude foremen. “In any of the factories in Connecticut men will be found running from two to as high as ten or twelve machines” (Bridgeport Herald, 19 04 1901)Google Scholar. For a general view, see Habbakuk, H. J., American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labor-Saving Inventions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

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23 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Hearings before the Special Committee of the House of Representatives to Investigate the Taylor and Other Systems of Shop Management, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1912)Google Scholar; Montgomery, , Workers' Control, 113–27Google Scholar; Clawson, Dan, Bureaucracy and the Labor Process: The Transformation of U.S. Industry, 1860–1920 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1980), 223–50.Google Scholar

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25 Perlman, , Machinists, 28–29Google Scholar. In 1897 the IAM had about 15,000 members (the ASE, 78,450), and between 1901 and 1913 enrolled about 11 percent of American machinists. But these were concentrated in railway shops and well-organized cities like Chicago. Montgomery, , Workers' Control, 49Google Scholar, 63, 92. As late as 1891, only 3 of 189 lodges were in New England—where many of the most progressive metal-trades centers were located. Perlman, , Machinists, 7.Google Scholar

26 E.g., Bridgeport Herald, 10 05 1903, 14Google Scholar, 21 April 1907, 2 June 1907. See also Bonnett, Clarence, Employers' Associations in the United States: A Study of Typical Associations (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 102–3.Google Scholar

27 Montgomery, , Workers' Control, 79–82Google Scholar, 93, 107–8, 124–26; Ramirez, , When Workers Fight, 105–21Google Scholar; Machinists', Monthly Journal (07 1903), 621–22; (November 1911), 1134–35; (May 1913), 475; (April 1914), 375.Google Scholar

28 Ramirez, , When Workers Fight, 116–21Google Scholar; Perlman, , Machinists, 36Google Scholar; Machinists' Monthly Journal (11 1909), 1044–79Google Scholar. The failure of the 1911–15 Illinois Central and Harriman railroad lines strike—initiated by a system federation of shop crafts over IAM executive opposition—contributed to the “socialist” union leadership's conservative preferences in organizational matters. Perlman, , Machinists, 41–42Google Scholar; Montgomery, , Workers' Control, 107–8.Google Scholar

29 Unity around economic demands appears in Bridgeport in the 1901 and 1907 strikes for a nine-hour day, among different grades at Pacific Iron Works in 1903 (Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics, Annual Report, 1903), among different crafts and grades at Coe and Stapley Company in 1913 (Machinists' Monthly Journal (07 1913), 680), and during the 1915 wave of strikes. By contrast, between 1901 and 1915, the Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics reports and a survey of local newspapers turn up eleven strikes in which issues of control (e.g., piecework, work rules, foremanship) were involved. Of the eleven, only the 1901 strike—part of a national dispute—involved more than one firm, and only one strike involved concerted action among members of different crafts or grades.Google Scholar

30 Notably, Edwards, Contested Terrain. See also Stone, “Origins of Job Structures”; Clawson, Bureaucracy and Labor Process; Meyer, Five Dollar Day, esp. ch. 5.Google Scholar

31 Esp. Hinton, FSSM; Burgess, Origins. See also Cole, G. D. H., Workshop Organization (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923)Google Scholar; Croucher, “Amalgamated Society of Engineers,”; Hyman, Richard, “Trade Unions, Control and Resistance,” in The Politics of Work and Occupations, Esland, Geoff and Salaman, Graeme, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), esp. 324–25.Google Scholar Similar interpretations of United States labor history are Brecher, Jeremy, “Who Advocates Spontaneity?” Radical America, 7:6 (1973), 91–112Google Scholar; and Stanley, Aronowitz, False Promises: The Shaping of American Working-Class Consciousness (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), ch. 4.Google Scholar

32 Great Britain, Annual Reports of the Registrar-General 1916 [Cd 8206], 14; 1920 [Cmd 608], 19; and HMM, II, 2, 101; V, 5, 50.

