SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 A HANDBOOK FOR 
 
 EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE 
 
 WILLIAM LEAVITT STODDARD
 
 AGO 2126 
 
 c.
 
 V 

 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 HKW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TOKONTO
 
 THE 
 SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 A HANDBOOK FOR 
 EMPLOYER AND EMPLOYEE 
 
 BY 
 WILLIAM LEAVITT^ STODDARD 
 
 A. M., HARVARD 
 
 Administrator for the National War Labor 
 Board, 1918-1919 
 
 U3eto gotk 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1919 
 
 A.II rights referred
 
 COPTEISHT, 1919 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1919.
 
 FOKEWOKD 
 
 THIS book is neither a treatise, a history, nor a com- 
 plete study of the shop committee movement in the 
 United States and abroad. It is primarily a hand- 
 book, designed to present only the essential principles 
 and facts about this movement to those who desire to 
 know what shop committees are and how they work 
 in a few of the many instances in which they have been 
 established. 
 
 This book is largely the result of the writer's experi- 
 ence as an administrator for the National War Labor 
 Board, somewhat broadened by research in the field 
 outside of the activities of that Board. This field is 
 but recently come under cultivation: the shop com- 
 mittee is a new thing in industry and is still in the 
 stage of experiment. All the signs, however, indicate 
 that the experiment is a promising one and that for 
 many years to come workingmen and employers will 
 continue in increasing numbers to develop intra-factory 
 machinery intended to eliminate friction, bring about 
 good relations, and promote the practice and extension 
 of genuinely collective bargaining. 
 
 As an imperfect record of the achievements of recent 
 months in this direction, this volume is respectfully 
 offered to the interested public. 
 
 WM. LEAVITT STODDAED. 
 
 Cambridge, Mass. 
 March, 1919.
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I THE EARLY BEGINNINGS ..... 1 
 
 II THE WAR LABOR BOARD PLAN .... 10 
 
 III GENERAL PRINCIPLES 21 
 
 IV THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION ... 31 
 V THE LYNN PLAN . . . ... .41 
 
 VI THREE CHARACTERISTIC PLANS .... 55 
 
 VII ELECTION MACHINERY ....... 64 
 
 VIII PROCEDURE ......... 74 
 
 IX SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION .... 82 
 
 X THE SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 91 
 
 APPENDIX . . 101
 
 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 THE EARLY BEGINNINGS 
 
 IT would be very interesting to make a study of the 
 causes and origins of the shop committee movement. If 
 we went at it painstakingly, we might well find our- 
 selves back at the dawn of industrial history when a 
 single cave man employer bargained collectively with a 
 committee of his hired men concerning the piece rate 
 to be paid for killing wolves or digging clams. The fact 
 is that the idea which is to-day finding expression in the 
 shop committee movement is as old as any idea in the 
 world. Its application, however, is relatively new and 
 has, therefore, a relatively short history. 
 
 For a considerable period as time is measured in this 
 age of rapid change, collective bargaining has been the 
 subject of practical experiment in the garment-making 
 industries in the United States, and much has there 
 been done in the way of securing peaceful and equitable 
 settlement of disputes through machinery which is simi- 
 lar in purpose to that of the shop committee as it is de- 
 scribed in this book. An account of what has been ac- 
 complished in this particular field may be found in 
 " Law and Order in Industry," by Julius Henry Cohen, 
 and the historic relationship between the movement 
 there described and that which is springing up to-day 
 may easily be seen.
 
 2 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 The Colorado Plan 
 
 Probably the most notable early American example 
 of a shop committee system as it is now in course of 
 development is the Colorado Plan. This plan of repre- 
 sentation was adopted late in 1915 in order to control 
 relations between the men and management of the Col- 
 orado Fuel and Iron Company. With the circum- 
 stances of the strike which preceded the adoption of this 
 plan we are not here concerned except to make this re- 
 mark: apparently the adoption of this plan has brought 
 about industrial peace in the section of Colorado in- 
 volved. At the very least it has removed many of the 
 causes of the intensely bitter warfare which at one time 
 called the attention of the country to the Colorado situa- 
 tion and the labor policies of the Kockefeller interests. 
 
 The story of this plan has often been told, most re- 
 cently perhaps in " Industry and Humanity," by W. L. 
 MacKenzie King, who had much to do with its incep- 
 tion. 
 
 I choose, however, to quote a brief description of this 
 plan from the report of the Federal Commission on the 
 Labor Difficulties in the Coal Fields of Colorado, ap- 
 pointed by the President in 1914. "Your Commission 
 knows nothing just like it in force anywhere," said the 
 report, after declaring that the Colorado plan was a 
 " new departure in the United States." " The impor- 
 tance of it, as an effort on the part of a large corpora- 
 tion to regulate its relations with its own employees, by 
 contracting with them instead of through a trade agree- 
 ment made with a labor union, justifies your Commis- 
 sion in discussing this plan with great care. . . . 
 
 "The essential features of the plan seem to your Commis- 
 sion to be ( 1 ) that the relations between the company and its 
 employees as a body are defined by contract; (2) that every 
 employee is guaranteed the right to belong to a labor union 
 or not, as he pleases; (3) and that the men in each mine
 
 THE EAELY BEGINNINGS 3 
 
 under this contract are entitled to choose their own represen- 
 tatives, these representatives being protected against abuse by 
 the company by a clause in the contract which entitles them, 
 if they have been discriminated against because of their action 
 as representatives of the men, to appeal to the industrial com- 
 mission of the state; and the contract binds the company on 
 this point, also, to accept as final the finding of the State in- 
 dustrial commission. The contract provides that any miner 
 having a grievance, or any group of miners, may appeal from 
 one authority to another until the president of the company 
 is reached. The influence of this provision, although the con- 
 tract has been in operation so short a time, has been greatly 
 to modify the attitude of the mine foremen and mine superin- 
 tendents and of the subordinate officials. . . . 
 
 " The plan provides further for the selection of four joint 
 committees representative of the company and of its em- 
 ployees: (1) on industrial cooperation and conciliation; (2) 
 on safety and accidents; (3) on sanitation, health and hous- 
 ing; and (4) on recreation and education. This part of the 
 plan went into operation only with the beginning of this year. 
 It evidently contemplates the most far-reaching cooperation 
 between the employees as a body and the corporation, as to all 
 matters which affect the working and living conditions of the 
 employees." 
 
 British Experience 
 
 In Great Britain, about the same time, there was 
 growing up a shop, or as it is termed there, a " works " 
 committee movement which is in many ways similar to 
 the Colorado plan. This movement developed rapidly. 
 In 1917, the Eeconstruction Committee, which later be- 
 came the Ministry of Eeconstruction, appointed a sub- 
 committee with J. H. Whitley as chairman, to report on 
 practical methods of improving the relations between 
 capital and labor. A number of other reports on the 
 same general subject were made subsequent. 
 
 In the summary of the preliminary Whitley report 
 occurs an often-quoted sentence which expresses a truth 
 fundamental to the whole shop committee movement: 
 
 " The feeling in the minds of the workers that their 
 conditions of work and destinies are being determined
 
 4 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 by a distant authority over which they have no influence 
 requires to be taken into consideration, not only by the 
 Government, but by the unions themselves." 
 
 The Whitley report, however, did more than merely 
 to call attention to a state of mind, important as that 
 alone was. It specifically recommended the widest 
 establishment of works or shop committees with certain 
 definite functions. It outlined an entire system of in- 
 dustrial government, one vital branch of which is the 
 shop committee. Except in few instances has the move- 
 ment in this country gone as far as the Whitley report, 
 but if we wish to look at the problem broadly and with 
 an eye to the future, it should be realized that the 
 shop committee is, after all, but one of the parts of a 
 mechanism for the adjustment of the daily relations 
 between capital and labor. 
 
 For each industry in England this report proposed 
 a Joint Industrial Council, " to have as its object the 
 regular consideration of matters affecting the progress 
 and well-being of the trade from the point of view of 
 all those engaged in it, so far as this is consistent with 
 the general interest of the community." The type of 
 organization which was suggested for the industries was 
 something quite new. At the top there was to be a joint 
 industrial council national ; lower down, a joint in- 
 dustrial council district or local; and finally, at the 
 bottom, works committees for the individual shop or 
 plant. Each body, as the word " joint " implies, was 
 to be composed of representatives both of men and of 
 management. In other words, for each great trade or 
 industry there was to be established a three-fold, semi- 
 public governmental system, built up in such a way as 
 to represent fairly both capital and labor, both factory, 
 district and nation.
 
 THE EARLY BEGINNINGS 5 
 
 Its Wide Scope 
 
 An idea of the wide scope which the acceptance of the 
 Whitley report by the British public has given to these 
 newly created joint councils and committees may be 
 gained when it is realized that among the questions 
 taken up by men and management and threshed out 
 jointly are: 
 
 (1) The better utilization of the practical knowledge 
 and experience of the work people. 
 
 (2) Means for securing to the work people a greater 
 share in and responsibility for the determination and 
 observance of the conditions under which their work 
 is carried on. 
 
 (3) The settlement of the general principles govern- 
 ing the conditions of employment, including the methods 
 of fixing, paying, and readjusting wages, having regard 
 to the need for securing to the work people a share in 
 the increased prosperity of the industry. 
 
 (4) The establishment of regular methods of nego- 
 tiation for issues arising between employers and work 
 people, with a view both to the prevention of differences, 
 and to their better adjustment when they appear. 
 
 (5) Means of insuring to the work people the great- 
 est possible security of earnings and employment, with- 
 out undue restriction upon change of occupation or 
 employer. 
 
 (6) Methods of fixing and adjusting earnings, piece- 
 work prices, etc., and of dealing with the many diffi- 
 culties which arise with regard to the method and 
 amount of payment apart from the fixing of general 
 standard rates, which are already covered by paragraph 
 (3). 
 
 (7) Technical education and training. 
 
 (8) Industrial research and the full utilization of 
 its results. 
 
 (9) The provision of facilities for the full considera-
 
 6 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 tion and utilization of inventions and improvement de- 
 signed by work people, and for the adequate safeguard- 
 ing of the rights of the designers of such improvements. 
 
 (10) Improvements of processes, machinery, and or- 
 ganization and appropriate questions relating to manage- 
 ment and the examination of industrial experiments, 
 with special reference to cooperation in carrying new 
 ideas into effect and full consideration of the work 
 people's point of view in relation to them. 
 
 (11) Proposed legislation affecting the industry. 
 
 With some few exceptions, the shop committee idea 
 may be said to have remained dormant in the United 
 States during the period in which the groundwork of 
 the structure thus pictured in the Whitley report was 
 being laid. But the entrance of the United States 
 into the Great War in the spring of 1917 was speedily 
 to require a development similar to that which had 
 taken place in England. During the first feverish 
 twelve months of preparation after the declaration of 
 hostilities against Germany, no real attempt was made 
 to remove the basic cause of strikes. Strikes were 
 discouraged by public opinion, but that was all. 
 
 War Labor Board and Shop Committees 
 
 Late in the spring of 1918, however, the National 
 War Labor Board was created by presidential proclama- 
 tion, and immediately began to act as court of last resort 
 in industrial disputes in which war production was 
 threatened. Almost in the first award of this body 
 the works or shop committee idea was adopted as a 
 means of promoting sound relations between employer 
 and employee, and as a means, further, of securing 
 'what was most urgently needed by the nation at that 
 time, namely, maximum war production. 
 
 With the history of this Board in general we have
 
 THE EARLY BEGINNINGS 1. 
 
 nothing to do here; that belongs rather to a discussion 
 of the development of arbitration. But it is both per- 
 tinent and well within the truth to say that the most 
 valuable single achievement of the National War Labor 
 Board was the impetus given by it to the shop committee 
 movement. 
 
 The principles upon which the Board operated, 
 formally agreed to by representatives of capital and 
 labor, contained this declaration : " The right of 
 workers to organize in trades-unions and to bargain 
 collectively through chosen representatives is recognized 
 and affirmed." 
 
 Here was the authorization, if any were needed, for 
 the insertion in award after award of provisions call- 
 ing for the establishment of shop committee systems, 
 and in a following chapter will be found the shop 
 committee plan as worked out by the experts of the 
 Board. "The encouragement of mutual adjustments 
 and collective bargaining as between employer and em- 
 ployees," runs one sentence in the instructions issued 
 to examiners assigned to administer awards, " will prob- 
 ably prove the most valuable and lasting work which 
 an administrative examiner can perform." 
 
 During these same war months, the principle of col- 
 lective bargaining was consistently advanced by the 
 Federal Government in practically all its direct and 
 indirect dealings with labor, and thus there was estab- 
 lished a solid body of experience and opinion in favor 
 of the fundamental theory upon which the shop commit- 
 tee movement rests. This movement, begun in this 
 fashion, is that with which we are chiefly concerned 
 in the following pages. 1 
 
 i The literature on the shop committee and the general 
 movement toward democratic control of industry is relatively 
 new and correspondingly small. Great Britain, as might be 
 expected, furnishes the bulk. The books listed below bear more
 
 8 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 The Economic Need 
 
 \Ve shall see in Chapter X that the real economic 
 need for shop committees in American as well as in 
 British factories during the war and after came from 
 the fact that in spite of the great value of the trades 
 unions in collective bargaining, the trades unions were 
 not and never had been organized to handle efficiently 
 the many intimate, localized problems of the individual 
 
 or less directly on the subject matter of the present volume, 
 particularly the book by W. L. MacKenzie King and the re- 
 prints of official English documents published by the United 
 States Shipping Board. 
 
 " War Time Control of Industry, The Experience of Eng- 
 land," Howard L. Gray. The Macmillan Co. 
 
 " The Great Change," Charles W. Wood. Boni and Live- 
 right. 
 
 " Labor and Capital after the War," edited by S. J. Chap- 
 man. John Murray. 
 
 " Industrial Reconstruction," edited by Huntley Carter. 
 E. P. Button. 
 
 " Industry and Humanity," W. L. MacKenzie King. 
 
 " The Aims of Labor," Arthur Henderson. B. W. Huebsch. 
 
 " The Creative Impulse in Industry," Helen Marot. E. P. 
 Dutton. 
 
 " Collective Bargaining and Trade Agreements in the Brew- 
 ery, Metal, Teaming, and Building Trades of San Francisco, 
 Calif.," Ira B. Cross. University of California Press. 
 
 " Fair Play for the Workers," Percy S. Grant. Moffatt 
 Yard & Co. 
 
 " Workshop Committees," C. G. Renold. The Survey Asso- 
 ciates. 
 
 Memorandum on the Industrial Situation After the War 
 (reprint of the memorandum issued by the Garton Founda- 
 tion, London). United States Shipping Board. 
 
 Report of an Inquiry as to Works Committees (reprint of a 
 report made by the British Ministry of Labor). United 
 States Shipping Board. 
 
 " Works Committees and Joint Industrial Councils," A. B. 
 Wolfe. United States Shipping Board. (Contains valuable 
 bibliography.) 
 
 Monthly Review, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U. S. 
 Dept. of Labor, passim.
 
 THE EAELY BEGINNINGS 9 
 
 factory. And for the matter of that, neither were 
 employers properly organized to cope with these same 
 problems. There was, in short, a sheer lack of ma- 
 chinery designed to eliminate internal shop friction, 
 whether over large matters or small matters. One 
 who has studied typical plants which have well planned 
 shop committee systems and typical plants which are 
 still operating in the old disorganized fashion, can not 
 hesitate to agree that neither the recognition of the 
 union nor the introduction of " efficiency " ideas will 
 do the good to employer, to employee and to the 
 public that can be gained by falling into step with 
 evolution and utilizing the advantages of this new 
 form of industrial self-government, 
 
 " The movement," says W. L. MacKenzie King in 
 his book above referred to, " is not without its critics 
 among both employers and labor leaders, and it en- 
 counters of necessity the opposition of upholders of 
 militancy in industrial affairs and the advocates of clasa 
 hatreds. It will reveal shortcomings, make mistakes, 
 experience setbacks and failures; and it is probable 
 that some time must elapse before its benefits will be 
 appreciated. ' The change of attitude involved is too 
 vital, the field of activity is too large, to hope for any 
 but gradual development.' But the scheme has in it 
 the germ of all that has made for freedom in political 
 evolution; and it has to promote it the genius for self- 
 government which the British peoples have evolved 
 through centuries of struggle. It is therefore destined 
 to win its way. Meanwhile, it will remain the surest 
 method of approach to the solution of the problems of 
 Industry which wide knowledge of actual conditions, 
 combined with many-sided opinion, has thus far 
 evolved." 1 
 
 iM italics. W. L. S.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE WAR LABOR BOARD PLAN 
 
 BEGINNING late in the spring of 1918 the United States 
 Government, as a war measure, began to organize shop 
 committees and to develop the theory and practice of 
 the shop committee system. The Government per- 
 formed this function through the National War Labor 
 Board and other war-time agencies. Its main purpose 
 was to attempt to set the house of capital and labor 
 in order, first so that essential industries would be 
 kept running during the hostilities, and second so that 
 industry would be more stable and prosperous during 
 the period of demobilization and reconstruction. 
 
 It may be noted in passing that it was not a new 
 thing for Uncle Sam to play the part of organizer of 
 cooperative associations. For many years the United 
 States Department of Agriculture has most energetically 
 promoted the formation of farmers' cooperatives, which 
 are fundamentally collective bargaining associations. 
 This work of the Washington government has brought 
 benefits to those living in the rural regions that can 
 be measured in dollars and cents, and has also served 
 as a precedent for similar activities in the world of 
 industry. 
 
 The Pittsfield Award 
 
 One of the first awards of the National War Labor 
 Board, if not the very first to recommend a shop com- 
 mittee system, was the award in the case of the em- 
 ployees versus the General Electric Co., Pittsfield 
 
 10
 
 THE WAE LABOR BOARD PLAN 11 
 
 Works, Massachusetts. Towards the end of this award 
 are these paragraphs : 
 
 " Election of Committees. 
 
 " The election by the workers of their representative depart- 
 ment committees to present grievances and mediate with the 
 company shall be held, during the life of this award, in some 
 convenient public building in the neighborhood of the plant, 
 to be selected by the examiner of this board assigned to su- 
 pervise the execution of this award, or, in the case of hia 
 absence, by some impartial person, a resident of Pittsfield, to 
 be selected by such examiner. Such examiner, or his substi- 
 tute, shall preside over the first and all subsequent elections 
 during the life of this award, and have the power to make the 
 proper regulations to secure absolute fairness. 
 
