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Reflections on the History of the French and American Labor Movements*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Val R. Lorwin
Val R. Lorwin
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

Jules Michelet remarked that the forms of association “must differ … among the different countries, according to the diversity of national genius.” and Denis W. Brogan once said (he is surely one who does not merit the reproach): “Because we have studied only France, we have not understood even France.” The second remark might apply to the United States, too. There has been talk of the value of comparative study of labor movements, but comparatively little application of comparative methods to labor history. A comparison of the history of association in labor unions in France and the United States may therefore throw a little more light on the “national genius” of each country as well as on die behavior of each labor movement.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 1957 , pp. 25 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1957

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References

1 Paris: Costes, 1946 (first published 1846), p. 228.

2 See Perlman, Selig, A Theory of the Labor Movement (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928)Google Scholar; Gulick, Charles A. and Bers, Melvin K., “Insight and Illusion in Perlman's Theory of the Labor Movement,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, VI (1953), 510–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; discussion of Perlman's Theory in Industrial Relations Research Association, Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting (Madison, Wisconsin: The Association, 1951), pp. 140–83Google ScholarPubMed; Galenson, Walter, ed., Comparative Labor Movements (New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1952), pp. ix–xivGoogle Scholar; Sturmthal, Adolf, Unity and Diversity in European Labor (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Sturmthal, , “National Patterns of Union Behavior,” Journal of Political Economy, LVI (1948), 515–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lorwin, Val R., “Recent Research on Western European Labor Movements,” in Industrial Relations Research Association, Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Meeting (Madison, Wisconsin: The Association, 1955), esp. pp. 77–78Google Scholar; Kerr, Clark and Siegel, Abraham, “The Structuring of the Labor Force in Industrial Society: New Dimensions and New Questions,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, VIII (1955), 151–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kerr, Clark, Harbison, Frederick H., Dunlop, John T., and Myers, Charles A., “The Labor Problem in Economic Development,” International Labour Review, LXXI (1955), 223–35Google Scholar.

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6 The phrase is that of the porcelain decorators returning from the London Exposition. Dolléans, Histoire du mouvemcnt ouvrier, II, 271–72.

7 Duchemin, René P., Organisation syndicate patronale en France (Paris: Plon, 1940), pp. 172, 169Google Scholar. He saw this moderation saving France from the weight of the depression as compared with the United States, suffering more and saving itself only by “authoritarian methods.”

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9 “Les causes de la disparité entre les prix français et les prix étrangers,” Bulletin du Conseil National du Patronat Français, April 20, 1953Google Scholar.

10 Temporarily moderation did make itself felt in the mid- and late 1920's, years of economic recovery and growth. The reformist CGT was then the dominant group among the minority of French workers who were organized.

11 Delzant, Charles, Le Travail de l'enfance dans les verrenes (Paris: Temps Nouveaux, 1912), pp. 18, 3Google Scholar.

12 Victor Griffuelhes, “L'Infériorité des capitalistes français,” Mouvement socialiste;, no. 226, December 1910, pp. 329–32Google Scholar.

13 Marx, Karl, The Communist Manifesto (Chicago: Regnery, 1949), p. 43Google Scholar.

14 Quoted by Bell, Daniel, in Egbert, Donald D. and Persons, Stow, eds., Socialism and American Life (2 vols.; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), I, 216Google Scholar.

15 “Les Travaux de la commission supérieure des conventions collectives tendant à l'élaboration d'un budget-type,” Revue française du travail, V (1950), 355–428Google Scholar; Lapierre, Claude, “L'élaboration du budget-type et la fixation du salaire minimum garanti,” Droit social, XIV (1951) 380–87Google Scholar; Val R. Lorwin, The French Labor Movement, pp. 220–21.

16 Tocqueville, Alexis de, Oeuvres et correspondence inédites, ed. Beaumont, Gustave de (2 vols.; Paris: Michel LéVy, 1861), II, 70–71 (written in 1837)Google Scholar.

17 Duveau, Georges, Histoire du peuple français de 1848 à nos jours (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie de France, 1953), p. 14Google Scholar.

18 Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor, II, 151.

19 See, for example, Leiserson, William, Adjusting Immigrant and Industry (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924)Google Scholar; Egbert and Persons, Socialism and American Life, esp. essay by Daniel Bell; Selig Perlman, “Jewish-American Unionism, Its Birth Pangs and Contributions to the General American Labor Movement,” and discussion by David, Henry T. and Reich, Nathan, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society XLI (1952), 298–355Google Scholar; Jack Barbash, “Ethnic Factors in the Development of the American Labor Movement,” in Industrial Relations Research Association, Interpreting the Labor Movement, pp. 70–82; and Menes, Abraham, “The East Side: Matrix of the Jewish Labor Movement,” in Friedman, Theodore and Gordis, Robert, eds., Jewish Life in America (New York: Horizon, 1955), pp. 131–54Google Scholar.

20 For a vivid portrayal of abuses and protest, see the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union film, With These Hands (1950).

21 Lorwin, Lewis L., The Women's Garment Workers (New York: Huebsch, 1924), p. ixGoogle Scholar.

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23 Mosely Industrial Commission, Reports of the Delegates (London, 1903), p. 225Google Scholar, cited by Henry Pclling, “The American Economy and the Foundation of the British Labour Party,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., VIII (1955), 13Google Scholar.