33 Can, F. W., “Engineering Workers and the Rise of Labour in Coventry, 1914–1939” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warwick, 1978), 32–33, 75–76Google Scholar, 246; Hinton, , FSSM, 217 n. 3.Google Scholar

34 Hinton, , FSSM, 218–21Google Scholar; Friedman, , Industry and Labour, 192Google Scholar, 194; Carr, , “Engineering Workers,” 10Google Scholar. In the nation as a whole, females constituted 9.4 percent of employees in private metal-working firms in July 1914, and 24.6 percent four years later. HMM, VI, 3, 22–32. For general views, see HMM, IV, 4; Jefferys, , Story of the Engineers, 125–26Google Scholar, 135; Hinton, , FSSM, 62–67.Google Scholar

35 E.g., CDC Minutes, 2, 16, 23 March, and 6 April 1915.

36 CDC Minutes, 2 March, 2 October, 2, 24 November 1915; 14, 21 March 1916; HMM, II, 3, 68; V, 5, 50.

37 HMM, V, 1, 167–68; Cole, , Workshop Organization, 60–61.Google Scholar

38 For general assessments, see HMM, 1, 2, 98–99; VI, 1, 92–93; Cole, Workshop Organization; and Hinton, FSSM. For reactions in Coventry, see, e.g., CDC Minutes, 1 February 1916.

39 Workers' Union Record (September 1916, January 1917, and November 1917); HMM, VI, 1, 44, 97–98.

40 Great Britain, Commission of Enquiry into Industrial Unrest, Reports (London: HMSO, 1917). For Coventry, CDC Minutes, 31 August 1915, 27 June 1916.Google Scholar

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42 CDC Minutes, 16 May, 6 June 1916; Can, “Engineering Workers,” 80.

43 CDC Minutes, 7 April 1917; Can, , “Engineering Workers,” 80Google Scholar; Great Britain, Commission of Enquiry, Report of the Commissioners for the West Midlands Area, 9–10Google Scholar; Friedman, , Industry and Labour, 194Google Scholar; Hodginson, , Sent to Coventry, 37.Google Scholar

44 HMM, VI, 1, 114 n. 1; Carr, , “Engineering Workers,” 85.Google Scholar

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46 CDC Minutes, 7, 10 April 1917; Carr, , 'Engineering Workers,“ 80.Google Scholar

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48 CDC Minutes, 14 May 1917.

49 CDC Minutes, 6 May 1917; Carr, , 'Engineering Workers,“ 82–83.Google Scholar

50 CDC Minutes, 14 May 1917; Midland Daily Telegraph, 2105 1917Google Scholar; HMM, VI, 1, 113–14; Carr, , “Engineering Workers,” 82–83; Hinton, FSSM, 217.Google Scholar

51 Carr, , “Engineering Workers,” 86–90.Google Scholar

52 “Shop Rules and Instructions for Stewards,” issued by the CEJC, “Historical Documents” box, Offices of the Coventry and District Engineering Employers' Association; Hinton, FSSM, 221–22; Carr, , “Engineering Workers,” 85.Google Scholar

53 CDC Minutes, 22 September, 6, 13, 20–29 November, 3 December 1917; Birmingham Post, 28 November 1917; Birmingham Gazette, 30 November 1917; HMM, VI, 2, 30–31; Hodginson, Sent to Coventry, 48; Hinton, FSSM, 223–24; Can, “Engineering Workers,” 95. While the Russian revolution occurred in the same month, neither Bolshevik sympathies nor antiwar feeling influenced the shop stewards' movement until 1918, and the influence was minor. Hinton, FSSM, 256–67. By then the tide had already turned in Coventry.

54 HMM, VI, 2, 32–33. See also 21 December 1917 letter from Engineering Employers' Federation to Coventry Engineering Employers' Association, “Historical Documents, including Local Conferences” box, Coventry Engineering Employers' Association; and Hinton, FSSM, 213–15, 233–34.

55 HMM, VI, 2, 31; Cole, , Workshop Organization, 76–79Google Scholar; Hodginson, , Sent to Coventry, 46Google Scholar; Hinton, , FSSM, 225Google Scholar; Carr, , 'Engineering Workers,“ 94–95.Google Scholar

56 CDC Minutes, 2 January, 23 April, 18 June 1918; Workers' Union Record (February 1918), 2; HMM, VI, 2, 46; Carr, , 'Engineering Workers,” 96–98.Google Scholar

57 Mr. Justice McCardie's Committee of Inquiry, Interim Report on Labour Embargoes (London: HMSO, 1918)Google Scholar; Birmingham Gazette, 20 07 1918Google Scholar; Birmingham Daily Mail, 22 07 1918; HMM, VI, 2, 65.Google Scholar

58 Hinton, FSSM, 231.

59 CDC Minutes, 12, 14, 17, 23 July, 22 September 1918; Midland Daily Telegraph, 20, 22–25, 29 July 1918Google Scholar; Birmingham Post, 22 July 1918; HMM, VI, 2, 65–68; Hinton, FSSM, 229–33; Carr, , “Engineering Workers,” 95–97, 174–77.Google Scholar

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61 Machinists' Monthly Journal (08 1915), 748Google Scholar; Minutes of the Manufacturers' Association of Bridgeport, 4 November 1915, Bridgeport Public Library, Accession 1981.06. The estimate of peak IAM strength is based on “A. W. Reports,” 22 March 1916 (reports to the Manufacturers' Association of Bridgeport by a labor spy planted in the Bridgeport IAM), typescript in Bridgeport Public Library; Machinists' Monthly Journal (06 1916), 553.Google Scholar

62 Women comprised about 13 percent of the workforce in mid-1918, or half the British norm. Iron Age, 18 July 1918, pp. 146–47.