 " In the elections the examiner shall provide, wherever 
 practicable, for the minority representation by limiting the 
 right of each voter to a vote for less than the total number of 
 the committee to be selected. Elections shall be held annually. 
 
 " Duties of Department Committees. 
 
 " The duties of the department committees shall be confined 
 to the adjustment of disputes which the shop foremen and the 
 division superintendents and the employees have been unable 
 to adjust. 
 
 " The department committees shall meet annually and shall 
 select from among their number three ( 3 ) employees who shall 
 be known as the committee on appeals. This committee shall 
 meet with the management for the purpose of adjusting dis- 
 putes which the department committees have failed to adjust." 
 
 It so happened that the writer was assigned to act 
 as the examiner or administrator of the Pittsfield award, 
 and can therefore speak both from official and personal 
 observation of this very interesting experiment in in- 
 dustrial government. 
 
 At this time, the latter part of the summer of 1918, 
 the Pittsfield Works of the General Electric Company 
 employed about 7,000 men and women. The plant was 
 engaged in manufacturing many important articles used 
 directly and indirectly by the Government and neces- 
 sary for the war program of the Government. Maxi- 
 mum production and the elimination of internal strife
 
 12 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 was therefore a matter of public concern. It should 
 be added that while a majority of the employees were 
 members of organized labor, the plant was and still is 
 an open shop. 
 
 For some time before the award of the National 
 War Labor Board there had been in existence in this 
 plant a General Works Committee, which consisted of 
 about fifty employees, and which was elected by the 
 rank and file of the workers at an election held each 
 year in the factory buildings. For various reasons this 
 shop committee, or shop committee system, was not 
 satisfactory to the employees who came before the Board. 
 One of the reasons was that a single general committee 
 could not handle promptly and fairly the grievances 
 which constantly came up in the plant. The justice 
 of this claim was admitted by the Board, and a new 
 system was therefore ordered. 
 
 By way of further explanation it should be said that 
 before the award of the War Labor Board there had 
 been a serious strike in the Pittsfield Works. This 
 strike had brought about an era of bad feeling between 
 men and management which lasted several months and 
 which seriously complicated and made difficult the task 
 of working out calmly and in joint conference the 
 details of the award. I mention this fact not for the 
 purpose of opening old sores, but in order to illustrate 
 a very important fact in the shop committee movement 
 the fact that unless both the employer and the 
 employees have the right spirit, the spirit of coopera- 
 tion, the spirit of dealing man to man in sensible, 
 reasonable fashion, it is almost impossible to set going 
 an orderly and workable shop committee system. 
 
 Features of the Plan 
 
 The Pittsfield shop committee plan of the War Labor 
 Board is not like most of the plans subsequently ap-
 
 THE WAK LABOK BOAKD PLAN 13 
 
 proved by the Board. For example, it provided that the 
 Elections should be held, not in the shop, but in some 
 convenient public building. The reason for this pro- 
 vision in this particular case was that the Board desired 
 to give neither side any possible grounds for claiming 
 that either the company or the unions had influenced 
 the elections. Back of this lay the declaration of the 
 Board, laid down as a general principle for all industry 
 during the war, that "In establishments where the 
 union shop exists the same shall continue. ... In 
 establishments where union and non-union men and 
 women now work together and the employer meets 
 only with employees or representatives engaged in said 
 establishments, the continuance of such conditions shall 
 not be deemed a grievance." 
 
 In plain English, this meant that it was the duty 
 of the Board to see to it that the unions did not take 
 advantage of the war and of the war-time establish- 
 ment of shop committees to force union recognition. 
 It also means that it was the duty of the Board to see 
 to it that every employee in the plant, whether belong- 
 ing to a union or not, had the chance to vote and run 
 for office. 
 
 Another consideration had much to do with the de- 
 cree that the elections should be held on neutral ground. 
 This was that there was then a feeling of hostility among 
 certain of the employees against the company: a feel- 
 ing so deep that almost without exception the leaders 
 testified that if the elections were held inside the plant 
 the men would not vote. At the same time, however, 
 these same leaders declared that the former elections, 
 which had been held in the plant and managed by 
 the company, had been absolutely fair and square. 
 But there was the prejudice of the rank and file to 
 overcome, and the War Labor Board thought that the 
 best way to overcome it was to hold the elections in a
 
 14 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 place where no one could pretend that either the unions 
 or the company could control in any way, shape or 
 manner. 
 
 There was still another reason for selecting "some 
 convenient public building." One of the principles of 
 the Board declared that workers have the right "to 
 organize in trades-unions and to bargain collectively 
 through chosen representatives/' The right to choose 
 representatives was thought to carry with it the right 
 to choose them freely, or as freely as was consistent 
 with other circumstances. The other circumstances 
 which limited this freedom were the declarations of the 
 Board to which labor and capital were pledged for 
 the period of the war, to the effect that labor unions 
 should not seek to obtain recognition through the elec- 
 tion of committees, and that employers should not 
 discriminate against union employees. In theory, the 
 argument went, nothing could better guarantee a free, 
 uninfluenced election than to have it in a public build- 
 ing under the supervision of an officer of the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 I have gone into these matters in some detail because 
 the Pittsfield shop committee system was one of the first 
 attempts of the War Labor Board to put the theory 
 of the shop committee into practice. As often hap- 
 pens, there was nothing wrong with the theory, though 
 the application of it, as will be seen later, might have 
 been improved. 
 
 The Pittsfield award contained another provision 
 which was discarded in subsequent awards. This was 
 the provision for minority representation. The idea was 
 this : Roughly one third of the employees of the Pitts- 
 field Works, or a minority of the whole, did not belong 
 to any union. The Board, fearing that the union em- 
 ployees might control the elections and shut the non- 
 union employees out completely, gave instructions that
 
 15 
 
 when, for example, two union and one non-union candi- 
 dates were nominated on the same slate, each voter 
 should mark his ballot for two instead of for three. It 
 was calculated that in this way the minority would be 
 sure to secure a fair share of the offices. In practice, 
 however, it was speedily found that with one or two 
 exceptions the minority favored all the nominees and 
 offered none of their own. Most of the elections were 
 unanimous. By simply allowing great freedom in mak- 
 ing nominations, the minority had every opportunity to 
 be represented. 
 
 Two Kinds of Committees 
 
 As defined in the award the shop committees were to 
 be of two kinds. First, there were to be department 
 or shop committees representing the employees of the 
 different sections of the works, elected by the employees 
 of each section, voting separately as a section. Second, 
 there was to be a general or appeals committee of three, 
 elected by the members of the shop committees, meet- 
 ing in a convention called for that purpose. The shop 
 committees were to have the duty of adjusting disputes 
 which individual employees had failed to adjust either 
 with their foremen or their division superintendent. 
 The appeals committee, as its name implies, was to 
 take up with the management cases which the shop 
 or department committees had been unable to settle 
 satisfactorily. 
 
 This new plan was a great improvement over the 
 single General Works committee of fifty which had 
 previously represented the employees in dealing with 
 the management. As compared with the plans worked 
 out by the Board in some other places, however, as for 
 example, the Lynn General Electric Works, the Bridge- 
 port munition plants, and the Philadelphia Eapid Tran- 
 sit Company, the Pittsfield plan was incomplete.
 
 16 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 Nevertheless the Pittsfield plan was put into opera- 
 tion. The steps in this process may be briefly summed 
 up: 
 
 The first step was to district the plant. The award 
 called for " department " committees. But what was 
 a department ? Were the cranemen, for example, whose 
 work took them all over the plant, and who reported 
 to various foremen, to be considered a department? 
 Should a department consist of a more or less fixed 
 number of workers; or should a department be defined 
 as all the workers under a single foreman? Should 
 a department be on one floor, or might one department 
 include a floor and a gallery, or two floors? Should 
 a department be composed of workers of the same 
 trade? In short, what ought to be the basis of repre- 
 sentation? 
 
 Working It Out 
 
 These questions were not answered in Pittsfield to 
 the complete mutual satisfaction of men and manage- 
 ment, and to that extent and for that the reason the 
 Pittsfield plan as it was in operation as late as March 
 1919 cannot be termed a good example of a working 
 shop committee system. The Pittsfield management 
 opposed, on principle, the idea of holding the elections 
 outside the plant, and for this and other reasons the 
 districting of the plant was left to the men and the 
 representative of the War Labor Board. The plant was 
 not districted as it should have been, that is, coopera- 
 tively by the joint counsel of men and management. 
 In a later chapter the theory of districting is con- 
 sidered in detail. It is a most important question, if 
 not the most important single question which has to 
 be met in working out a shop committee system. 
 
 In spite of the difficulty just referred to, the elec- 
 tions were held in a vacant store near the plant, used
 
 THE WAR LABOR BOARD PLAN 17 
 
 by the city as a polling place. Owing partly to the 
 fact that the elections were held outside company time, 
 namely from 5 to 8 or 9 p. M., the attendance, while 
 representative, was not as large as it would have been 
 had the elections been held under the most favorable 
 circumstances in the plant itself. But the committees 
 were chosen as decreed by the award, were recognized 
 by the management, and proceeded to perform their 
 functions. Thus ended the duty of Uncle Sam in his 
 pioneer role of industrial organizer. 
 
 During the same summer and fall of 1918, the War 
 Labor Board decreed that the Pittsfield shop committee 
 system should be installed in several other plants which 
 were manufacturing war material for the Government. 
 From the reports which came from these places, as well 
 as from Bridgeport, where a gigantic problem con- 
 fronted the examiner of the Board assigned to the 
 supervision of the Bridgeport award, there was developed 
 a standardized plan for shop committee systems. This 
 plan was not intended to fit every industry without some 
 alteration. But it did and still does embody all 
 the basic principles which experience in the field has 
 proved to be sound and workable. 
 
 I quote this plan in full at this point. In the next 
 and following chapters the most important practical 
 problems involved in putting it into operation will be 
 taken up : 
 
 NATIONAL WAR LABOR BOARD 
 WASHINGTON 
 
 PROCEDURE 
 
 ELECTIONS OF SHOP COMMITTEES 
 
 In cases where elections are required to be held for the pur- 
 pose of selecting Shop Committees, the following shall be the 
 procedure :
 
 18 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 1. Number of Committeemen 
 
 Shop Committees shall be selected to meet with an equal 
 or a lesser number of representatives to be selected by the 
 employer. Each department or section of the shop shall be 
 entitled to one committeeman for each one hundred employees 
 employed in the department or section. If in any department 
 or section there shall be employees in excess of any even hun- 
 dred, then an additional committeeman may be elected pro- 
 vided the additional employees beyond the even hundred shall 
 be fifty or more; if less than fifty, no additional representation 
 shall be allowed. As an example: In a department or section 
 employing 330 men, three committeemen will be elected; in a 
 department employing 375 men, four committeemen will be 
 elected. 
 
 2. Nominations 
 
 Due notice having been given of an election, 10 days shall be 
 allowed during which nominations may be made for candidates. 
 In order that a candidate's name may appear on the ballot, 
 such person must be nominated either at a meeting of the 
 employees or any part of them duly called for that purpose, 
 or by petition signed by not less than 10 per cent of those 
 qualified to vote for any candidate so nominated. 
 
 a. By Convention 
 
 Meetings for nomination of candidates may be held at any 
 places named in the calls for the same. The nominations and 
 the attendance of at least 10 per cent of the persons entitled 
 to vote for nominees at any such meeting must be certified to 
 by the chairman and secretary of the meeting. 
 
 6. By Petition 
 
 All nominating petitions must clearly name the candidate or 
 candidates and have the signature of not less than 10 per 
 cent of the bona fide employees qualified to vote for such 
 candidate. 
 
 c. Filing Nominations 
 
 Nominations made either by meeting or by petition must be 
 sent to the examiner of the National War Labor Board not 
 later than 10 days after the notice of election is given, and the 
 election shall be held on the fifth day next succeeding unless 
 such day should be Saturday or Sunday or a holiday, in which 
 event the election shall be held on the next successive work day.
 
 THE WAR LABOR BOARD PLAN 19 
 
 d. Publishing Lists of Nominees 
 
 Lists of candidates selected by convention or petition and 
 distinctively designated, may be posted by their respective 
 supporters on a bulletin board to be provided by the employer, 
 convenient to the voting booths, to assist voters in marking 
 their ballots. 
 
 3. Elections 
 a. Place 
 
 The election shall be held in the place where the largest 
 total vote of the men can be secured, consistent with fairness 
 of count and full and free expression of choice, either in the 
 shop or in some convenient public building, as the chief exam- 
 iner shall decide after conference, if need be, with the Secretary 
 of the National War Labor Board. 
 
 6. Election Officers 
 
 The election shall be conducted under the supervision of an 
 examiner of the National War Labor Board, who shall select 
 as assistants two or more employees of the department or sec- 
 tion for which the election is held. These persons shall con- 
 stitute the Election Board, which will conduct the election, 
 count the votes, and certify as to the correctness of the count. 
 
 An employee of the company to be nominated by t" e em- 
 ployer, who shall preferably be the timekeeper or some one 
 connected with the proper department or section, who is quali- 
 fied to certify to and identify the voters as bona fide employees' 
 shall assist the Election Board in its duties. 
 
 c. Freedom from Undue Influence 
 
 All elections shall be held in accordance with the Australian 
 or secret ballot. The names of all the nominees shall be 
 printed in alphabetical order on the ballot, which shall clearly 
 state the number to be voted for. This ballot shall be in the 
 form that it may be folded so as to conceal the nature of the 
 vote. Each employee presenting himself shall be certified to 
 as qualified to vote and handed a ballot by the tellers. Upon 
 indicating upon the ballot by marking a cross opposite the 
 names of the candidates for whom the employee wishes to vote, 
 he shall himself place it in the ballot box. A booth or booths 
 shall be provided where the employee may indicate his choice 
 free from observation. 
 
 Foremen and other officials of the company shall absent 
 themselves from the election to remove ground for a claim of 
 undue influence.
 
 20 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 d. Declaration of Election 
 
 The candidates receiving the greatest number of votes shall 
 be declared elected by the Election Board. In the event of a 
 tie vote, the examiner of the National War Labor Board shall 
 call for a new election within five days. 
 
 4. Change of Procedure by Agreement 
 
 After the initial election under the supervision of the exam- 
 iner of the National War Labor Board, subsequent elections 
 and any general rules or regulations pertaining to the selec- 
 tion of Shop Committees may be carried out through agreement 
 between the employer and the committee so elected. Proper 
 provision should be made for reports of the Shop Committees 
 from time to time to their respective constituencies. 
 
 Approved by the Joint Chairmen, October 4, 1918. 
 
 As this book goes to press, (April, 1919), the 
 National War Labor Board is still in existence and is 
 still promoting the shop committee movement. Should 
 this Board continue by Act of Congress as a permanent 
 industrial court, without question it will become one 
 of the best possible sources of information in the country 
 on the question of shop committee systems. In the brief 
 history of this Board from its formation to date, it 
 has been under the fire of both capital and labor. The 
 unfriendly criticism which it has received has been un- 
 fortunate for several reasons, but chiefly because it 
 has led public attention away from the real and neces- 
 sary constructive work which the Board has been doing 
 from the very start. I refer of course to the establish- 
 ment of shop committee systems, and from my copy 
 of a memorandum entitled " Instructions to Examiners 
 Assigned to Administer Awards/' I quote the following 
 sentence : 
 
 " The encouragement of mutual adjustments and collective 
 bargaining as between employer and employees, will probably 
 prove the most valuable and lasting work which an Adminis- 
 trative Examiner can perform."
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES 
 
 IN Chapter I the history of the shop committee move- 
 ment was briefly sketched, and in Chapter II the be- 
 ginnings of the movement as promoted and standardized 
 by the United States Government were related. At 
 this point, before going into further detail, it will be 
 valuable to try to get at the basic principles which 
 underlie the shop committee plan of the National War 
 Labor Board, and of the movement as it is spreading 
 to-day. 
 
 What are these principles? 
 
 It will make it easier to understand and explain the 
 shop committee if it is understood and realized at the 
 start that a shop committee system is really an experi- 
 ment in democratic industrial government. The word 
 experiment is used because shop committee systems are 
 in their infancy, and are rapidly changing in form. 
 The words democratic industrial government are used 
 because after all what a shop committee system actually 
 does in a factory is to establish a system of govern- 
 ment to control democratically the relations between 
 employer and employee. 
 
 A factory in which neither shop committees nor 
 trades unions are recognized must necessarily be more 
 or less of an autocracy, and recent events in Europe 
 and elsewhere have demonstrated again to the world 
 the old truth that an autocracy is practically no gov- 
 ernment at all, because it is an unjust and unstable 
 government. What is going on in the United States 
 
 21
 
 22 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 to-day is, therefore, a revolution in industry. The ob- 
 ject of this revolution is to overthrow obsolete auto- 
 cratic methods of doing business between employer and 
 employee and to substitute new and democratic methods. 
 
 Compared to U. S. Government 
 
 The shop committee system of government does not 
 resemble the kind of representative democratic govern- 
 ment which we have, for example, in the United States. 
 The theory of the American government is that the 
 people elect their servants whose duty it is to make and 
 execute laws under a constitution, which in turn can be 
 changed by the people. The theory of the shop com- 
 mittee system form of government is that the employees 
 elect their representatives who meet with an equal num- 
 ber of representatives of the management. Thus in the 
 United States Government there is only one source of 
 power, the people. In the shop committee system gov- 
 ernment, there are two sources of power. This is what 
 is commonly called " joint control," and the various 
 branches of the government are called " joint com- 
 mittees." 
 
 But the phrase " joint control " is bound to be mis- 
 understood if it is not explained further. The rela- 
 tions between employer and employee in a factory hav- 
 ing a shop committee system are controlled jointly or 
 collectively up to a certain point only. The committee- 
 men representing the employees may be able to agree 
 with the committeemen representing the management on 
 a large number of important matters, but when they 
 fail to agree, the joint method of settling disputes is at 
 an end: the matter goes to the manager, who, being in 
 charge of the factory, has the veto power. The manager 
 will side either with the employees or with his own 
 representatives. In any case his decision is final, so far 
 as the shop committee system is concerned. If, how-
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES 23 
 
 ever, the matter in dispute is vital to the employees, 
 they may ask that it be arbitrated by outside parties, 
 and they will probably threaten to stop work if it is not 
 left to some impartial body, such as the War Labor 
 Board. Such a case shows clearly that the shop com- 
 mittee system is not in itself complete. 
 
