MARCH, 1978 THE WESTERN CANADIAN LUMBER WORKER _ ABOUT RIGHT TO WORK LAWS CR FEE oS Editor’s note: IWA Regional officers concerned at the amount of pressure “right-wing” groups are exerting to have the provin- cial government bring in so-called right to work legislation in British Columbia, that they had the Union’s Public Rela- tions Director Tom Fawkes do a study on the subject for the IWA. The following are excerpts from the booklet Fawkes prepared and the Union had published. The excerpts will run in the Lumber Worker in serial form over the next few issues. CHAPTER ONE THE FIFTY YEAR BATTLE For most Canadians the term “right to work” is something new, and something which at face value sounds very ap- pealing. In fact the so-called ‘right to work concept is not new, although it has not been known by that name through- out its long history. : Right to work basically denies workers the right to have a ‘closed shop” or “union shop” where they work. It-should be remembered that the term itself has nothing to do with generating employment for those out of work, as the term suggests, nor in fact does it give working people any additional rights. It has been and continues to be an effort by employers and their collectives to pre- vent the closed shop. The first legal landmark case involving the closed shop principle appears on the books in the United States dated 1806. This case involved cordage workers in Philadelphia and the court at that time found in favour of the workers. By 1842 the American courts had found that there was nothing inherently unlawful in a closed shop agreement, thus _ pro- tecting union workers and developping stability for workers in an organized workplace. The beginning of the fifty year battle to outlaw the closed shop began in the United States following the depresion period of 1893-1896. The depression it- self encouraged workers to move to join trade unions and union membership began to increase very rapidly. Member- ship in the American Federation of Labour (AFL) during this period in- creased from 265,000 in 1897 to more than one and a half million in 1904. The tremendous increase in union organizational activity did not slip by the employers. In 1903 a number of em- ~ ployer groups began a serious “open shop” drive. This term “open shop” came from the 1903 National Associa- tion of Manufacturers’ Convention. It was the National Association of Manu- facturers that spearheaded the drive along with the National Erectors As- sociation and the National Trades Federation. In addition there were a number of “citizen’s alliances” involved at the state and local level. f This conglomerate of employers groups wasted no time in striving for the demise of the closed shop. In reality this drive to maintain the open shop was in fact technically a drive by the employers to establish their own closed shop, a closed shop that would keep those who belonged to a trade union out of the em- ployer’s establishment. During the 1905 National Association of Manufacturers’ convention a keynote speaker told his audience to, “discharge union men promptly” for, “it is common practice for union men in an open shop to harass up- right and capable workers who may not choose to join a union.”” Obviously those in the open shop movement had decided that their biggest threat was the union’s ability to organize from within. To combat this situation all those workers they even suspected of being partial, or. sympathetic, to the trade union move- ment were to be fired. To prevent these “union men” from moving on to other employers in the as- sociation, each employer group set up an - effective “black list’’ system that would keep the union sympathizer out of the industry altogether, or at least out of the shops of those employers who were members of the association. The National Erectors Association (NEA) went one step further and re- stricted its own membership to ‘those firms which pledge themselves to the open shop” principle. The NEA defined the open shop principle as meaning, “‘not only no dealings with the union, but-no employment of union members.” Another employer group, the National Metal Trade Association (NMTA), estab- lished an “employment bureau” which issued a “certificate of recommenda- tion’’ to employees of NMTA member companies. In order for a worker to re- ceive this ‘certificate of recommenda- tion” it was necessary for the worker to work “‘not less than sixty days during strike conditions” in the shops of mem- bers of the association. It can be as- sumed that the leadership of the as- sociation felt that if a worker was pre- pared to cross a picket line for sixty working days that the chances of him being in favour of the union were very slim indeed. The “certificate of recom- mendation” did not mean that the worker was in fact a good tradesman, nor a good employee, it simply let other association members know that the worker did not support unions. To show the strength that the “open shop drive” developed it should be noted that Bethlehem Steel, one of the nation’s largest steel makers, refused to sell its products to those contractors that em- ployed union men or had any dealings with the union at all. For a company to Pass up sales, even a sale of the smallest order, indicates how dedicated some firms were in their drive to end the closed shop. The Bethlehem Steel policy was by no means unique during this period. Not surprisingly, the open shop drive was very successful. In just two years between 1904 and 1906 membership in the AFL had dropped by more than one hundred and fourteen thousand mem- bers. However, for the next ten years the open shop movement slowed down. Al- though the drive was not dead, the AFL did not suffer the major loss it had between 1904 and 1906. Between 1904 and 1914 the AFL was in a period of slow growth and we can assume that this was satisfactory to the employer groups. It is probable that the employer associations, which supported the open shop prin- ciple, suffered very little organization and the AFL increases in membership came from other industries. The years that found the world em- broiled in its first global war saw another tremendous increase in union activity. Between 1914 and 1920 the AFL doubled its membership from two million at the beginning of the war, to four million by 1920. War years have always meant periods of high employment for the in- dustrialized nations, especially those that did not find their nation being physically ravaged by the modern war machine; therefore it is not so unusual to find union activity increased when many more workers are employed. Generally speaking war means economic pro- sperity, especially for those nations like . the United States with large war machines to feed. Following the first world war however, the employers again noticed the tre- mendous amount of union organization going on within their industries. No longer were they guaranteed the big pro- fits which came with the government defense contracts. Once again they decided it was time to do something about the growth of the labour move- ment. This time however the drive for the open shop was called the “American Plan.” The employers were a little more sophisticated, and purported to be in favour of voluntary unionism, but were set against the “un-American” closed shop. Exactly how they came to the con- clusion the closed shop was suddenly un-American is unknown. After all, the American courts had found the closed shop acceptable more than a hundred years earlier! The “American Plan” was almost identical in function to the open shop drive. The Plan was supported by em- ployer groups and was as equally popular with those groups as the original “‘open shop” drive had been. By late 1920 there were fifty employer groups active- ly fighting the closed shop in New York State alone. In January 1921 some 22 states met in Chicago to draw all the local ‘“American Plan” groups together. This co-ordina- tion was much more sophisticated and much larger than the “open shop” drive had been. It also covered a larger number of industries than the “open shop” drive ‘had. TO BE CONTINUED