63 See the data on Union Metallic Cartridge Company in hearings before the National War Labor Board, 17 July 1918, National Archives, Washington, D.C., Record Group 2 (hereafter cited as N.A., RG2), Box 3, Docket No. 132: IAM District 55 v. Bridgeport, Connecticut, Employers.

64 Testimony by Willard Freeland, NWLB Hearings, 18 July 1918, N.A., RG2, Box 3, Docket No. 132.

65 Bridgeport Herald, 8 September 1918; Bridgeport Post, 14 September 1918.

66 Bing, Alexander, War-Time Strikes and Their Adjustment (New York: E. P. Dutton and Co., 1921)Google Scholar; U.S. War Department, A Report of the Activities of the War Department in the Field of Industrial Relations during the War (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1919).Google Scholar

67 Bridgeport Herald, 8 September 1918; The Labor Leader (weekly newspaper of IAM Lodge 30, B?dgeport), 31 January 1918.

68 Machinists' Monthly Journal (09 1915), 836Google Scholar, 839, 848; (October 1915), 941; Bridgeport Post and Bridgeport Herald throughout July, August, and September 1915.

69 Iron Age, 9 12 1915, p. 1394; “A. W. Reports,” 5, 12, 20 April, 1 May, 8 June, 31 July, 8 October 1916; Bulletin of the Manufacturers' Association of Bridgeport, 14 January 1917, Bridgeport Public Library, Accession 1977.25, Box 1; testimony by John Hart, NWLB Hearings, 2 July 1918, N.A., RG2, Box 3, Docket No. 132.Google Scholar

70 “A. W. Reports,” 19 September 1916; Minutes of the Manufacturers' Association of Bridgeport, 2 November 1916; advertisement in the Bridgeport Herald, 24 June 1917; Perlman, , Machinists, 54Google Scholar; Bucki, , “Dilution and Craft Traditions,” 112.Google Scholar

71 Bridgeport Herald, 8, 22 August, 19 September 1915; “A. W. Reports,” 5 May, 8 June 1916; Bridgeport Post, 12 07 1917Google Scholar; Labor Leader, 15 08 1918.Google Scholar

72 “A. W. Reports,” 12 May 1916; Bridgeport Herald, 25 03 1917; letter from George Bowen to Robert McWade, 30 April 1917, U.S. Department of Labor, Conciliation Service, Series 33, File 347, N.A., RG280; Bucki, “Dilution and Craft Traditions,” 114. Lavit's successful campaign to replace George Bowen as business agent exploited rank-and-file dissatisfaction with Bowen's lack of support for victimized shop-floor activists and for efforts to eliminate piecework. “A. W. Reports,” 4 June, 9 August, 5 September, 10 November 1916.Google Scholar

73 Labor Leader, 18 April, 9 May 1918; Bridgeport Post, 9 May 1918; Bing, , War-Time Strikes, 171–72.Google Scholar

74 Copy in U.S. Department of Labor, Conciliation Service, Series 33, File 817, N.A., RG280.

75 Bing, , War-Time Strikes, 75.Google Scholar

76 See Lavit's remarks, Minutes of the Local Board of Mediation and Conciliation, meeting of 21 November 1918, NWLB Case Files, N.A., RG2, Box 21, Docket No. 132.

77 The strikes are covered by the Bridgeport Post, Bridgeport Herald, and Labor Leader, and are reviewed in testimony at the NWLB hearings. See also Bucki, , “Dilution and Craft Traditions,” 114Google Scholar, who overstates the retreat to craft exclusivism. The ambiguity of craft versus class politics is present from the start; the demands of May and June still include specialists, and those to the NWLB once again include production workers and unskilled helpers as well.

78 NWLB Case Files, N.A., RG2, Box 19, Docket No. 132.

79 E.g., testimony by Walter Merritt, NWLB Hearings, 2 July 1918, N.A., RG2, Box 3, Docket No. 132.

80 Bridgeport Post, 30Google Scholar August-18 September 1918; Bridgeport Herald, 1, 8, 15 September 1918; Labor Leader, 5 September 1918.