 In many shop committee plans, it is provided that 
 when a decision of the manager is not satisfactory to the 
 employees, the case shall go to outside arbitration. 
 
 In the United States Government, on the other hand, 
 the people are theoretically supreme, and there is no 
 veto power over them. Their servants may not obey 
 them, but at the next election a new set of servants 
 can be selected. In the shop committee form of gov- 
 ernment, the employees may, of course, get rid of repre- 
 sentatives who are not satisfactory, and the manage- 
 ment may do likewise with its representatives. But 
 the point is that in a shop committee system the em- 
 ployees have nothing to say about the selection of the 
 representatives of the management, or of the manager, 
 who is practically the president, with veto power; nor 
 has the management anything to say about the selection 
 of the representatives of the employees. In other 
 words, in a shop committee system we have two different 
 elements meeting for the purpose of adjusting and bar- 
 gaining with each other. 
 
 This contrast may be seen more clearly by comparing 
 the shop committee form of government to the govern- 
 ment of a genuinely cooperative industry in which the 
 workers have a direct voice in the management because 
 they are part owners of the enterprise. 
 
 These remarks do not necessarily throw discredit on 
 the shop committee theory. They are intended merely 
 to make clear exactly what kind of a government the 
 shop committee sets up, its advantages and its limita- 
 tions.
 
 24 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 " Voice in the Management " 
 
 The phrase " voice in the management " applies to 
 every well worked out shop committee system. " Joint 
 control/' as explained above, is a misnomer. " Partner- 
 ship," writes W. L. MacKenzie King on this point, 
 " is essentially a matter of status. It does not involve 
 identity or similarity of function on the part of the 
 partners, or equality of either service or rewards; but it 
 does imply equality, as respects the right of representa- 
 tion, in the determination of policy on matters of com- 
 mon interest." 
 
 Let us now see, within the limits just explained, 
 what sort of a system of government the shop com- 
 mittee establishes. In other words, what are the 
 branches of this form of government, what is its legisla- 
 ture, its court, its executive ? 
 
 The " people " who are to set up this government are 
 in two groups employees and employers. So far as 
 the employees' side is concerned, the people are all em- 
 ployees without regard to age, sex, or condition of em- 
 ployment. If the system is to be truly representative, 
 it must not disfranchise any employee, no matter 
 whether he or she is an elevator man, a clerk, a scrub- 
 woman, or a highly paid mechanic. But just as in the 
 American government it is necessary to define the 
 qualifications of the voter, so in a shop committee sys- 
 tem it is necessary to define what an employee is. 
 
 As a matter of fact, all the men and women, with 
 one or two possible exceptions, who work in a modern 
 American factory are employees. Unless the manager 
 is also an owner, he is an employee : and so are his 
 assistants from the general office down the line to the 
 superintendents, foremen and leading hands. But for 
 the purposes of shop committee government, it is neces- 
 sary to divide employees into two classes, that which 
 represents the management, and that which consists of
 
 25 
 
 the rank and file of the workers. Therefore it is cus- 
 tomary to disqualify from voting and participating in 
 the employees' side of the system all those who have 
 administrative duties. This commonly includes those 
 who are employed in a supervisory capacity, and hence 
 shuts out the manager and his staff, and the fore- 
 men and leading hands. The reason for this is self- 
 evident. 
 
 In addition, it is usual to fix an age limit, say 21 
 years ; to require that voters shall be American citizens, 
 and so on. These details are discussed at some length 
 in Chapter VII. 
 
 The general principle here is, within the limits of cus- 
 tom and common sense, to allow every employee to vote. 
 
 Shop Committees Their Functions 
 
 The " people " having been defined, we now come to 
 the first branch of the shop committee system, which is 
 usually the shop committee itself. By its very name, 
 this is a committee of the shop, that is to say, it repre- 
 sents a shop, department or division of the plant. The 
 plant, therefore, must be divided or districted just as a 
 city is districted into wards each of which selects its 
 members of the common council. The details of this 
 process of districting are considered fully in Chapter 
 IV. The general principle here is that every representa- 
 tive system of government requires some device to insure 
 that an elected representative actually represents the 
 people who elected him, and that no other people or 
 voters shared in that electing. Thus each district or 
 shop in a plant determines for itself the members of 
 its committee, which is the first branch of the system 
 of government. 
 
 The duty of the employee members of a shop com- 
 mittee is to act as mediators or adjusters of disputes 
 arising in their district between the employees and the
 
 26 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 foremen: to sit in session with the employer members 
 of the committee as (1) a mediating and adjusting 
 committee, and (2) as a court to hear and pass on 
 cases coming before it. These duties are more fully de- 
 tailed in later chapters. 
 
 The second branch of the shop committee system is 
 what is termed in the standard plan of the War Labor 
 Board, the " General Works Committee/' This com- 
 mittee is higher in authority than the shop committees 
 and has broader powers. It may be composed (1) 
 of all the shop committee members, (2) of a fraction of 
 the shop committee members, or, (3) of employees at 
 large, not shop committee members. It is usually 
 elected by the members of the shop committees them- 
 selves, but it may be elected at a popular election in 
 which all employees participate. 
 
 The duty of a General Committee may be, (1) to 
 sit as a court of appeals in matters coming up from 
 the shop committees; (2) to act as a mediating and 
 adjusting body between the whole body of employees and 
 the management; (3) to make rules and regulations 
 to govern elections and procedure. 
 
 In some existing shop committee systems, the duty 
 described under (3) is handled by a separate committee 
 on rules. As will be seen later, there may be more 
 than one general committee, though it is usual to have 
 but one charged with the duties enumerated under (1) 
 and (2). 
 
 The General Works Committee, no matter whether 
 called the Appeals Committee, the General Joint Com- 
 mittee, or the General Adjustment Board, is, after all, 
 the supreme joint council of employer and employee. 
 It is a judicial council when it decides cases which come 
 up on appeal. It is a legislative council when it decides 
 on rules and regulations, wage rates, bonuses, and other 
 matters affecting conditions of employment. It is also
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES 27 
 
 an advisory body or kind of cabinet to the General 
 Manager, when, as frequently occurs, it brings to his 
 attention situations or complaints which might other- 
 wise escape his notice. It is not an executive body 
 for the reason that the execution or administration of 
 its decisions and recommendations is the function of the 
 management. 
 
 The Management's Side 
 
 Looking at the other half of this system of govern- 
 ment, we find that the representatives of the manage- 
 ment are, first of all, appointed instead of elected. 
 The reason for their selection by appointment instead 
 of election is that the management is one thing, usually 
 one person or one small group of persons with a single 
 head. The management chooses its representatives from 
 those employees who are not " people " as defined above, 
 that is to say, from its assistants, superintendents, 
 department or division heads, general foremen, foremen, 
 leading hands, and often cost clerks or paymasters. 
 
 To deal with the individual employee the manage- 
 ment selects foremen or leading hands. To represent 
 the management's half of the joint shop committees, 
 foremen again are generally chosen. To represent the 
 management's half of a general committee, assistant 
 managers, or department heads are usually selected. 
 In some plants the management employs a special agent, 
 often called " the industrial representative " who reports 
 directly to the manager and who attends without vote 
 the committee meetings so as to keep in constant touch 
 with the workings of the plan of representation. 
 
 Thus we see that the shop committee system is a 
 system of government composed of a series of commit- 
 tees with duties which differ but slightly, and which 
 is organized and operated on the principle that as far 
 as is practicable the relations between employer and
 
 28 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 employee should be adjusted by common counsel at joint 
 meetings of accredited representatives of each side. 
 
 The joint meeting is the characteristic thing about 
 the shop committee form of industrial government. It 
 is more than characteristic, it is fundamntal. The entire 
 purpose of shop committee systems is to bring em- 
 ployer and employee together face to face. To the 
 minds of some keen employers and employees this move- 
 ment means a return of the " good old days "' when 
 industry was small and the general manager personally 
 knew Tom Jones in the foundry and dealt with him 
 man to man, instead of through the medium of half 
 a hundred subordinates. How to reestablish this kind 
 of relationship in modern industry has been a problem 
 which has puzzled many of the leaders in the world of 
 labor as well as in the world of capital. At a critical 
 time in the history of industry throughout the world, 
 the shop committee offers itself as a solution of this 
 problem. By setting up a simple plan of internal shop 
 government on the principles just outlined, something 
 of the old small shop atmosphere can be regained. 
 The sense of aloofness between employer and employee 
 vanishes when the manager realizes that his responsible 
 agents are meeting daily with the men in committee 
 sessions; and when the men, for their part, realize that 
 the management believes that the rank and file should 
 have a say in the way the business is managed. 
 
 Cooperation 
 
 But if a shop committee system is to be a success, it 
 must be based on one other fundamental principle in ad- 
 dition to those already mentioned. This is that from 
 the very beginning a shop committee system must be a 
 matter of cooperation. From the start it is essential 
 that men and management should come together as 
 nearly as possible on an equal footing and from that
 
 GENERAL PRINCIPLES 29 
 
 footing thresh out their problems with the utmost good 
 nature and frankness. The management may feel that 
 it possesses superior wisdom, but it need not exhibit this 
 feeling. The men may feel that the management is 
 trying to " slip one over " on them, but they ought to 
 go in and use their brains and reason the matter out. 
 In one great industrial plant in the United States the 
 shop committee system failed because it was devised 
 solely by the management and offered to the employees 
 as a charity. In another factory a shop committee sys- 
 tem nearly fell to pieces because the unions misunder- 
 stood it and counselled a policy of "knocking." And 
 in a third plant both sides got together on common 
 ground from the beginning and out of two quite dif- 
 ferent schemes, worked a new one which both declared 
 to be preferable to either of the originals. Unless the 
 basic principle be adopted that a shop committee sys- 
 tem must be planned, established and operated collec- 
 tively, it is as well to have none at all. 
 
 All government, we are told, rests on the consent of 
 the governed. A shop committee system of government 
 is no exception to this rule. 
 
 I emphasize this point for the reason that experience 
 has shown it to be a vital one. The shop committee 
 movement is in reality a part of the organized labor 
 movement. If it is properly guided in the early years 
 of its life it may prove to be a solution of many of the 
 most vexing problems which confront the labor move- 
 ment. The shop committee means in principle, not the 
 recognition of the union, but the recognition of the 
 fact that it is more efficient both for employer and em- 
 ployee to handle their daily, intimate problems collec- 
 tively instead of in the old way, individually. If then, 
 an employer is to deal collectively with representative 
 groups of his employees, it is essential that the desires 
 of the employees should be made known and should be
 
 30 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 given at least equal weight with those of the employer. 
 
 Some students of the shop committee go further than 
 this and maintain that the employees are the sole judge 
 in the matter of districting and determining represen- 
 tation. Two heads are, however, generally wiser than 
 one, and inasmuch as shop committee government is 
 after all joint government, joint counsel should be held. 
 But experience has also shown that no shop committee 
 system introduced and put into operation by a manage- 
 ment which considers itself morally or intellectually 
 the superior of the men has ever really succeeded. 
 
 These are the main principles of shop committee 
 government. The list is not complete. For example, 
 it is also an important principle that in the elections of 
 shop committees the management should refrain from 
 even an appearance of supervision. It should, of 
 course, be reasonably assured that the elections are 
 fair and free and open only to employees, and a joint 
 committee of men and management might well agree 
 on the rules governing the elections. But the elections 
 are primarily the business of the employees, just as the 
 appointment of the representatives of the management 
 is primarily the business of the management. Another 
 principle, discussed in detail in Chapter VIII, is that 
 the spirit of the shop committee system must be entirely 
 democratic; there should be the initiative, the referen- 
 dum and the recall ; the records of all committees should 
 be open and public to employees desiring to consult 
 them ; and the system itself must be easy to amend after 
 due consideration by both parties. 
 
 If a shop committee system is founded on the prin- 
 ciple outlined in this chapter and if it is motivated, 
 above all, by the principle of genuine cooperation 
 not the kind of cooperation which means benevolent 
 paternalism it can be built in such a way as to out- 
 last the lives of the men who helped to erect it.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION 
 
 THE first step in the practical application of the gen- 
 eral principles of shop committee government is to di- 
 vide the plant into shops, sections, districts, or depart- 
 ments. This should be done jointly by a committee of 
 employees meeting with representatives of the manage- 
 ment. In order to secure a successful districting, it is 
 necessary that this committee should be familiar with 
 the geography of the plant and with the various kinds 
 of work done throughout the plant. A successful job 
 of districting will almost certainly insure a successful 
 working plan, the reason being that a fair and just 
 districting provides a fair and just basis of represen- 
 tation, a thing that is fundamental to the entire system. 
 
 Districting involves three factors: (1) the actual lo- 
 cation and size of the district; (2) the size of the com- 
 mittee or number of representatives of the workers; 
 (3) the craft or occupation of the workers to be in- 
 cluded in the district. 
 
 In the Pittsfield award of the War Labor Board 
 (see Chapter II), nothing was said about districting 
 the plant. The Board assumed that the plant was al- 
 ready divided in such a way as to make re-division un- 
 necessary. As a matter of fact, some fifty departments 
 had long been recognized in the Pittsfield Works as 
 separate shops or departments, and there was no great 
 demand for revising this arrangement. There was, 
 however, some sharp difference of opinion between men 
 and management as to whether certain departments 
 
 31
 
 32 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 should be combined before choosing a committee, and 
 as at that time the general principles of districting were 
 not clearly understood and agreed on, the result was a 
 more or less unsatisfactory compromise. I mention this 
 fact because it indicates an error which can easily be 
 avoided. 
 
 Size of Constituency 
 
 Within a few weeks the Board had issued its stand- 
 ardized shop committee plan. Under the heading 
 " Number of Committeemen " this plan declared : 
 
 " Each department or section, of the shop shall be entitled 
 to one committeeman for each hundred employees employed 
 in the department or section. If, in any department or sec- 
 tion, there shall be employees in excess of any even hundred, 
 then an additional committeeman may be selected, provided 
 the additional employees beyond the even hundred shall be 
 more than fifty. If less than fifty, no additional representa- 
 tive shall be allowed. As an example: in a department or 
 section employing 330 men, 3 committeemen will be elected. 
 In a department employing 375, 4 committeemen will be 
 elected." 
 
 In another paragraph this plan declared : 
 
 " In order to insure workable committees of not less than 3 
 or more than 5, examiners can either subdivide the plant into 
 sections of not less than 250 nor more than 500 employees." 
 
 In a memorandum of instructions issued at this time, 
 the Board said that its standard plan was not intended 
 to fix hard and fast rules, and that the basis of repre- 
 sentation might well vary from the numbers just given. 
 "No injustice results from such variations," was the 
 statement, "inasmuch as these shop committees deal 
 directly on behalf of their constituents with foremen 
 and other representatives of the management." In 
 other words, the sound principle was set forth that it is 
 not at all necessary that the actual number of em-
 
 THE BASIS OF KEPRESENTATION 33 
 
 ployees in each shop or district should be the same. 
 Each shop is an independent political unit, so far as 
 its own business is concerned, and its size should be 
 determined not for numerical reasons, but in accordance 
 with geographical and craft conditions. 
 
 In applying this theory in industrial plants, however, 
 it is generally found to be wise to decide on a limit, 
 such as 100, as a rough basis of representation. This 
 limit is not a fixed one, and the number of employees 
 in a separate shop or department runs all the way from 
 50 or even less to 400 or 500. 
 
 Craft vs. Geographical Basis 
 
 Once this flexible limit is settled, the question arises: 
 What shall be the character of each unit or shop? 
 Shall it be geographical or occupational, or both ? 
 
 This is a highly important question, and there is room 
 for a large variety of answers to it. From the point 
 of view of some managers, an employee is an employee 
 regardless of the nature of his work, and all that is 
 necessary in order to give him representation is to 
 allow him freely to vote for candidates taken from 
 among his neighbors in the plant. The point of view 
 of the average employee, on the other hand, is, that an 
 employee is above everything a worker at some particular 
 kind of a job, and that in order to have real repre- 
 sentation he must choose a committee which has direct 
 knowledge of the job. These opposite views may be 
 illustrated by an actual case: 
 
 In a certain factory it was proposed to group about 
 seventy-five skilled machinists, about one hundred 
 operatives on semi-skilled repetition work, and about 
 one hundred and fifty construction laborers together and 
 give them a shop committee. The management argued 
 that all these workers were housed in the same wing 
 of one building, and that a committee of three, one
 
 34 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 from each group, could handle their business. The 
 repetition workers and the construction laborers were 
 agreeable to this proposal, but the skilled machinists 
 objected because they were a distinct, trained craft with 
 peculiar craft problems which, they declared, could not 
 well be handled by other craftsmen. In the end the 
 machinists got a separate committee of their own, while 
 the other two groups were consolidated into another 
 single constituency. 
 
 The problem is always a complicated one, and no hard 
 and fast rule should be laid down. Perhaps the best 
 general rule is that of the War Labor Board : " The 
 committees shall be not only of manageable size . . . 
 but shall give definite proportional representation to 
 as many occupational or other natural groups, includ- 
 ing women, as may be possible. . . . While it is mani- 
 festly impossible for every minor occupation or minor 
 department to be represented upon shop committees, it 
 is possible to do justice in every case, provided the 
 local situation is understood, and only when it is under- 
 stood." 
 
 The matter of the size of the committee is not so 
 difficult. The War Labor Board followed common cus- 
 tom in this regard when it recommended that the com- 
 mittees be not less than three nor more than five. Even 
 when a shop or district contains as few as fifty em- 
 ployees, a committee of three is not too large. Shop 
 committee work is hard work and requires careful atten- 
 tion. If less than three are chosen, the burden of repre- 
 sentation will fall heavily on the one or two mem- 
 bers and will require their frequent absence from 
 work to make investigations and adjust cases. This 
 means loss of time and often of earnings to the em- 
 ployees, and a corresponding loss in production to the 
 company. 
 
 So far we have analyzed the basis of representation
 
 THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION 35 
 
 only as it involves the shop committees. Let us now 
 look at it as it involves the general committee. 
 