24 The ironic language is that of F.-Louis Closon, director of the French Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques, Recensement general de la population … 1946, état civil et activité professionnelle … (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale: 1949), p. vGoogle Scholar.

25 Address at Cigar Makers’ convention, 1923, Cigar Makers’ Official Journal, September 1923, p. 718, reprinted in Saposs, David J., ed., Readings in Trade Unionism (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), pp. 285–88Google Scholar.

26 Hoxie, Robert F., Scientific Management and Labor (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1915)Google Scholar; Cooke, Morris L. and Murray, Philip, Organized Labor and Production (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940)Google Scholar; Slichter, Sumner H., Union Policies and Industrial Management (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1941)Google Scholar; McKelvey, Jean T., AF of L Attitudes toward Production, 1900–1932 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1952)Google Scholar; Gomberg, William, A Trade Union Analysis of Time Study (2d ed., New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1955)Google Scholar, Chs. i and ii; and Nadworny, Milton J., Scientific Management and the Unions, 1900–1932 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1955)Google Scholar.

27 Lauck, Rex, ed., John L. Lewis and the … United Mine Workers (Washington, D.C.: UMW, 1952), p 239Google Scholar. Actually both figures of employment were overstated by Mr. Lewis. Employment in all coal mines went down from a high of 785,000 in 1920 to 421,000 in 1952. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1954, p. 752.

28 Notably the printers, who in almost every country show a practice of solid union organization.

29 Quoted by Maxime Leroy, La coutume ouvrière, I, 214.

30 In the 1880's and 1890's Gompers spoke of what was later to be called field organizing as “lecturing.” Seventy Years of Life and Labor, I, 327.

31 An indication of the order of magnitude (if not the exact amount) of the miners’ aid is given by John L. Lewis’ bill to the CIO after his break with the organization. It amounted to $ 1,904,303 for services (organizers, clerks, attorneys, executives, etc.). plus cash loans of $1,685,000 from the CIO's founding in 1942. Alinsky, Saul, John L. Lewis (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1949), p. 263Google Scholar.

32 Fédération française des Syndicate du Bâtiment, etc., CFTC, Bulletin: Vie fédérale, August 14, 1956, p. 5.

33 The principle of the exclusive bargaining agency is that, within any given unit of employment in which employers bargain with their employees, the union chosen by a majority of the employees concerned will represent all the employees. The scope of the bargaining unit may be anything from a single craft or shop or department within a plant to all the plants of a nationwide corporation, or a whole industry in one labor market or the nation.

34 Although the Taft-Hartley Act bans closed shops, many continue with the assent of employers in the construction industry. The union shop and the closed shop were banned by seventeen states as of late 1956.

35 Majority rule and the exclusive bargaining agency are not the only effective forms of collective bargaining. Pluralism is consistent with effective collective bargaining if there is sufficient consensus among the various unions on the performance of their essential functions.

36 Sidney and Beatrice Webb, The History of Trade Unionism (rev. ed.; London: Longmans, Green & Co., Inc., 1920), p. 296Google Scholar.

37 The closed shop was only recently specifically banned by a law of April 27, 1956. Journal Officiel, April 28, 1956.

38 Once recognized as “representative” nationally, a union enjoys rights of participation in economic life from the plant to the national levels. All three workers’ confederations have had such recognition and therefore have exercised their rights for the past decade, even where they have had only skeletal organization and membership. On the complicated issue of “representativity,” see Val R. Lorwin, The French Labor Movement, pp. 205–9.

The American union must at least organize sufficiently to win an election (see note 33, above) if its claims of representation are challenged by an employer, a rival union, or dissident constituents.

39 Very recently innovations have been made by collective bargaining, for the first time in French history. See Val R. Lorwin, “Collective Bargaining in Post-War France,” in the March 1957 Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, ed. by John P. Windmuller; and almost any current issue of Droit social.

40 Bothereau, Robert, Ouvrière, Force, 26 Congrès Confèdèral, 25–28 octobre 1950, Compte Rendu … (Paris: Force Ouvrière, 1951), p. 123Google Scholar.

41 For example, J. B. S. Hardman, in American Labor Dynamics, pp. 283–86.

42 The term is also used by Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (London: Nisbet,1952), p. 86Google Scholar.

43 The phrase is that of J. B. S. Hardman, American Labor Dynamics, p. 105.

44 Strasser was the head of the Cigar Makers’ International Union. The senator presiding over the committee generously reassured the witness: “I see that you are a little sensitive lest it should be thought that you are a mere theorizer. I do not look upon you in that light at all.” John R. Commons and Associates, History of Labor in the United States, II, 309.

45 Josephson, Matthew, Sidney Htllman (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1952), p. 208Google Scholar.

46 Joseph Gollomb, “The Mystery of Sidney Hillman,” Jewish Digest, February 1941, quoted in Ibid., p. 439.

47 In violation of property rights, American workers used sit-down strikes in 1936–1937 to gain union recognition. Since then they have dropped the sit down. The French unions look back with nostalgia to the 1936 sit downs, and still currently attempt sit-down strikes.

48 Levasseur, Emile, The American Workman, trans, by Adams, T. S. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1900), p. 405Google Scholar.

49 Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor, I, 75.

50 Weil, Simone, L'Enracinement (Paris: Gallimard, 1949), p. 32Google Scholar. This was written in London during World War II at a moment when she was more seer than saint.