81 Bridgeport Herald, 1 September 1918; telegram from Isaac Russell (NWLB field representative) to Jett Lauck (NWLB secretary), 29 August 1918, NWLB Case Files, N.A., RG2, Box 20, Docket No. 132.

82 Meeting of the Local Board of Mediation and Conciliation, 31 March 1919, NWLB Case Files, N.A., RG2, Box 21, Docket No. 132. See also telegram from Isaac Russell to Jett Lauck, 4 September 1918, NWLB Case Files, N.A., RG2, Box 20, Docket No. 132; Bridgeport Post, 4 September 1918; Bridgeport Herald, 23 March 1919; and Hawley, George, “Bridgeport Employers Report Shop Committees Successful,” New York Evening Post, 22 April 1920.Google Scholar

83 “Organization and By-Laws for Collective Bargaining Committees Instituted by the NWLB for Bridgeport, Connecticut”; telegrams between Sam Lavit and Jett Lauck, 5, 6 May 1919; letter from Willard Aborn (temporary chairman of the Local Board of Mediation and Conciliation) to W. D. Angelo (assistant chief administrator of the NWLB), 12 May 1919: all in NWLB Case Files, N.A., RG2, Box 21, Docket 132.

84 Bridgeport Herald, 23 March 1919; Bing, , War-Time Strikes, 80–81.Google Scholar

85 Labor Leader, 26 September 1918; meeting of the Local Board of Mediation and Conciliation, 31 March 1919, NWLB Case Files, N.A., RG2, Box 21, Docket No. 132. This problem was not peculiar to Bridgeport; see Bing, , War-Time Strikes, 161–62.Google Scholar

86 This was notably the case at the Bullard Machine Tool Company and the Crane Company. See Bullard Company, Yankee Toolmaker (draft copy in possession of Jack Stupakevich, Manager for Labor Relations and Security, Bullard Co., 1980), 35; Bridgeport Herald, 19 December 1915, 19 November 1916, 7 January 1917, 24 February 1918. More generally, see Bulletin of the Manufacturers' Association of Bridgeport, 3, 24 March 1916; 16 April 1918.Google Scholar

87 The details of these schemes are extensively documented in the NWLB Hearings, 17, 18 July 1918, N.A., RG2, Box 3, Docket No. 132. See also Labor Leader, 14 March 1918. On Bullard's “Maxi-Pay Plan,” see Bridgeport Post, 13 May 1916; Iron Age, 25 July 1918, p. 2046.

88 For these strikes I have relied on reports in the Bridgeport Post, Bridgeport Herald, Labor Leader, and U.S. Department of Labor, Conciliation Service, Series 170, Files 649, 671, 672, 743, N.A., RG280.

89 Bridgeport Post, 24 July 1919. For bickering over the composition of shop committees, see Bridgeport Post, 26, 31 July, 3, 5, 6 August 1919; Bridgeport Herald, 27 July 1919; Labor Leader, 31 July, 7 August 1919; U.S. Department of Labor, Conciliation Service, Series 170, File 649, N.A., RG280.

90 Bridgeport Post, 1, 2, 8, 14 August 1919; Labor Leader, 7 August 1919; U.S. Department of Labor, Conciliation Service, Series 170, File 672, N.A., RG280; Hawley, “Bridgeport Employers Report Shop Committees Successful.”

91 Lavit's expulsion and the move to the Amalgamated Metal Workers of America are covered by the Labor Leader, passim, from August to the paper's demise late in 1920; Bridgeport Post, 10, 20 August 1919; Bridgeport Herald, 10 August, 7, 28 September 1919; 7 March 1920. The national view is in the Machinists' Monthly Journal (09 1919), 853; (October 1919), 953; (April 1920), 315–17.Google Scholar

92 Montgomery, , Workers' Control, 100, 122, 133–34, 160.Google Scholar

93 Stone, , “Origins of Job Structures,” 40–47Google Scholar; Edwards, , Contested Terrain, chs. 7, 8.Google Scholar

94 Montgomery, , Workers' Control, 13Google Scholar 1–33; “New Tendencies in Union Struggles and Strategies in Europe and the United States, 1916–1922,” in Work, Community, and Power: The Experience of Labor in Europe and America, 1900–1925, Cronin, James and Sirianni, Carmen, eds. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 105–11. Montgomery, “New Tendencies,” 111, does find a shift toward wage demands, beginning in 1920, but he attributes this shift to inflation. In any case, the reversal of radical tendencies in Bridgeport was already clear by mid-1919.Google Scholar