 General Committees 
 
 A general committee is a legislative and judicial 
 body which spends most of its time on appeals from 
 shop committees or else on general questions which 
 affect the entire plant. Since a general committee repre- 
 sents the entire plant, the problem of districting so far 
 as it is concerned, comes down to a single question: 
 Should the members of this committee be chosen to 
 represent different large sections or divisions of the 
 plant, or should they be chosen from the employees 
 regardless of where located ? 
 
 As a rule there is not much difficulty in reaching a 
 satisfactory decision on this point. It is obvious that 
 a general committee should have general knowledge 
 or experience, and it therefore usually results in prac- 
 tice, no matter whether a specific rule is adopted or 
 not, that the members are actually chosen from the 
 different parts of the works. In Pittsfield, for example, 
 the election rules required that the three main divisions 
 should each choose one member of the Appeals Com- 
 mittee. In Bridgeport, for another example, the Em- 
 ployees General Committee is composed of the chair- 
 men of all the department committees, and therefore 
 automatically represents each section. 
 
 Another and more fundamental question is, Who shall 
 elect the members of the general committee, and who 
 is eligible for nomination thereto? In the case of the 
 shop committee, all the inhabitants of the shop, so to 
 speak, elect the committee, and none but workers in 
 that shop are eligible to membership. With the general 
 committee a different situation arises. 
 
 In the standard plan of the War Labor Board, the 
 General Works Committee is described as being "com-
 
 36 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 posed of the several shop committees representing the 
 departments or sections of the plant. Thus, a single 
 election in a department provides both a shop committee, 
 as such, and a portion of the Works Committee, which 
 will be formed by the coming together of all the various 
 shop committees." This theory, in other words, is that 
 the shop committee is really a part of the general com- 
 mittee, and that all members of the general committee 
 are members of the shop committees. As we have 
 seen, this theory was put into practice in the Bridge- 
 port munition plants, where the general committee is 
 composed of the chairmen of the shop committees. 
 Thus one answer to the question put in the last par- 
 agraph is that the members of the general committee 
 may be elected by the shops, each shop voting separately, 
 and that only shop committeemen may be eligible for 
 membership on the general committee. 
 
 But is this a satisfactory answer ? Is it a democratic 
 and truly representative method of forming a govern- 
 ment? If the general committee is to be an appeals 
 committee, which must necessarily be the case, should 
 it be composed of employees who are members of lower 
 committees, and who are therefore placed in the position 
 of reviewing on appeal cases which they have already 
 decided? I ask this question not because there is any 
 ready-made solution for it: shop committee government 
 is too new an experiment to permit dogmatism. But in 
 some shop committee plans, as for example, the Lynn 
 and Pittsfield plans, the members of the General Joint 
 Committee on Adjustment and the Appeals Committee, 
 respectively, are not members of shop committees. They 
 are selected from the employees at large, and are elected 
 by the members of the shop committees, who meet in 
 a special convention for that purpose. None but mem- 
 bers of the shop committees can nominate for members 
 of the general committees.
 
 THE BASTS OF REPRESENTATION 37 
 
 Election Metlwds 
 
 In some minds there will arise a doubt as to the 
 wisdom of holding a popular election for the members 
 of a general committee. If the general committee is to 
 represent all the employees of the plant, however, why 
 should not all the employees in the plant have the oppor- 
 tunity to make nominations and to cast ballots ? Should 
 this not be the case particularly where the members of 
 the general committee are taken from the rank and file 
 of the workers? The issue is in reality between direct 
 and indirect elections, between the original method, for 
 example, of choosing a United States Senator through 
 the legislature, and the present method of choosing him 
 by the popular vote of his State. It may be said, 
 however, that if the election rules and procedure in- 
 clude the recall, the matter of voting indirectly is 
 obviously of less importance than otherwise. 
 
 Without end are the devices which have been and 
 which will be suggested to secure a fair and equitable 
 basis of representation of employees on shop and general 
 committees. One interesting device suggested by the 
 War Labor Board for the selection by a general com- 
 mittee of an appeals committee is this : 
 
 " In such balloting each General Works Committee member 
 shall cast as many votes as the total number of employees 
 whom he represents. Thus, if Ihere are five committeemen 
 from a certain machine shop where 17,500 men are employed, 
 each of the five will have a voting strength of 350; a commit- 
 tee of 3 from the pattern makers' department of say 420 men 
 would each have 140 votes in the General Works Committee. 
 This arrangement gives fair representation all around, and 
 permits the working parts of the collective bargaining ma- 
 chinery, namely, the shop committees and subdivisions of the 
 General Works Committee, to fit the actual departmental, craft 
 or other needs which they are intended to fill." 
 
 This suggestion brings us directly to the matter of 
 the size of general committees. Custom differs accord-
 
 38 
 
 ing to the character of the general committee or com- 
 mittees to be selected. In Bridgeport they vary from 
 three to nine, depending on the size of the plant. 
 Elsewhere, five is a common number, though it is not 
 unusual to have an even number, as four or six. The 
 principle to be followed is that a general committee 
 must be neither too cumbersome nor too "light." It 
 must not be too large to be unable to do business effi- 
 ciently, and it must be large enough to be able to do 
 business in the absence of two or three members. 
 
 To sum up in outline the main points thus far covered : 
 
 Basis of Representation 
 
 1. Shop Committees districting. 
 
 a. Size and location of shops. 
 
 b. Craft or occupational character. 
 
 c. Size of committees. 
 
 2. General Committees. 
 
 a. Eligibility. 
 
 b. Direct or indirect election. 
 
 c. Size. 
 
 Underlying all that has been said concerning the 
 basis of representation is the important fact that what 
 is a fair basis of representation in one plant may be 
 unfair in another. Local conditions must always be 
 considered in applying general principles, and the com- 
 mon mistake of trying to use a ready-made form which 
 was designed to meet a different problem must be 
 avoided. What will really determine the final plan of 
 a system of representation will be the peculiar character 
 of the industry. In a certain small factory, for example, 
 there are about two hundred employees. A strict craft 
 grouping of these employees suggested that there should 
 be eight committees. But the fact that the entire plant 
 was contained in one building resulted in a plan call-
 
 THE BASIS OF REPRESENTATION 39 
 
 ing for one committee of four, each member representing 
 both a craft or crafts and a geographical area. 
 
 Again, in a certain street railway organization, there 
 was a natural division into five departments. These 
 natural divisions, further, had branches which were 
 promptly made into " shops " electing shop committee- 
 men and men to serve on the department committees, 
 two from each department committee later being selected 
 to serve on the general committee. Here the numbers 
 of the employees in the different districts was not as 
 important a factor as the divisions themselves, which 
 had long been in existence, ready to be adapted to the 
 new purpose. 
 
 Task of Management 
 
 It must not be forgotten that the management has 
 to perform a task of equal importance with the task 
 of agreeing on a basis of representation. The em- 
 ployees' side of a shop committee system is only half 
 of the system, though it is the more difficult half to 
 plan. The management must reorganize itself in order 
 to deal with the organization of the workers. It must 
 designate its members of shop and general committees. 
 Its basis of representation will largely follow that 
 adopted for the employees: in the majority of cases 
 it will be a combination of geographical and craft, that 
 is to say, the foremen, cost clerks, leading hands, and so 
 on, chosen to sit on joint shop committees or to deal 
 with representatives of the workers must have direct 
 knowledge of the work of the particular shop, and 
 should be located in that shop. In addition, they must 
 possess a large share of tact and discretion, together 
 with ready willingness to " play the game " in accord- 
 ance with the new rules. Adequate representation of 
 management is as necessary as adequate representation 
 of men.
 
 40 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 The districting of a plant brings to a head and focus 
 all the most vital problems in shop committee govern- 
 ment. A perfect basis of representation is probably an 
 unattainable ideal. But a satisfactory basis of repre- 
 sentation can be reached if the joint committee comes 
 to the task in the right spirit and takes as its guide 
 the principles which have been worked out in the labora- 
 tory of experience, remembering always that, like any 
 system of government, a shop committee system is sub- 
 ject to change and needed revision.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE LYNN PLAN 
 
 THE Lynn (Massachusetts) Works of the General Elec- 
 tric Company has in operation at the present time a plan 
 of representation which was worked out in joint con- 
 ference between employer and employee and the writer, 
 acting as administrator for the National War Labor 
 Board. This plan thus far has been a pronounced 
 success. A description of it with particular reference 
 to the basis of representation, will serve to illustrate 
 the points taken up in the last chapter. 
 
 This plant is one of the largest of a series of more 
 than a dozen factory groups located in various parts of 
 the United States. It turns out a great variety of elec- 
 trical apparatus, and one of the buildings at Lynn is 
 the largest single building in the world devoted to the 
 manufacture of electric motors. The Lynn plant has a 
 ground area of 200 acres; there are 3,000,000 square 
 feet of floor space, and the employees number between 
 10,000 and 12,000. The trades represented include 
 most of the " regular " trades, such as pattern making, 
 die-cutting, skilled machine work, carpentry, blacksmith- 
 ing, etc. The bulk of the work, however, is more or 
 less special in its nature and there is a large amount 
 of semi-skilled repetition work. 
 
 Difficult Districting Problem 
 
 The problem of districting the Lynn Works was 
 therefore a very difficult one. Not only was it necessary 
 to give adequate representation to the " regular " trades, 
 
 41
 
 42 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 but it was also necessary to divide the works into units 
 of government which would insure adequate representa- 
 tion for the various groups of specialists, whether skilled, 
 semi-skilled or unskilled. In spite of the fact that in 
 this plant, as everywhere in the modern industrial 
 world, the old craft lines had largely broken down, 
 there was nevertheless a strong feeling on the part 
 of considerable numbers of the employees that they 
 should be represented by men who had first-hand knowl- 
 edge of their particular jobs. 
 
 At the beginning of the joint discussion the manage- 
 ment presented a plan which called for one representa- 
 tive for each one hundred employees, irrespective of 
 occupation. At the same time the employee members 
 of the committee placed their emphasis on craft repre- 
 sentation for the reasons above stated. 
 
 A building map of the works was made and used 
 to guide the discussion. This map showed the location 
 of each building and was supplemented by memoranda 
 which set forth the nature of the work in each building 
 and floor. Some idea of the task which the joint com- 
 mittee performed may be gained from the fact that the 
 conferences over the basis of representation alone occu- 
 pied more than a week of daily sessions. 
 
 It was first agreed that the rough numerical basis of 
 representation should be 200 employees. It was next 
 agreed that each group of 200, to be called a " section/' 
 should elect two representatives. Up to this point the 
 question of the character and location of the sections or 
 units had not been determined. 
 
 Craft-geographical Basis 
 
 With the approximate size of the sections fixed, the 
 committee again consulted maps and memoranda in 
 the attempt to find a common ground for agreement 
 as to character and location. Hard study developed the
 
 THE LYNN PLAN 43 
 
 fact that it was possible to cut the plant into sections 
 varying in size from 75 to 365, with the average in 
 the neighborhood of 200, and that each of these sections 
 would include more or less the same kind of work and 
 would, in addition, lie within convenient boundaries. 
 In other words, it was found quite feasible to adopt 
 what may be called the craft-geographical basis of repre- 
 sentation. For example, a small building in which 116 
 employees were doing machine work and assembly of a 
 new type of apparatus was made into a section. The 
 next section had a population of 223 employees, en- 
 gaged in tool-making machine manufacture, small punch 
 press and die work, and the manufacture of arc lamp 
 electrodes. It was found on careful inquiry that two 
 representatives could be selected from this group who 
 either together or separately would have knowledge of 
 the two main branches of the production. 
 
 Another section, the first and second floors of one 
 building, included 150 employees mainly engaged in 
 light winding and the manufacture of meter parts. 
 The cranemen, wherever located about the plant, were 
 made into a separate section for wage adjustment only. 
 The truck drivers and transportation men were grouped 
 with the employees of the hospital and restaurant. The 
 reason for this was that the transportation workers 
 naturally belonged together, while the restaurant and 
 hospital workers were so few in number and so mis- 
 cellaneous in occupation that it did not greatly matter 
 where they were placed. The groups which demanded 
 craft representation were either given separate treat- 
 ment or were else granted special committees for the 
 adjustment of rates. For ordinary grievances they were 
 to make use of the representatives of the geographical 
 section in which they were employed. 
 
 Throughout the days of these discussions, the em- 
 ployee members of the committee held frequent con-
 
 44 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 ferences with the rank and file of the works and reported 
 to the employer members the criticisms and suggestions 
 thus gathered. This contact proved to be of great value 
 because it took the whole plant into the discussion, and 
 made it impossible for any one to charge that the plan 
 was a " company plan," or something " fixed up " as 
 a result of expediency or hasty compromise. 
 
 By and large, the sections, which were the units of the 
 shop committee structure, gave representation to crafts 
 or to similar kinds of work. They also represented def- 
 inite, compact geographical areas. 
 
 Committee on Fair Dealing 
 
 At this stage of the conference it became necessary 
 to determine what relation the section should bear to 
 the shop committee. Was the section to be considered 
 as a shop, or as something entirely different? The 
 agreement reached was as follows : 
 
 " The employees' representatives of each section shall consti- 
 tute a committee on fair dealing to cooperate with the man- 
 agement in fostering just and harmonious relations between 
 the management and employees. Any matter requiring ad- 
 justment, may, in the first instance, be referred by the em- 
 ployee affected either personally or with one or both of the 
 representatives of his section, to the foreman of the work on 
 which the employee is engaged. If the foreman fails to ad- 
 just satisfactorily any matter referred to him, it shall then 
 be reduced to writing and taken up by the joint shop com- 
 mittee." 
 
 In other words, the sectional committee on fair deal- 
 ing was composed, so far as the employees were con- 
 cerned, of two representatives plus the employee or em- 
 ployees having a grievance. This committee was to 
 meet with the foreman immediately in charge of the 
 job, and attempt to settle the case. This committee 
 was not to be a joint committee in the sense that it 
 was made up of equal numbers of workers and of
 
 THE LYNN PLAN 45 
 
 representatives of the management. It was the first 
 step in the collective bargaining scheme. 
 
 The next higher step, as may be gathered from the 
 quotation, is the joint shop committee. 
 
 A " shop " in the Lynn plan is a group of sections. 
 The original districting of the plant called for about 
 fifty sections. After the sections had been agreed to, 
 it was decided to bring two, three, four or five sections 
 together into other groups called " shops." The shops 
 thus created contain sections in which, as far as possible, 
 similar or allied manufacture is being carried on, and 
 which, in addition, are located either in the same build- 
 ing or in adjacent buildings. Each shop has a com- 
 mittee of three employees, elected by the representatives 
 of the sections of the shop from among their own num- 
 ber. A total of twenty shops was established. 
 
 Shop Committees 
 
 Shop No. 1, for example, is composed of section 11, 
 with 223 employees, located in the small buildings A, 
 B, and E, plus section 41, with 116 employees, located 
 in adjacent building D. Section 11 is devoted to tool- 
 making machine manufacture, small punch press and 
 die work, and the manufacture of small arc lamp 
 electrodes. In Section 41 there is machine work and 
 the assembly of new type of apparatus. Shop No. 1 
 therefore has a total of 339 employees. Four repre- 
 sentatives, organized into two committees on fair deal- 
 ing, were to represent these two sections separately. 
 The four representatives, meeting in a miniature con- 
 vention, elected three of their number to serve as the 
 employees' half of the joint shop committee for Shop 
 No. 1. 
 
 This system was carried out throughout the plant 
 with the exception of a few special sections created 
 for wage adjustment only, and with one or two shop
 
 46 
 
 committees elected, as in the case of the two power 
 plants, directly by the employees themselves. 
 
 In the Lynn scheme the shop committees are real 
 joint committees three elected representatives of the 
 men and three appointed representatives of the 
 management. Their duties as agreed to are to take up 
 matters referred to them by the committees on fair 
 dealing. 
 
 " If the foreman," declared the agreement, " fails to adjust 
 satisfactorily any matter referred to him, it shall then be 
 reduced to writing and taken up by the joint shop committee. 
 This committee shall endeavor finally to dispose of the matter 
 and shall be at liberty to adopt such means as are necessary, 
 including the calling of witnesses by either side, adequately to 
 ascertain the facts and render a fair decision. Should the 
 committee reach a decision satisfactory to the employee origi- 
 nating the matter, or should the committee reach a unanimous 
 decision on this subject, this decision shall be regarded as 
 terminating the matter." 
 
 Up to this point in the Lynn plan the representatives 
 of the employees handle matters at issue in common 
 counsel with the management. But just at this point 
 the agreement called for a step which gave the manage- 
 ment one more opportunity to secure an adjustment 
 before the case went to the appeals or general commit- 
 tee. " Should the committee," declared the agreement 
 again, " fail satisfactorily to adjust any matter referred 
 to it, a written report shall be made, together with the 
 recommendations of the committee, if any, and this re- 
 port shall be submitted to the department head or manu- 
 facturing engineer for his action." 
 
 It must be explained in this connection that in the 
 Lynn Works officials with the title of department head 
 or manufacturing engineer are in charge of large sec- 
 tions of the plant, sections comprising several shops. 
 The purpose of injecting these officials into the system 
 at this juncture was to give the men responsible to
 
 THE LYNN PLAN 47 
 
 
 
 the manager for the conduct of these groups of shops 
 a chance to review cases in which the shop committees 
 reported failure to agree. It was not considered advis- 
 able or necessary to make this a joint review for the 
 reason, first, that it was expected that a limited number 
 of cases would come up beyond the shop committees; 
 and second, that so long as the employees had the right 
 of appeal over the department head to the general 
 committee, there could be no injustice in discontinuing 
 here and here alone the joint representation. 
 
 General Committees 
 
 As has already been stated, the Lynn plan provided 
 for general joint committees, the most important of 
 which, from the point of view of the employees, was the 
 general joint committee on adjustment. The original 
 plan provided for a second general committee, that 
 on routine, procedure and elections in reality a rules 
 committee. Subsequently, three other general commit- 
 tees were authorized. 
 
 The general joint committee on adjustment represents 
 the entire works. It was elected by the representatives 
 of the sections, meeting in a convention called for the 
 purpose. Its members were chosen from among the 
 employees at large, no representative being eligible 
 thereto. The reason for this was that the committee 
 was essentially a court of last appeals on which it was 
 determined no one should sit who had had a direct 
 interest in any case that might come before it. The 
 routine, procedure and elections committee was also 
 elected by the representatives, but from among their 
 own number. As in the case of the shop committees, 
 the management appointed an equal number of represen- 
 tatives to sit with the representatives of the employees 
 on the general committees. In order to secure geogra- 
 phical representation, it was agreed that one of the four
 
 48 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 employee members of the general committee on adjust- 
 ment, and one of the three employee members of the 
 rules committee should be elected from the " Federal 
 Street Works," the smaller of the two groups of fac- 
 tories which comprise the Lynn plant, the other mem- 
 bers coming from the larger or " Eiver Works." 
 
 This plan of representation is pictured in Chart No. 
 1 on page 49. The chart was designed to show the 
 " source of power " or representative character, of the 
 representatives of men and management in the system. 
 The chart does not show what becomes of a case in the 
 event of failure of the general committee to adjust it. 
 This is indicated in Chart No. 2, which shows how a 
 grievance may go from the individual employee either 
 directly to his foreman or through his representatives 
 to his foreman; thence, if unsettled, to his shop com- 
 mittee ; thence, if unsettled, to the manufacturing head ; 
 thence to the general committee; and thence to the 
 manager of the plant. 
 
 The Lynn plan was the outgrowth of an award of the 
 National War Labor Board. It was worked out in joint 
 conference between representatives of the management, 
 of the men and the Board and up to the time this book 
 goes to press, still enjoys the unshaken confidence of 
 the parties directly involved. Taken in connection with 
 the foregoing analysis, the following summary of the 
 plan tells the whole story : 
 
 EEPRESENTATION OF EMPLOYEES 
 
 GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY 
 
 LYNN WORKS 
 
 A committee of employees of the Lynn Works, and a commit- 
 tee of the management, meeting under the auspices of the 
 Examiner in charge of the award, have drawn up the following 
 plan of shop committees. 
 
 In order to carry out the plan, the Works have been divided 
 into sections each containing, as nearly as practicable, 200
 
 CHART ffo. t 
 
 PLAN OF REPRESENTATION o 
 
 tiens VvyFma 75-365^ Sheft composed of from S'SJectioas eoth+Tetvl 
 
 ef Sections Si* Shops 20 
 
 Employees 
 
 Management 
 
 Each 
 Stetim 
 
 ofAtproc 
 mately 
 
 200 
 Employed 
 
 CHART No. 
 
 o ROUTE OF ATT Issus 
 
 CHART ILLUSTRATING LYNN PLAN. (See page 48.) 
 49
 
 50 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 employees. These sections have been grouped into " shops " 
 representing manufacturing groups of similar or allied manu- 
 factures. 
 
 Except for certain special sections, each section is entitled 
 to two employees' representatives, to be selected by secret 
 ballot from the employees in the section. 
 
 Not less than 30 days before the second general election and 
 all subsequent general elections, the Joint Committee on Rou- 
 tine, Procedure and Elections, hereinafter provided for, shall 
 review the division of the Works into sections and " shops " 
 and shall make any changes which may be necessary to carry 
 out the principles laid -down in the plan. 
 
 (1) Elections of representatives shall be held semi-an- 
 nually. 
 
 (2) One-half the number of representatives shall be 
 elected at each semi-annual election. 
 
 (3) The term of office of a representative shall be one 
 year; provided, however, that in the case of the rep- 
 resentative chosen at the first elections, one repre- 
 sentative from each section shall be retired by lot at 
 the next ensuing election. 
 
 (4) Retiring representatives, and representatives whose 
 terms of office have expired, shall be eligible for re- 
 election. 
 
 (5) Any representative may be recalled on written request 
 of two-thirds of the employees qualified to vote in the 
 section in which he has been elected. 
 
 (6) Any representative shall be deemed to have vacated 
 his office upon ceasing to be an employee of the Com- 
 pany. 
 
 (7) Vacancies in the office of representative occurring 
 from any cause shall be filled, for the unexpired term, 
 by a special election to be conducted forthwith, in 
 the section where the vacancy occurs, and in a man- 
 ner similar to that of the general elections. 
 
 (8) In case any representative is incapacitated, a tem- 
 porary representative, to replace him during such 
 incapacity only, may be elected on the written request 
 of two-thirds of the employees qualified to vote in the 
 section in which the incapacitated representative was 
 elected. In such case a special election shall be con- 
 ducted in the section in a manner similar to that of 
 the general election.
 
 THE LYNN PLAN 51 
 
 Employees must possess all the qualifications herein enu- 
 merated in order to be eligible to hold office as representatives 
 or committeemen : 
 
 (1) Employees who have been in the Lynn Works for 
 one year. 
 
 (2) Employees who are American citizens, or who have 
 taken out their first papers. 
 
 (3) Employees who are able to read and write the Eng- 
 lish language. 
 
 (4) Employees of Apprentice Departments, eighteen years 
 of age or over, who fulfill the above qualifications. 
 
 (5) Employees of other departments twenty-one years of 
 age or over. 
 
 (6) No foreman or leading hand. 
 
 (7) No alien enemy. 
 
 The following classes are eligible to vote: 
 
 (1) Every employee in the Lynn Works, except foremen 
 and leading hands, regardless of age or term of 
 service. 
 
 (2) After the first election only employees who have been 
 in the Lynn Works for a period of three months prior 
 to the election shall be entitled to vote. 
 
 METHOD OF CONDUCTING ELECTIONS 
 
 The first election shall be conducted according to a method 
 prescribed by the National War Labor Board. 
 
 Succeeding elections shall be conducted according to a 
 method to be determined by the Joint Committee on Routine, 
 Procedure and Elections. This committee shall undertake the 
 determination of these questions at least sixty days before each 
 general election. 
 
 ORGANIZATION OF COMMITTEES 
 
 Immediately after the result of a general election has been 
 announced all the representatives elected at the River Works 
 shall meet, select a presiding officer and a secretary and pro- 
 ceed to elect three employees to serve as members of the Gen- 
 eral Joint Committee on Adjustment. In a similar manner all 
 the representatives elected from the Federal Street (West 
 Lynn) Works shall meet and elect one member of this com- 
 mittee. 
 
 Members of the General Committee may be selected from the
 
 52 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 employees at large, or from duly elected representatives of 
 sections. If an elected representative be chosen to serve on the 
 General Committee, his office as representative shall be de- 
 clared vacant and a new election shall be held to choose his 
 successor. 
 
 The representatives of the River Works shall elect from 
 their number, at the same time, two members of the Joint 
 Committee on Routine, Procedure and Elections; and the rep- 
 resentatives at Federal Street (West Lynn) shall elect one 
 member of this committee. 
 
 As soon as possible after the announcement of these elec- 
 tions the representatives elected for each " Shop " shall meet 
 and elect from among their number three members of the Joint 
 Shop Committee for that Shop. 
 
 Representatives may serve on one Joint Committee only. 
 
 The result of the first election will be recorded by the Ex- 
 aminer in charge of the administration of the award of the 
 War Labor Board. The result of subsequent elections shall 
 be reported to the Management in writing, signed in case of 
 members of the General Committee by the presiding officer and 
 secretary, and in case of members of the Joint Shop Commit- 
 tee, by all the representatives taking part in the Election. 
 
 The management shall appoint to each Joint Committee as 
 many members as there are employees' representatives, but 
 no more. 
 
 JOINT COMMITTEES 
 
 The following Joint Committees are constituted under this 
 plan: 
 
 1. Joint Committee on Routine, Procedure and Elections. 
 
 2. General Joint Committee on Adjustment. 
 
 3. Joint Shop Committees. 
 
 JOINT COMMITTEE ON ROUTINE, PBOCEDUEE AND ELECTIONS 
 
 The Joint Committee on Routine, Procedure and Elections 
 shall have charge of all matters relating to dates and hours 
 of meetings of all Joint Committees, the regulation of their 
 methods of procedure, but not of the action taken by them, of 
 the routine of procedure in matters requiring adjustment, and 
 of all matters relating to elections, including all controversies 
 concerning the fairness of an election. 
 
 PROCEDURE IN MATTERS REQUIRING ADJUSTMENT 
 1. Committee on Fair Dealing: 
 
 The employees' representatives of each section shall 
 constitute' a Committee on Fair Dealing to cooperate
 
 THE LYNN PLAN 53 
 
 with the Management in fostering just and harmonious 
 relations between the Management and employees. 
 
 2. Reference to Foreman: 
 
 Any matter requiring adjustment, may in the first 
 instance, be referred by the employee affected either per- 
 sonally or with one or both of the representatives of 
 his section, to the foreman of the work on which the 
 employee is engaged. 
 
 3. Reference to the Joint Shop Committee: 
 
 If the foreman fails to adjust satisfactorily any mat- 
 ter referred to him, it shall then be reduced to writing 
 and taken up by the Joint Shop Committee. This Com- 
 mittee shall endeavor finally to dispose of the matter 
 and shall be at liberty to adopt such means as are 
 necessary, including the calling of witnesses by either 
 side, adequately to ascertain the facts and render a 
 fair decision. Should the Committee reach a decision 
 satisfactory to the employee originating the matter, or 1 
 should the Committee reach a unanimous decision on 
 the subject, this decision shall be regarded as terminat- 
 ing the matter. 
 
 4. Reference to the Manufacturing Engineer or Depart- 
 
 ment Head: 
 
 Should the Committee fail satisfactorily to adjust 
 a matter referred to it, a written report shall be made, 
 together with the recommendations of the Committee, 
 if any, and this report shall be submitted to the depart- 
 ment head or manufacturing engineer for his action. 
 
 5. References to the General Joint Committee on Adjust- 
 
 ment: 
 
 Should the Manufacturing Engineer fail to adjust 
 satisfactorily any matter referred to him, the question 
 may then be referred to the General Joint Committee 
 on Adjustment for action and report thereon to the 
 Management. Should the Committee reach a decision 
 on any matter referred to it which is satisfactory to 
 the employee or employees originating the matter, or 
 should the decision of the Committee on the question 
 be unanimous, this decision shall terminate the mat- 
 ter. In case the Committee fails to reach a decision 
 under the preceding provisions, it shall be referred to 
 the Manager.
 
 54 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 RECORDS OF COMMITTEE MEETINGS 
 
 Every Joint Committee shall keep accurate records of its 
 proceedings. 
 
 MANAGER'S REPRESENTATIVE 
 
 The Manager may appoint an industrial representative to 
 facilitate close relationship between the Management and the 
 representatives, and at any stage in the program of proceed- 
 ings the Manager's representative may be called in to exercise 
 his good offices. He may attend any meeting but shall have 
 no vote. 
 
 DISCRIMINATION 
 
 There shall be no discrimination either on the part of the 
 employees or the Management in respect to race, creed, society, 
 fraternity or union. 
 
 ACCOMMODATION 
 
 The Management shall provide a suitable place for meetings 
 and defray such expenses as are necessarily incidental to the 
 activities herein provided for. 
 
 AMENDMENTS 
 
 Any course of procedure herein provided for may be amended 
 by unanimous vote of the Joint Committee on Routine, Pro- 
 cedure and Elections. 
 
 Under the award of the War Labor Board, the Lynn 
 shop committees were ordered to review the wage scale 
 from top to bottom and make it comparable with the 
 wage scale of the Schenectady Works of the General 
 Electric Company. The performance of this task was 
 a severe test of the new system, but the test was met 
 successfully. For this reason, and because, further, the 
 Lynn plan appears to be based on fundamentally sound 
 principles, it is commended to the study of all who are 
 interested in the shop committee movement.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THREE CHARACTERISTIC PLANS 
 
 THE Lynn plan, described in the last chapter, shows 
 how a shop committee system can be built into and 
 fitted to the particular and special needs of a very large 
 and complex industry. The apparent elaborateness of 
 the Lynn plan was necessary because of the elaborate- 
 ness of the manufacture in the Lynn plant. But the 
 shop committee idea is nevertheless equally adaptable to 
 smaller and simpler industries, as well as to even larger 
 and more involved industrial situations. 
 
 The shop committee system established at the Pitts- 
 field Machine and Tool Company, Pittsfield, Mass., has 
 already been mentioned. It is worth further attention 
 at this point because it is an illustration of the adapta- 
 tion of the shop committee to a small factory. 
 
 In the fall of 1918 this factory employed, in round 
 numbers, one hundred men and women. The men, who 
 were in the majority, were skilled machinists, tool- 
 makers, " specialists " on machine work, laborers and 
 apprentices. The girls were doing semi-skilled work, 
 chiefly the winding of wire. The plant was comprised 
 in a single building. 
 
 For some weeks prior to the installation of the shop 
 committee system, the men had been joining the union. 
 Inasmuch as this was during the war, they realized 
 that they could not force recognition of the union and 
 a reversal of the company's policy of maintaining an 
 open shop. The company, on the other hand, made 
 no objection to the union activities of the men, and 
 
 55
 
 56 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 was always ready to meet with them, either individually 
 or collectively. Both sides favored the shop committee 
 as a happy solution of their common difficulties. 
 
 At a joint conference held in the manager's office 
 a plan for a shop committee system was drawn up and 
 agreed to. In view of the small size of the plant it 
 was decided that a single committee could adequately 
 represent the entire works. The women were offered 
 representation on the committee, but declined. Elec- 
 tion rules and procedure were drafted on the basis of 
 similar rules and procedure in other plants (see Chapter 
 VII). The election was held toward the end of the 
 working day later in the week of the conference. 
 
 A Simple Problem 
 
 So small was this plant that the vexatious problem 
 of the basis of representation practically settled itself. 
 The workers naturally desired to choose committeemen 
 who were acquainted with the different operations in the 
 shop, and no formal districting was necessary. Nor was 
 it necessary to establish more than one committee, the 
 small size making it possible for a single committee 
 to serve both as a mediating and as a judicial body. 
 The principal value of the installation of this system 
 was, first, that it organized a local industrial government 
 for the plant in which every employee, regardless of 
 outside affiliation, had equal voice. Second, it guaran- 
 teed to the management that when the duly elected 
 committee requested a conference, the matter to be con- 
 sidered was one of interest to the entire body of em- 
 ployees. Third, it brought about a permanent means 
 of maintaining between men and management the good 
 relations of the past which rapidly changing conditions 
 in the industrial world at times threatened to disrupt. 
 
 In sharp contrast to this one-committee shop com- 
 mittee system is the so-called cooperative plan of the
 
 THREE CHARACTERISTIC PLANS 57 
 
 Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company. This plan is 
 interesting because it shows that the shop committee 
 form of government can be successfully applied to the 
 transportation industry. It is also interesting because 
 it shows how a shop committee system can be grafted, 
 so to speak, onto a Welfare Association, thus bringing 
 it up to date and rendering it capable of meeting modern 
 demands. 
 
 The Philadelphia Plan 
 
 The Philadelphia plan was developed in 1918 as a 
 result of a joint conference between men and manage- 
 ment. The first elections were supervised by the Na- 
 tional War Labor Board. The history 1 of this plan, 
 while of great significance, need not be recounted here 
 beyond saying that the basis of it was a Cooperative 
 Welfare Association established in 1911 at a time when 
 the company faced a serious financial crisis. The pur- 
 pose of the Cooperative Welfare Association was similar 
 to that of a shop committee system, namely, to create 
 and maintain mutually satisfactory relations on the 
 theory that such relations both served the public and 
 secured the investments of stockholders. 
 
 When the shop committee system was established, the 
 Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company employed nearly 
 10,000 workers. Through the welfare organization men 
 and management had come into close contact, wages had 
 been adjusted, sick and death benefits had been assured, 
 and working conditions had been improved. The wel- 
 fare association alone failed to provide an organization 
 sufficiently complete and effective for all the needs of 
 genuine collective bargaining. The new plan broadened 
 and enlarged certain features of the old plan, and pro- 
 
 i See pamphlet entitled " A Plan for Collective Bargaining 
 and Cooperative Welfare," published in 1918 by the Philadel- 
 phia Rapid Transit Co.
 
 58 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 vided a system of adjustment entirely separate and dis- 
 tinct from the cooperative welfare work. This separa- 
 tion is well worth noting. 
 
 Districting the Railroad Organization 
 
 The first task was the districting of the industry. 
 Study of this problem soon developed the fact that the 
 unit of representation was already in existence, namely, 
 the depots, the stations and the divisions of the road. 
 The industry was already further grouped into five 
 departments, each of which included a number of units : 
 the transportation department, the rolling stock and 
 buildings department, the electrical department, the way 
 department, and the general office department. No new 
 or artificial sectioning was here necessary, as in the 
 case of the Lynn plan. While the number of employees 
 in the different depots, stations and divisions varied 
 within considerable limits, the fact that a given unit 
 contained, broadly speaking, similar crafts or occupa- 
 tions and was also bounded by well defined geographical 
 lines, fulfilled the general principles of representation 
 discussed in Chapter IV. 
 
 Each depot, station or division under the plan was 
 allowed two representatives, or "branch committee- 
 men," who were elected by the workers in the customary 
 fashion. 
 
 Each department was given a committee, composed 
 of all the branch committeemen or representatives 
 elected in that particular department. 
 
 Each department committee elected two of its mem- 
 bers to serve on the general committee. 
 
 The management appointed an equal number of 
 representatives to meet jointly with the branch, depart- 
 ment and general committees. 
 
 The skeleton or framework of the Philadelphia sys- 
 tem is quite similar to that of the Lynn system. The
 
 CHART OF ORGANIZATION 
 
 THE COMPANY 
 
 EDUCATION 
 
 ARBITRATION 
 THROUGH THE PUBLIC 
 
 CHAIRMAN 
 
 PU8LJC SERVICE COMMISSION 
 REPRESENTING 
 
 SERVICE 
 
 PRESIDENT 
 CHAMBER OF COMMCRCI 
 
 REPRESENTING 
 
 COMMERCE 
 
 CHABT ILLUSTRATING PHILADELPHIA PLAN. (See page 60.) 
 
 59
 
 60 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 branch committeemen correspond to the representatives 
 in the Lynn system; the department committees corre- 
 spond to the shop committees; and the general commit- 
 tees in both systems, though elected somewhat differ- 
 ently, are essentially alike in purpose, make-up and 
 function. 
 
 Arbitration Provision 
 
 The Philadelphia plan further contained a provision 
 for arbitration which in one form or another should be 
 an essential part of every shop committee system. The 
 scheme as set forth appears to be both ingenious and 
 practicable : 
 
 " If resort to arbitration becomes necessary, then there shall 
 be an arbitrator chosen by the general committee for em- 
 ployees and an arbitrator chosen by the general committee for 
 employer; the two arbitrators so chosen to select a third arbi- 
 trator. Failing unanimous decision, the decision of any two 
 of these arbitrators shall be binding. 
 
 " In the event that the arbitrators chosen by the general 
 committee for employees and the arbitrator chosen by the gen- 
 eral committee for employer are unable to agree upon a third 
 arbitrator, then the provost of the University of Pennsylvania, 
 the chairman of the Public Service Commission, and the Presi- 
 dent of the Chamber of Commerce shall be requested to serve 
 as additional arbitrators, or, failing so to do, to appoint their 
 own personal representatives to act as such additional arbi- 
 trators. Failing unanimous decision, the decision of any three 
 of these five arbitrators shall be binding." 
 
 The chart on page 59 indicates the reason for the se- 
 lection of the additional arbitrators, and also puts in 
 graphic form the scheme of representation. 
 
 The Bridgeport Plan 
 
 Far more difficult of organization than either the 
 Lynn, Pittsfield or the Philadelpbia systems was that 
 which was worked out for the Bridgeport, Connecticut, 
 munitions plants in the summer and fall of 1918.
 
 THREE CHARACTERISTIC PLANS 61 
 
 Sixty-two separate plants were involved, and the em- 
 ployees affected numbered between fifty and sixty thou- 
 sand. The production of these factories was almost 
 entirely for the war purposes of the United States Gov- 
 ernment. It is not necessary to recount here the history 
 of the stormy events which menaced not only the local 
 peace of Bridgeport itself, but imperiled the success of 
 the allied armies, which depended to a large extent on 
 Bridgeport for the manufacture of ammunition for rifles 
 and machine guns. Had the Union Metallic Cartridge 
 Company alone closed down at this time it is well within 
 the truth to say that the United States could not have 
 proceeded with the final push which ended the war in 
 November. 
 
 The problem of securing agreements between the em- 
 ployers and employees involved in the Bridgeport sit- 
 uation was, therefore, complicated by many grave consid- 
 erations. For the very reasons above indicated the 
 speedy establishment of a workable shop committee sys- 
 tem was a prime national necessity. 
 
 The Bridgeport plan is essentially very simple. Its 
 main features are: 
 
 1. Employees' department committees of three, " one 
 committee for each group of workers under a foreman 
 or f orelady." 
 
 2. Employees' general committee for each plant, com- 
 posed either of the chairmen of the department com- 
 mittees, or an executive committee elected by these chair- 
 men. 
 
 3. Representatives of the management appointed to 
 deal with the employee committees. 
 
 4. A local joint board of mediation and conciliation, 
 composed of three representatives of employees and 
 three of manufacturers.
 
 62 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 Committee Functions 
 
 Under this plan the problem of districting is solved 
 almost automatically. By considering each group un- 
 der a foreman as the unit of government, complete 
 craft or occupational representation is assured, and geo- 
 graphical representation takes care of itself. The com- 
 mittees of three elected to represent the various groups 
 or shops have two functions: first, the function of at- 
 tempting to secure adjustments with the foremen; and, 
 second, the function of meeting with the management 
 on cases in which settlement with the foreman has failed. 
 The general committee for each plant at Bridgeport sits 
 in joint conference with the management to review all 
 cases and matters not settled between the department 
 committees and the management. In addition, the 
 general committee serves as a rules or election commit- 
 tee. The local board of mediation and conciliation has 
 the function of representing the entire body of em- 
 ployees and manufacturers in the Bridgeport plants 
 coming under the scope of the plan. 
 
 The method of procedure under this simple machin- 
 ery of adjustment was worked out in great detail and 
 has been proved by experience to be entirely practicable. 
 The power and functions of each set of committees, as 
 well as the method of procedure was made the subject 
 of a signed agreement x which has every appearance 
 of leaving no excuse or loophole for evading the princi- 
 ples of the covenant thus created. In the chapter on 
 Procedure some of the provisions of the Bridgeport shop 
 committee system are quite fully discussed, but it is 
 well to emphasize here also the value of having regula- 
 tions so carefully drawn that there can not be the slight- 
 
 i " Organization and By-Laws for Collective Bargaining Com- 
 mittees, instituted by the National War Labor Board for 
 Bridgeport, Conn."
 
 THREE CHARACTERISTIC PLANS 63 
 
 est misunderstanding of the way in which the system is 
 intended to work. 
 
 The Bridgeport plan is worth more extended analysis 
 than can be given it in these necessarily brief pages. 
 Remarkably complete in structure, it is nevertheless 
 easy of operation and certainly as democratic in prin- 
 ciples as other systems established during the same pe- 
 riod. 
 
 Judging by the evidence afforded by the Pittsfield, 
 Philadelphia and Bridgeport shop committee plans, the 
 shop committee theory is capable of adaptation to very 
 small plants, to peculiar industries like transportation, 
 and to groups of plants in which similar or allied man- 
 ufacture is being carried on. Are we not justified in 
 drawing the further conclusion that the shop commit- 
 tee is a device in industrial government which, if prop- 
 erly shaped to the special or local end in view is of uni- 
 versal application?
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 ELECTION MACHINERY 
 
 ENOUGH has been said in the preceding chapters to give 
 a fair idea of the general principles of shop committee 
 government as well as of the practical application of 
 these principles. We now come logically to the question 
 of the election machinery; in other words, to a discus- 
 sion of the detailed methods of supervising and hold- 
 ing elections. 
 
 It should go without saying that the first essential 
 requirement is that the elections should be absolutely 
 fair and aboveboard. Since the object of the elections 
 is to choose representatives of the employees, it follows 
 that the elections are, above all else, employees' elec- 
 tions. That is to say, none but employees may nominate, 
 vote and address the meetings. All employees, there- 
 fore, must be on equal terms at the elections : the ballot- 
 ing should be secret, there should be no " lobbying " at 
 or near the polls, and the customary restrictions to 
 guard against fraud and cheating must be enforced. 
 
 But while the management is not directly concerned 
 in the elections, it has the right to demand that the 
 elections be fair, that none but employees participate, 
 and that no employee, regardless of his union affilia- 
 tion or lack of union affiliation, be discriminated against. 
 If the elections are "straight," the management is 
 bound to recognize and deal with the committees. If 
 there is any question about the character of the elec- 
 tions, the management is correct in withholding recog- 
 
 64
 
 ELECTION MACHINEKY 65 
 
 nition till it can be satisfied that all was as it should 
 have been. 
 
 For these reasons it is desirable that the election 
 rules should be worked out in joint conference by em- 
 ployer and employee. After the rules have been worked 
 out and proper means adopted for impartial super- 
 vision of the elections, the management should main- 
 tain a strict policy of hands off. 
 
 Such a policy and such impartial supervision was 
 required by the National War Labor Board. Wherever 
 shop committee elections were held under an award 
 of this body, the administrative examiner, or some 
 one selected by him, was charged with the duty of 
 running the elections. In the future many shop 
 committee systems will doubtless be installed out- 
 side of any governmental jurisdiction whatever, and 
 a wise plan of procedure would be for employer and 
 employee to agree on some disinterested outsider to 
 take charge of the elections. In this way all danger 
 from alleged influence on the part of the management 
 or of the unions can be avoided. 
 
 Where To Hold Elections 
 
 Where should shop committee elections be held? In 
 the early days of the development of shop commit- 
 tee systems this question caused considerable difficulty. 
 Practically all employers have advocated the holding 
 of elections within the plant or shop itself on the ground 
 that an election is purely a plant or shop matter. 
 Practically all representatives of labor, on the other 
 hand, have advocated the holding of elections outside 
 the plant on the ground that the committees are com- 
 mittees of the employees and that the employees should 
 be free to select them where and as they choose. 
 
 As was brought out in Chapter II, the War Labor 
 Board in the Pittsfield General Electric award decided
 
 66 
 
 that the elections should be held on the neutral soil 
 of a public building, thus giving neither side a real 
 or imaginary advantage of place. In later awards the 
 practice was to hold the elections within the plant, 
 of course under government supervision, with the quali- 
 fication, however, that the election should be conducted 
 " where the largest total vote of the men can be secured, 
 consistent with fairness of count and full and free ex- 
 pression of choice, either in the shop or in some con- 
 venient public building." 
 
 Looking at the question of place from the point of 
 view thus set forth, it will generally be agreed that 
 the largest total vote can be secured in the plant rather 
 than outside the plant. This is borne out by experi- 
 ence. In Pittsfield again, for example, the elections 
 were held outside the plant and necessarily outside 
 regular working hours. Many employees naturally de- 
 sired to get home as soon as possible after the whistle 
 blew, and the desire not to come out in the evening also 
 kept many away from the polls when the schedule called 
 for elections at 6, 7, 8 or 9 o'clock. As a matter of fact, 
 probably less than 75% of the Pittsfield employees 
 voted a large percentage when compared with the 
 vote cast at the average municipal election, but not as 
 large as the record made at the Lynn and Bridgeport 
 elections held in the plant, where the figure ranged from 
 80 to 100% of those eligible to vote. Elections held 
 in the plant, moreover, can be run of! in less time than 
 outside; the workers are relatively near any room or 
 building chosen for the purpose, and it is possible to 
 have the voting done during the working day. Under 
 an honest supervising officer and with a management 
 acting in good faith, elections can be held in the shop 
 "consistent with fairness of count and full and free 
 expression of choice." As a matter of efficiency, then,
 
 67 
 
 and wholly aside from the question of the right of 
 workers to do their own choosing of their own repre- 
 sentatives when and where they wish, the factory seems 
 to be the best place in which to conduct the voting. 
 
 The Labor Side of It 
 
 The argument of those labor leaders who contend 
 that elections should be held outside the plant has 
 already been stated in part. To what has been said 
 this further argument should be added: that the em- 
 ployees have nothing to say as to the place where the 
 management chooses its representatives, nor as to 
 whether outside influences, such as employers' associa- 
 tions, are consulted in the selection; that, in other 
 words, each side should be allowed to use its own judg- 
 ment and to follow its own desires in selecting its own 
 committee members. 
 
 This argument loses sight of the fact that in the 
 majority of instances the management of a plant con- 
 ducts its own business within the four walls of the plant, 
 but in spite of this oversight, there is much sound com- 
 mon sense in this point of view. The right of workers 
 to bargain collectively through their chosen representa- 
 tives has been upheld by the United States Government, 
 and it would seem that this right carries with it the 
 right of selecting the locality where representatives are 
 to be chosen. On the broad grounds of principle, there 
 seems to be every reason to permit employees to vote 
 where they please, provided they can give to the manage- 
 ment satisfactory guarantees that the voting was open 
 to all employees and was, in addition, fair and unin- 
 fluenced. As a general matter of expediency, however, 
 experience in holding elections goes to show that the 
 factory itself is by far the better place. Frank dis- 
 cussion of these points on the part of employer and
 
 68 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 employee will usually bring about a satisfactory and 
 unanimous agreement. 
 
 Elections In the Plant 
 
 Whereabouts in the plant should elections be held? 
 
 There are two possible answers to this question. One 
 is to decree that the elections shall be held in some 
 central building in the plant; the other is to hold them 
 in the actual shop where the employees eligible to vote 
 at any particular election are at work. In the first 
 case it is necessary for the employees to leave their 
 benches for a period of from fifteen minutes to three- 
 quarters of an hour. In the second case, either the 
 work may be stopped and the election held in some open 
 portion of the shop, or the ballot box may be carried 
 around to the employees. Thus there are three different 
 methods of conducting the elections, each one of which 
 has been successfully used. 
 
 The practice of carrying the ballot box around to 
 the voters is the most economical of the time of the 
 voters. The election officials merely go to the man at 
 his bench or machine, hand him a ballot, read or show 
 him the list of nominations, if any, and receive his 
 marked ballot in the sealed box. In plants where this 
 method has been employed, a shop or section of 100 
 has been voted in approximately half an hour with a 
 loss of time to the individual employee of a very few 
 minutes. The disadvantages of this method are, first, 
 that it requires more labor on the part of the super- 
 visor; second, that it fails to give an opportunity for 
 a convention or meeting at which nominations may be 
 made and the purpose and details of the election ex- 
 plained; and third, that the noise of the machinery is 
 likely to add confusion and to encourage misunder- 
 standing. 
 
 Where, on the other hand, the election is held in an
 
 ELECTION MACHINERY 69 
 
 open space on the floor of the shop, the disadvantages 
 just mentioned are done away with. Such an election, 
 however, requires a general cessation of work, including 
 the stopping of machines, and occupies ten or fifteen 
 minutes of the time of each worker. The advantages 
 are, first, that it requires less of the time of the super- 
 visor; second, that it brings the employees together 
 as a shop or group for the purpose of making nomina- 
 tions and so on ; and third, that with quiet in the room, 
 the chance of misunderstanding and error is reduced. 
 These same advantages apply to the method of hold- 
 ing elections in a central place in the plant. When 
 such a place is chosen, it is equipped with semi-per- 
 manent entrances and exits and booths, and provided 
 also with tables, chairs, and a blackboard. Each elec- 
 tion is preceded by a short convention at which the 
 supervising officer in the chair calls the meeting to order, 
 explains its purpose, answers questions, receives nomina- 
 tions, etc. This method has the additional advantage 
 that one set of election officers can handle the check- 
 ing of voters, the counting of the ballots, and the writ- 
 ing of election reports, thus insuring uniformity of 
 practice and speed. In practice it has been found that 
 it is easily possible to run off a section of as many as 
 300 within half an hour under one supervisor. In a 
 certain plant employing 10,000 workers where this 
 method was used, the elections of all the sectional, shop 
 and general committees were completed in five and one- 
 half days, under the supervision of two men. In a 
 plant of approximately the same size where the ballot 
 box was carried around, six supervisors were required to 
 do the work in the same time. 
 
 Election Rules 
 
 But regardless of the method of election, and regard- 
 less also of the place where the election is held, there
 
 70 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 are certain practices which should be common to every 
 well managed shop committee election. Foremost 
 among these is the drafting of a set of election rules 
 covering such questions as term of office, eligibility 
 both for nomination and for voting, method of mak- 
 ing nominations, method of deciding who is elected, 
 method of checking the voters, and important items 
 such as the referendum and the recall. These regula- 
 tions should be drawn up by the joint election com- 
 mittee, and should be posted throughout the plant several 
 days before the election. The execution of these regula- 
 tions should be left to the supervisor, assisted by the 
 employee members of the election committee. 
 
 A typical set of election rules, based on actual experi- 
 ence, is as follows: 
 
 ELECTION REGULATIONS 
 Eligibility 
 
 The following classes of employees are eligible to vote: 
 
 1. Every employee in the Works, except foremen and 
 
 leading hands, regardless of age or term of service. 
 
 2. After the first election only employees who have been 
 
 in the Works for a period of three months prior 
 
 to the election shall be entitled to vote. 
 
 In order to hold office employees must meet the following 
 qualifications: 
 
 1. Continuous employment in the Works for one year. 
 
 2. Must be American citizen, or have taken out first 
 papers. 
 
 3. Must be able to read and write the English language. 
 
 4. Must be 21 years of age or over. 
 
 5. Must not be foreman, leading hand, or employed in su- 
 pervising capacity. 
 
 Terms of Representation 
 
 1. Elections shall be held annually. 
 
 2. Any committeeman may be recalled at a special election 
 requested on petition of 20% of his constituents, two- 
 thirds voting in favor of recall prevailing at such spe- 
 cial election.
 
 71 
 
 3. A committeeman ceasing to be an employee of the 
 
 Works shall be deemed to have resigned his office. 
 
 4. Vacancies in the office of any committeeman shall be 
 filled, for the unexpired term, by a special election con- 
 ducted by the Elections Committee in such manner as 
 it shall order. 
 
 5. In case any committeeman is incapacitated, a tem- 
 porary committeeman may be elected on petition of 
 two-thirds of the employees of his shop. 
 
 Procedure at Elections 
 
 1. Upon arriving at the election hall, each employee will 
 give his name and clock number to the checker at the 
 gate, and will then be furnished with a ballot. 
 
 2. When the employees in each shop are fully assembled, 
 the supervisor of elections will call the meeting to order 
 and ask for nominations. Each shop will elect three 
 committeemen, but there is no limit to the number who 
 may be nominated. 
 
 3. The names of the nominees will be written on a black- 
 board, and the employees will proceed to the booths 
 and write their ballots. 
 
 4. Ballots containing more names than the shop is entitled 
 to elect will be thrown out. Ballots containing only 
 one name will be counted. 
 
 5. The candidates receiving the highest number of votes 
 will be declared elected. 
 
 These regulations are not intended to be complete, 
 but rather to suggest the points which ought to be 
 covered. Differing local conditions will require special 
 treatment and variation from the methods here outlined. 
 In some plants a bi-annual election is better than an 
 annual election. Again, in some shop committee sys- 
 tems it has been found desirable to declare the candi- 
 date receiving the highest number of votes in any shop 
 election, the chairman of the shop committee. 
 
 Ballots, Booths, etc. 
 
 Ballots for the voting should be cards or slips of 
 paper of convenient size with a notice, such as, " Vote 
 for Three," "Vote for Two Only," or "Fold Here,"
 
 72 
 
 printed on the face. The ballot boxes should be large 
 enough to hold all the votes cast in any one election; 
 the slot should be in the top, and the box should be 
 sealed by and left in the custody of the election officers. 
 After counting the ballots, provision should be made 
 to preserve the ballots for a stated period in case of a 
 demand for a recount. The record of each election 
 should be made in duplicate or triplicate on a blank 
 prepared for the purpose and should show : the name or 
 number of the shop or section, the date and hour of 
 the election, the candidates nominated and the votes 
 received by each, the number of voters checked in, 
 and the total number of votes cast. After being signed 
 by the tellers and countersigned by the supervisor of 
 elections, one copy of this record should be filed with 
 the management, another with the employees' com- 
 mittee, and a third with the joint election committee. 
 The booths may be extemporized from packing boxes, 
 mounted on work benches. 
 
 A word should now be said about the important mat- 
 ter of checking the voters. Probably the most conven- 
 ient method is to use the company payroll, rearranged 
 if necessary, in order to include on one sheet or set 
 of sheets the names of the employees of each section 
 or shop eligible to vote. These lists should be pre- 
 pared and posted a few days in advance of the election 
 so as to permit the correction of errors. As each 
 employee comes to the gate, he should be checked in 
 by a clerk of the committee. In some plants a clerk 
 from the particular shop or section pay office stands 
 outside the election hall to identify the voters, thus giv- 
 ing the management an assurance which it has the 
 right to demand. Other ways of insuring purity of 
 elections will readily present themselves. 
 
 The creation of a regular or standing general joint 
 committee on rules is usually advisable. Such a com-
 
 ELECTION MACHINERY 73 
 
 mittee should keep the records of the elections, should 
 make and revise the election rules, should conduct the 
 elections, including bye-elections to fill vacancies, and 
 may in addition be charged with the duty of redistrict- 
 ing the plant from time to time as the working of the 
 system or the creation of new or the abolition of old 
 sections requires.
 
 CHAPTEK VIII 
 
 PROCEDURE 
 
 IF we can call the joint agreement on which a shop 
 committee system is based the constitution of the indus- 
 trial government of the plant, we may say that the 
 rules of procedure for the system are the laws which 
 apply the principles of the constitution. Smooth and 
 orderly working of a shop committee system can not 
 be obtained unless such laws are first carefully formu- 
 lated and then rigidly enforced. 
 
 We have seen in previous chapters that the general 
 method of procedure in a shop committee system is 
 for the grievance or matter at issue to be referred by 
 the individual employee first to his representative or 
 committeeman ; that such representative or committee- 
 man next takes the case up with the foreman, and, 
 failing settlement, with the joint shop committee; that 
 the shop committee, if unable to agree, refers it on up 
 through the regular system till it reaches the manager 
 or, in rare instances, outside arbitration. But in order 
 to guide the business of these various representatives 
 and committees it is necessary to lay down in some 
 detail and with full consideration by both sides certain 
 specific rules of procedure. These rules will naturally 
 vary according to the situation, but in all plants we find 
 that many of the problems are the same and that the 
 same or similar rules will apply. 
 
 Practical experience tends to show that a complete 
 set of rules of procedure can not be laid down in ad- 
 vance of the establishment of a shop committee system. 
 Nevertheless a beginning must be made, and in all 
 
 74
 
 PROCEDUEE 75 
 
 probability the best plan is for the joint committee of 
 men and management having charge of the development 
 of the system to agree on a set of temporary rules of 
 procedure which may later be revised and perfected 
 by the general joint committee on rules. 
 
 It is essential above all that the rules of procedure 
 should be uniform throughout the plant, and the in- 
 dividual shop committees should not insist on consider- 
 ing themselves as independent of the rest of the sys- 
 tem. In order, however, to avoid the possible danger 
 of establishing an undemocratic set of regulations and 
 of denying a minority its rights, provision should be 
 made for a popular referendum on rules and procedure 
 whenever a certain percentage of the rank and file de- 
 mand it. Abuses will creep into the best systems of 
 government, and the only adequate remedy for abuses 
 is frank and free discussion and full opportunity for 
 amendment. But the routine work of making and en- 
 forcing rules should be left to the rules committee to 
 which should be given jurisdiction over the entire fac- 
 tory. 
 
 Among the subjects which rules of procedure should 
 cover are : 
 
 Time and place of meetings. 
 
 Records of meetings. 
 
 Method of arriving at committee decisions. 
 
 Method of investigating cases. 
 
 Compensation for committee service. 
 
 A typical set of rules for joint shop committee meet- 
 ings is the following: 
 
 PROCEDURE OF SHOP COMMITTEES 
 
 1. All meetings shall be held at 5 P. M. 
 
 2. A shop committee meeting falling on a holiday shall b 
 held at 5 p. M. on the working afternoon next following.
 
 76 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 3. Shop committee meetings shall be held in accordance with 
 the schedule prepared by the rules committee. Special meet- 
 ings of shop committees may be called at the request of one 
 member, made to two members of the rules committee, an 
 employee member and a management member, who shall decide 
 on the request as speedily as possible. Meetings shall be called 
 to order, minutes of preceding meeting read and approved and, 
 in the event that no business is presented, immediate adjourn- 
 ment is in order. 
 
 4. The members of each joint shop committee shall serve as 
 chairman in alphabetical rotation. The chairman may par- 
 ticipate in the discussion and may vote as a member of the 
 committee. 
 
 5. Each committee shall choose a permanent secretary from 
 among its members. The secretary shall keep the records as 
 hereinafter specified. The secretary may serve as chairman. 
 
 6. The secretary of the shop committee shall keep the min- 
 utes of each meeting, including a record of the disposition of 
 each case. Each member of the committee is entitled to a 
 copy of these papers and one copy shall be filed permanently 
 with the rules committee. These files shall be open to the 
 inspection of any employee. 
 
 7. Every question to be considered and voted on by a shop 
 committee shall first be reduced to writing, signed by the par- 
 ties to the issue and filed with the secretary of the shop com- 
 mittee. 
 
 8. The secretary of a shop committee about to hear a case 
 shall notify all witnesses whom either side desires to have 
 called on said case to attend at the proper time and place. 
 The names of the witnesses shall be filed with the secretary by 
 the parties requesting their presence. 
 
 9. When a member of a shop committee is directly involved 
 in a point at issue, he shall be deprived of his vote, and one 
 of the opposite side, to be selected by that side, shall also be 
 deprived of his vote for the occasion. Committeemen thus de- 
 prived of their votes may participate in the discussion. 
 
 10. If one member of the employees' side or one member 
 from the management's side is absent, one member from the 
 other side shall retire. No meetings of a shop committee shall 
 be held when less than two-thirds of the employee members 
 and of the management members, respectively, are present. 
 
 11. A unanimous vote of the committee shall settle any 
 question. If a majority vote, however, is satisfactory to the 
 employee bringing an issue to the committee, it shall be con- 
 sidered as terminating the matter; the party objecting should
 
 PROCEDURE 77 
 
 be recorded and shall have the right to submit a minority 
 report. In case the majority vote is not satisfactory to the 
 employee bringing the issue, the matter shall be carried to the 
 next committee under the plan. 
 
 12. Each decision or record of a committee meeting shall be 
 numbered as to shop and also as to case or docket number. 
 Every case shall be docketed in the order received. 
 
 13. Each shop committee decision shall be available to the 
 employee or employees bringing an issue. Copies of decisions 
 shall be filed with the management and with the rules com- 
 mittee and may, upon order of the rules committee, be pub- 
 lished in the plant. 
 
 14. Where it has taken some time to reach a decision, such 
 decision may be made retroactive. 
 
 15. Employee members of the shop committees will be paid 
 their average earnings for time spent at regular and special 
 meetings, but in no case will overtime be paid. 
 
 These rules of procedure are practically self-explana- 
 tory. Success in the operation of a shop committee 
 system can not be obtained without regularity of meet- 
 ings, without the fullest and freest opportunity for 
 securing all the facts necessary to a decision, and with- 
 out the maintenance of careful records. In some plants 
 the shop committees do not meet at regular intervals, 
 but are called only when there is business for them to 
 transact. In such cases it should be clearly agreed that 
 meetings may be held whenever there is demand from 
 any member, acting usually on the request of a constit- 
 uent. 
 
 The rules of procedure adopted for the Bridgeport 
 shop committee system illustrate this method of doing 
 business and also suggest several interesting variations 
 from the typical set of rules just given : 
 
 METHOD OF PROCEDURE 
 
 (30) Employees desiring to have their Department Commit- 
 tee act for them, individually or collectively, whether as an 
 appeal from a decision of their foreman, or as a direct presen- 
 tation, shall file their case with the Chairman of said Com- 
 mittee in writing and signed, if practicable; otherwise, the
 
 78 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 Chairman of the Committee shall reduce same to writing. 
 These matters shall be transacted on the premises outside of 
 working hours. 
 
 (31) The Chairman of Department Committees shall accept 
 for consideration all cases filed as provided under Section 30. 
 
 (32) The Chairman of any Department Committee shall 
 call a meeting of the Committee at such times and places as 
 the circumstances demand, for the consideration of such cases 
 as have been filed, and also of such matters as the Committee 
 contemplates initiating. Such meeting shall be held on the 
 premises but not during working hours, or on Company time, 
 except upon consent of the Management. 
 
 (33) Whether cases, or matters, considered in accordance 
 with the provisions of Section 32 shall be taken up with the 
 Management, shall be decided by a vote of the Committee. 
 Two votes for, or against, any proposition shall decide and no 
 reference or appeal to the joint Department, Executive, or 
 General Committee can thereafter be made. 
 
 (34) Whenever it is desirable for a Department Committee 
 to meet with the Management for the presentation and con- 
 sideration of prepared cases or other matters, the Chairman 
 of said Committee shall request through the Foreman of the 
 Department involved, a Joint Conference with such Repre- 
 sentative or Representatives as the Management shall desig- 
 nate for this purpose, not to exceed in number the member- 
 ship of said Department Committee. Such request shall be 
 accompanied by a specification in writing of the matters to be 
 considered. 
 
 (35) The Management shall meet with such Department 
 Committee in a Joint Conference upon the date requested, or, 
 if for any reason this is impracticable, upon one of the next 
 six days thereafter mutually agreed upon, not counting Sun- 
 days and Holidays. 
 
 (36) Any Management shall have the privilege of calling a 
 Department Committee to a Joint Conference by the method 
 set forth in Sections 34 and 35. 
 
 ( 37 ) The Chairmanship of each Joint Conference shall alter- 
 nate between the Chairman of the Department Committee and 
 the Spokesman for the Management's Representatives. 
 
 (38) All Joint Conferences shall be held immediately fol- 
 lowing the close of the day's work upon the date fixed, unless 
 by unanimous vote some other date is fixed, either in the De- 
 partment involved, or in some suitable room convenient thereto 
 provided by the Management for this purpose. Joint Confer-
 
 PROCEDUEE 79 
 
 ences may be held on Company time by consent of the Man- 
 agement. 
 
 (39) Joint Conferences shall be private except where wit- 
 nesses may be called. Full and free opportunity shall be 
 granted to all present to discuss, from every angle and view- 
 point, all cases and matters presented by either side at each 
 Joint Conference. 
 
 (40) Immediately following discussion of any issue at a 
 Joint Conference, a vote shall be taken upon the question at 
 issue and a majority of two votes of the entire membership of 
 the joint committee shall decide; that is five votes out of a 
 joint committee of six shall control. 
 
 (41) When an agreement has been reached the case or mat- 
 ter in issue is settled beyond appeal, and shall be promptly ad- 
 justed in accordance therewith. 
 
 (42) When no agreement has been reached, the Chairman of 
 the Joint Conference, unless such case be withdrawn by the 
 party proposing the action, shall immediately refer in written 
 form the case or matter in issue to the Chairman of the Em- 
 ployees' General Committee for presentation, discussion, con- 
 sideration and disposition at a Joint Conference between said 
 Employees' General Committee and a like or less number of 
 the Management's Representatives. 
 
 (43) A record of proceedings of all Joint Conferences shall 
 be made, signed by all members present. 
 
 The business of the general joint committees should 
 be governed by the same rules adopted for the shop 
 committees, or by similar rules. 
 
 A word or two should be said on the matter of com- 
 pensation for committee work. The general practice 
 seems to be for the management to pay representatives 
 or employees for regular committee work. In some 
 plants all. representatives are paid in accordance with 
 paragraph '1'5 of the typical rules. In other plants the 
 company pays only those representatives who sit on 
 joint committees, and for the time spent in joint com- 
 mittee sessions; time spent by employee representatives 
 or committeemen in adjusting cases, gathering evidence 
 and performing other functions of their office is not paid
 
 80 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 for. In a few plants, the company does not compensate 
 the employees' representatives for any time outside of 
 their regular work at the bench. 
 
 It is difficult to make a hard and fast rule to apply 
 to all cases, but certain general principles may be 
 stated as a guide. In plants where the management 
 does not pay employees' representatives the position 
 taken often by employees as well as by management 
 is that these representatives are officially representing 
 the rank and file, and that if they should be paid for 
 their services, the rank and file should pay them. This 
 usually means that the unions will furnish the compen- 
 sation, though in some establishments the funds of the 
 mutual benefit association are drawn upon, or a special 
 fund created. In the majority of plants where all repre- 
 sentatives are paid for their time, the position taken is 
 that, while they are primarily representing the rank 
 and file, they are also representing the best interests 
 of the company; that, in short, they are doing work 
 for the company just as if they remained at their 
 benches. Where representatives are paid only for time 
 spent in actual committee meetings, the position is that 
 they are then serving in a judicial capacity for this 
 benefit of the entire plant, and should accordingly be 
 compensated. 
 
 Experience shows that some method of compensation 
 is both desirable and necessary. The business of ad- 
 justing disputes between men and management calls 
 for both time and energy. It calls for time in working 
 hours as well as time outside working hours. Time 
 to the piece worker especially means money, and loss 
 of time means loss of earnings. In practice it has 
 been found that unless some method of paying for shop 
 committee service is adopted, the service rendered is 
 not up to standard. The various methods in use should 
 be discussed fully in joint conference of men and man-
 
 PEOCEDURE 81 
 
 agement and a clear understanding should be arrived 
 at before the committees are elected. 
 
 Underlying the rules of procedure for shop committees 
 should be, above all, the spirit of cooperation and of 
 fair play. If this spirit is permitted to have full scope, 
 the details will automatically adjust themselves.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 
 
 THIS incident is significant: 
 
 After two weeks of almost continuous sessions, a joint 
 committee representing the employees and the manage- 
 ment of a big industrial plant completed its job. It 
 had districted the plant, agreed on the method of elec- 
 tions, and drawn up the election rules and the by-laws 
 of the system. In the course of the meetings employer 
 and employee had come to know each other well, and the 
 distrust and suspicion which had marked the first con- 
 ferences had entirely given way to a feeling of mutual 
 respect and confidence. 
 
 The manager rose, and with more formality than had 
 been customary in the committee, expressed his cordial 
 appreciation of the spirit of cooperation which had 
 been shown by the employee members, declared it his 
 conviction that the management was animated by the 
 same spirit, and concluded by remarking that from 
 this day forward the relations between men and man- 
 agement were to be on a new basis, a basis which meant 
 square dealing and increased good will on each side. 
 
 "I guess," replied the chairman of the employees' 
 side of the committee, referring to the bitter strike 
 which had preceded the establishment of the shop com- 
 mittee system, " I guess there won't be any more serious 
 disagreements between us." 
 
 " I'll make one right here," said the manager. " I 
 expect that we shall disagree. In fact, I hope that we 
 
 82
 
 SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 83 
 
 shall, because all progress is made by disagreement. 
 But now we have laid down the rules of the game and 
 we'll fight our disagreements out face to face. We'll 
 play the game." 
 
 Another incident which illustrates concretely what a 
 shop committee system may accomplish through its ap- 
 peal to natural human love of order took place in a 
 factory during the elections. A woman stenographer, 
 a member of the union, employed in the office of, let 
 us say, Building A, was told by her chief that work 
 was slack and was offered a transfer to another depart- 
 ment. She objected, and the man next higher up in- 
 formed her that her work was poor. This charge she 
 resented and in consequence refused to take the trans- 
 fer. The management thereupon laid her off till such 
 time as the work should pick up once more. 
 
 When this occurred there was no shop committee sys- 
 tem in this plant, though a system had been agreed on 
 and was about to be established. 
 
 A. Typical Case 
 
 One of the men in Building A who happened to be a 
 member of the elections committee, volunteered to do 
 what he could to adjust this case for the girl. His first 
 recourse was to the head of the employment office, who, 
 while not directly charged with the settlement of griev- 
 ances of this kind, was in the habit of lending a helping 
 hand. This officer took up the case with the head of 
 Building A, but was unable to adjust the matter satis- 
 factorily. Both sides stood firmly on the record: The 
 management insisted that there was no work for the 
 girl and that she was a poor worker; they further in- 
 sisted that she must expect a lay-off after having re- 
 fused a transfer to another building where her services 
 could be used. The girl and her advocates, on the 
 other hand, insisted that this was the first time that
 
 84 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 her work had been unfavorably criticized, claimed that 
 another girl, who did not belong to the union, had been 
 engaged to supplant her, and charged that the company 
 was discriminating against her because of her affiliation 
 with organized labor. The case began to assume serious 
 proportions. 
 
 In the morning of the day on which Building A was 
 to hold its shop committee election, the two hundred- 
 odd employees in this building had become so exercised 
 over the case that they stopped work. They refused to 
 leave the factory or to resume work till the girl should 
 be reinstated and compensated for time lost. News of 
 this action spread rapidly, and in exaggerated form, 
 throughout the plant. Occurring as it did in the midst 
 of the elections, the incident seriously threatened the 
 success of the new system. 
 
 Yet the solution was clear and simple. A member 
 of the election committee secured permission to address 
 the employees of Building A. After they had been 
 assembled he spoke to them in substance as follows: 
 
 " You claim that Miss has been discharged be- 
 cause of union activities. The company claims that 
 she has not been discharged at all, but laid off on 
 account of lack of work. Who knows all the facts in 
 the case? What means have been taken to learn the 
 facts? If you will go back to work now, you will have 
 the chance to elect your shop committee this afternoon, 
 and your shop committee can find out the facts and make 
 a fair decision. If the shop committee cannot agree, 
 there is the general committee to appeal to next. Why 
 lose time and money till you know what it is all about 
 till you know that you're right ? . You owe it to the 
 company, but first of all to yourselves to abide by the 
 rules of the game." 
 
 A viva voce vote was taken on the proposition to 
 resume work till the committee election and the investi-
 
 SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 85 
 
 gation by the committee. Within ten minutes the ma- 
 chinery in Building A was running once more. 
 
 Within three days the shop committee took up the 
 case and rendered a unanimous decision which criticized 
 
 the management for failure to teach Miss properly, 
 
 while criticizing Miss for having refused the trans- 
 fer. The decision recommended that she be transferred. 
 The employees accepted the verdict as fair, and the case 
 was definitely settled. Had there been no shop com- 
 mittee, in all probability there would have been a strike, 
 small or large, with all that a strike involves of loss 
 to both strikers and company. 
 
 It would be possible to fill this book with the relation 
 of similar incidents showing the value to employer as 
 well as to employee of a shop committee system. The 
 claim is not here made that a shop committee system 
 will prevent all strikes, for no such claim could be 
 sustained by experience. One of the most unnecessary 
 strikes in years occurred in January, 1919, in a plant 
 in which a shop committee system had been installed 
 only a few months before. In this particular case the 
 condition which caused the strike was not only a local 
 condition it was a condition affecting other plants in 
 the same industry. But it may be stated with a reason- 
 able degree of accuracy that in the majority of situations 
 where a strike is among the possibilities, it will be 
 averted by a shop committee system, provided the causes 
 are local to the plant, and provided further that there 
 is the feeling on both sides that each side has acted and 
 will act in good faith. 
 
 Petty Tyranny Checked 
 
 In the ordinary routine of business, a shop committee 
 system eliminates much of the friction which is only 
 too likely to arise from the misunderstandings or from 
 the petty tyranny of "bosses." This feature was re-
 
 86 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 ferred to in the report of the Government Commission 
 which studied the Colorado plan (see Chapter I). It 
 is an important consideration. Even in the best man- 
 aged industrial plants it is impossible to avoid the evils 
 which arise from man clad with a little brief authority. 
 The petty boss, whether leading hand, price setter or 
 foreman, is, first of all, concerned with securing produc- 
 tion. Often he is in direct competition with the fore- 
 men of other jobs, and naturally he desires to make a 
 record for his shop. This motive frequently leads him 
 to all sorts of small and unnecessary injustices toward 
 his employees, and if one foreman succeeds as a result 
 of tyranny, his competitor is likely to go and do like- 
 wise. The effect on the men is bad. They fight fire 
 with fire and may turn out to be more intolerant and 
 less humanly reasonable than the foreman who started 
 the trouble. 
 
 A shop committee system acts as a corrective and 
 check to this kind of thing. Both foreman and em- 
 ployee know that their actions may be investigated by 
 men higher up. What they do is a matter of written 
 record in the minutes of the shop committee. They 
 become responsible, in short, to the rank and file of the 
 representatives of employers and employees who make 
 up the government. They feel keenly that the great 
 moral power of public opinion is organized and that it 
 stands ready to judge them. There is the same differ- 
 ence between the old and the new way of conducting 
 business between men and management as there is be- 
 tween life in an unorganized community and one in 
 which law and order have been established. 
 
 The point of view of managers of industrial plants 
 which have adopted shop committee systems is well 
 put in this quotation from an interview with K. H. 
 Eice, acting manager of the Lynn Works of the General 
 Electric Company:
 
 SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 87 
 
 "... Through these joint committees which I am now 
 speaking of, one of the chief advantages of the plan may be 
 realized, namely, education of the employee members of these 
 committees in the needs, requirements and technicalities of 
 the business may be brought about, and through these members 
 an education of the employees themselves may be secured which 
 can in no other way be brought about. 
 
 " There are now many industries throughout the country in 
 which similar plans are in operation and many cases of satis- 
 factory working of such plans are reported. In these cases it 
 is found that a great education of employees and of manage- 
 ment has taken place. The employees find that many of the 
 things with which they are dissatisfied are promptly remedied 
 while others are more fanciful than real. They come to a 
 better realization of the difficulties of management; they learn 
 the need of output; of a fair day's work for a fair day's pay; 
 they get the spirit of the management and get into step with it. 
 
 " On the other hand the foremen learn to sympathize with 
 the point of view of those employees who are fair and loyal; 
 they learn better methods of dealing to secure results; they 
 learn not to be arbitrary but to be right. 
 
 " The management is better in touch with the spirit and 
 atmosphere of the shop; the shop is better in touch with the 
 spirit and aims of the management." 
 
 The average laboring man is as enthusiastic about 
 shop committees as is the intelligent employer. To 
 members of organized labor, committees and committee 
 work and procedure are an old story; and union as 
 well as non-union employees are generally quick to 
 realize what an advantage it brings to their side to have 
 a fair and orderly method of transacting business with 
 employers. 
 
 This point may be illustrated by the comment of a 
 labor leader representing both organized and unorgan- 
 ized workers, on a shop committee system installed in 
 accordance with an award of the War Labor Board. 
 For many months prior to the award, which, incidentally 
 raised the wages some twenty per cent., the feeling of 
 men toward management and of management toward 
 men in this plant was of an almost unbelievable bitter-
 
 88 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 ness. It was the kind of bitterness which seems to 
 revolve in a vicious circle, requiring some radical out- 
 side force to destroy it. Every step taken under the 
 award was hotly contested, including, of course, the 
 shop committee system. But when the fighting was 
 over, and the shop committees were recognized and 
 running, a new atmosphere seemed to pervade the plant. 
 Said the labor leader : 
 
 "We were very thankful to the Board for bringing 
 our wages up, but that isn't the most important thing 
 the Board did." 
 
 " What is ? " he was asked. 
 
 " The committee system. Giving us poor devils a 
 chance to go to the old man and tell him about condi- 
 tions without the risk of being jumped for it by some 
 straw boss down the line. You've never worked here 
 and you're lucky. But if you had, you would appreciate 
 what this new deal means to the rank and file." 
 
 Efficiency 
 
 In the best and largest sense of the term the shop 
 committee brings efficiency into a factory. It is not a 
 one-sided efficiency. It is an efficiency which applies 
 with equal force to employer and employee. " This 
 committee system," the head of a division of a great 
 plant once told the writer, " is a benefit to me because 
 it enables me to get better reports of the work from 
 the men. I have always had plenty of reports from 
 my assistants, but the man at the machine has been 
 silent. Now I begin to know what he is thinking about 
 his work, and I find that he has some very valuable 
 ideas about the way the work should be done. There 
 used to be quite a little cheating running up the 
 indicators of punch presses without material, and so 
 on. That doesn't go any more. The committees frown 
 on it. Also there used to be loss of production and
 
 SHOP COMMITTEES IN ACTION 89 
 
 friction because of personal rows between the fore- 
 men and the men under them. That doesn't go any 
 more, either, and we've got the committees to thank 
 for that. The manager estimates that the system costs 
 us about $8,000 a year. I figure that it doesn't cost 
 us a cent, and that we make money on it in increased 
 contentment and efficiency." 
 
 The uses of shop committees, though they are many 
 and various, are all in the fulfillment of the same 
 general purpose. The Whitley report suggests a large 
 variety of problems which can be adequately handled 
 by shop committees and which can not be adequately 
 handled in any other way yet devised. 
 
 Another illustration of the wide scope and solid 
 worth of joint committees comes from the record of 
 the United States Fuel Administration, which, at a 
 critical moment in the war, organized a system of spe- 
 cial production committees for the bituminous coal 
 fields. Three representatives of the mine workers and 
 three men representing the company sat on each com- 
 mittee. Their duties included the following: 
 
 To make known the fact that there must be a large increase 
 in tonnage without which the United States Government will 
 fail in its war work. 
 
 To pass careful, and impartial judgment upon the reasons 
 given for absence, short hours worked, or other occurrences 
 which may have resulted in loss of tonnage. . . . 
 
 To clear the record of any worker who has lost time or ton- 
 nage through his own fault, provided the worker is willing to 
 make up the lost time or tonnage and the operator is satisfied 
 to have him do so, and provided also that in doing so he will 
 not violate any rules or mining laws and will not render it 
 difficult or impossible for the operator to give an equal turn 
 of cars. . . . 
 
 Etc. 
 
 The shop committee movement is young, and its 
 limitations are more apparent to some minds than its
 
 90 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 advantages. But its limitations are or should be 
 nothing but the ordinary bounds of common sense and 
 reason. No human association, no matter how ideally 
 organized, can be perfect. On the other hand, it is 
 equally true that the possibilities of the shop committee 
 movement are wider than the possibilities of the trades 
 union and employers' associations movements, for the 
 reason that the shop committee represents the coming 
 together of two elements which hitherto have been con- 
 spicuous because they have been apart. The shop com- 
 mittee, in short, is a simple and familiar device ap- 
 plied in a new way to meet and solve very old problems. 
 It succeeds where it is estimated at its real worth 
 no more, and no less.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 
 
 THE shop committee is so new a thing in the United 
 States that its relationship to the trade union is still 
 a matter of speculation. Employers ask: Is the shop 
 committee a substitute for the union? Does the shop 
 committee encourage unionism? Employees ask: Is 
 the shop committee a device of capital to prevent union- 
 ism? Does the shop committee discourage unionism? 
 These questions we cannot answer with certainty, for 
 the shop committee is an experiment still an ex- 
 periment in industrial government. Its history is still 
 to be made. 
 
 Yet we may gather from the scanty available records 
 here in the United States as well as from the larger 
 experience in Great Britain enough information to in- 
 dicate what the relationship between the shop com- 
 mittee and the union labor movement will probably 
 grow into. Let us first look at the situation in Eng- 
 land. 
 
 An article in The Public x is highly suggestive : 
 
 " Strikes on a large scale in Great Britain, apparently with- 
 out the knowledge or consent of the trade union leaders, are 
 exciting much comment on this side of the water by those who 
 think that they see an outbreak of Bolshevism in England. 
 Such apprehension springs from a lack of understanding of the 
 British labor movement. 
 
 " There are really two labor movements in Great Britain. 
 One is the ordinary craft unionism, which parallels American 
 trade unionism very closely; the other is the shop stewards' 
 
 i The Public, Feb. 15, 1919. 
 
 91
 
 92 
 
 movement. And it is not an uncommon thing for the British 
 worker to come within the scope of both movements. Some- 
 times the two pull together, and sometimes they are in conflict. 
 
 " The craft unions are nationally organized like our own, 
 and all men are organized by trades into large national socie- 
 ties. The shop stewards are individuals or committees who 
 represent the workers of all trades in individual shops or 
 plants. Sometimes they are merely representatives of the va- 
 rious unions. At other times they represent the workers di- 
 rectly and are directly elected. They frequently represent all 
 the workers in a shop, whether members of a union or not. 
 Occasionally conflict is avoided by requiring the shop steward 
 to be a member of some union. 
 
 " There are thus two systems pulling together sometimes 
 and pulling in different directions at other times, one organ- 
 ized upon a craft basis and the other upon a shop basis. The 
 shop stewards have federated, and have built up organizations 
 composed wholly of shop stewards, which cover large areas. 
 These federations are headed toward the ' one big union ' 
 scheme advocated by a number of American leaders. 
 
 " There is some advantage in having the shop steward sys- 
 tem. It decentralizes trade union negotiations remarkably 
 and increases solidarity. It settles minor grievances by direct 
 contact with the employer, rather than through the interven- 
 tion of a union delegate and the use of very complex and cum- 
 bersome trade union machinery. The shop steward system is 
 a short-cut. It is a protest against craft union bureaucracy, 
 and its rapid growth during the war was caused by the inflexi- 
 bility of the trade union. There are some disadvantages, how- 
 ever, as the present situation in Great Britain will exemplify. 
 The duality of the organization raises the question of alle- 
 giance. Sometimes local grievances result in strikes, and 
 where there is no point of contact between the shop stewards 
 and the trade unions, members of trade unions who owe part 
 of their allegiance to a local shop steward find themselves tak- 
 ing part in unauthorized strikes called by the stewards. 
 These strikes frequently spread and affect great areas. 
 
 " This is literally what has been going on for some time over 
 the greater part of the United Kingdom. Labor disturbances 
 of considerable magnitude between employer and employee are 
 occurring without any knowledge on the part of the national 
 officials of the various crafts involved. British trade unions 
 are in much the same position that the American Government 
 was in just before the Civil War. They have two kinds of 
 government in the same area, local and national, and each
 
 SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 93 
 
 claims to be supreme. A recent proposal to unite the two 
 movements and agree on a practicable division of sovereignty 
 was voted down, but sheer necessity will bring them together 
 in the near future." 
 
 Making every allowance for important differences 
 in national psychology and in the character of 
 the British and American labor movements, this analysis 
 describes with surprising accuracy the sitiation which, 
 in the opinion of the writer, will develop in the United 
 States. Mainly for the reason that the shop committee 
 movement is not as far advanced here as it is in Great 
 Britain, no such conflict as that pictured in the article 
 just quoted has yet arisen. It is to be hoped that none 
 will arise and that a final and satisfactory relationship 
 between shop committees and the unions will be worked 
 out in peaceable fashion. But that there will eventually 
 be a merging of certain of the interests of the shop 
 committees and certain of the interests of the unions 
 can no longer seriously be doubted. 
 
 From its very earliest beginnings in the United States 
 the shop committee movement has been neutral on the 
 union question. For example, in its contract with its 
 employees under the plan of representation described in 
 Chapter I, the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company speci- 
 fically guaranteed the right of the workers to belong 
 to a union or not, as they chose. A similar guarantee 
 is given or implied in every plan of representation, and 
 as has been pointed out more than once, the right to 
 belong to unions without fear of discrimination or dis- 
 charge was one of the agreed principles of the War 
 Labor Board. 
 
 Certain Premises 
 
 On the surface, therefore, the shop committee is 
 neither a union nor a non-union scheme. It is primarily 
 a method of organizing the employees of a given plant
 
 94 
 
 with the employers for the purpose of bringing about 
 efficiency and .better working conditions. The charac- 
 ter of this organization is in several respects different 
 from trade union organization. One important respect 
 is that the organization is dual or joint and that it is 
 based on the theory of cooperation rather than on the 
 theory of competition or conflict. 
 
 Nevertheless the shop committee has a distinct con- 
 nection with the union labor movement, and it is well 
 for both employer and employee to face the facts and 
 understand the nature of this connection. 
 
 The shop committee theory admits as an important 
 premise that employees have the right to organize as 
 employees of a given plant in order to deal, or bargain, 
 collectively, with the management. If this idea is not 
 recognized, there can be no shop committee system. 
 If it is recognized and lived up to, a shop committee 
 system can be created and will succeed. 
 
 In the second place, the shop committee theory ad- 
 mits the premise that the organization which will be 
 most effective in securing the results which are mutually 
 desired, is an organization of the employees of a given 
 plant, and of them alone. Many managers declare: 
 " I will meet with my own employees at any time, but 
 not with union representatives." To such managers the 
 shop committee necessarily makes a strong appeal, for 
 it is a method of securing orderly and representative 
 meetings with employees and only with employees. 
 
 The primary function of the shop committee is, there- 
 fore, local to the plant, and shop committee systems 
 may exist in open shops or in closed shops without 
 effecting any basic change in the relation of the manage- 
 ment to organized labor. This fact is an impelling 
 reason with many employers for favoring the shop com- 
 mittee movement and for utilizing it in their plants. 
 
 Putting to one side the question of union recognition
 
 SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 95 
 
 which the shop committee does not answer because it 
 does not affect it, let us look at the bearing of the shop 
 committee on the union movement as a whole. 
 
 We may say that there are roughly three kinds of labor 
 organizations: the old standard craft or trade unions; 
 the newer industrial or group unions; and the labor 
 councils or local central labor unions, composed of repre- 
 sentatives of various union labor elements in a com- 
 munity. The prime object of all these organizations 
 is mutual benefit through various forms of collective 
 bargaining, and the differences between them are chiefly 
 differences in methods of organization and tactics. On 
 the employers' side there are manufacturers' associa- 
 tions, chambers of commerce, boards of directors and 
 trades or industry councils which represent roughly 
 the economic interests of employers as a class and as 
 of a particular industry. For the purpose of learning 
 the place which the shop committee occupies in relation 
 to this system of organization it is not necessary to 
 analyze it down to a finer point. 
 
 Into this complex system comes the shop committee. 
 
 Like the trade union the shop committee provides 
 a method of collective bargaining as to wages, hours 
 and general conditions of labor. In plants where the 
 trade union is recognized, either frankly or indirectly, 
 the establishment of a shop committee system does not 
 change fundamentally the relationship between the man- 
 agement and its employees. In plants where the trade 
 union is not recognized, the shop committee provides 
 the only means of establishing collective bargaining, 
 and to this extent therefore accomplishes one of the 
 things for which the trade union exists. 
 
 Shop Committees Overlap Unions 
 
 Unlike the trade union, the shop committee provides 
 a method of handling all sorts of conditions in a plant,
 
 96 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 general and special alike. In plants where the union 
 is recognized, the shop committee, while not affecting 
 fundamentally the relationship between the management 
 and its employees, provides both with machinery for 
 the joint settlement of local or domestic plant disputes 
 which are not of enough importance to warrant calling 
 in union representatives. In plants where the union 
 is not recognized, the shop committee performs this 
 same function and in addition provides, or attempts 
 to provide, machinery for the settling of all disputes, 
 great and small. The shop committee therefore to a 
 certain extent in closed shops and to a large extent in 
 open shops takes the place of the trade union. 
 
 For the reasons just enumerated the shop committee 
 appeals naturally to employers who do not recognize 
 the unions, and conversely tends to arouse the antago- 
 nism of labor union advocates and members. 
 
 Another important fact in this connection is that the 
 shop committee movement in the United States is neither 
 primarily a labor movement nor a movement promoted 
 solely by employers. It has advocates and opponents 
 in both camps. It has had, as we have seen, a power- 
 ful promoter in the United States Government, which, 
 it is to be assumed, acted as representative neither 
 of capital nor of labor, but of the public. In its present 
 stage, then, the shop committee movement is in the 
 best possible position for development along lines which 
 will make it of the largest service to the three parties 
 concerned in the maintenance of industrial peace, 
 namely, employers, employees and the public. 
 
 Wholly outside of the relationship established by shop 
 committees between men and management in given 
 plants is the relationship between the shop committee 
 and the general union labor movement. We have seen 
 that the establishment of a shop committee system in 
 a factory does not in theory at least bring about union
 
 SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 97 
 
 recognition, and that it does not, in theory once more, 
 encourage unionism. But does it not in fact advance 
 the tenets of unionism in general? Is not the shop 
 committee a training school in industrial organization, 
 and will not the workers thus taught the advantages 
 and technique of organization, incline more and more 
 to enter the wider field of labor organization as repre- 
 sented by the trade union? Is it a fair statement of 
 the case to say that the shop committee is at best a 
 temporary expedient designed to avoid the apparent 
 recognition of the union, while in reality recognizing 
 the essential principles of the trade union? 
 
 At just this point it is well to emphasize one central 
 difference between the labor situation in the United 
 States and the situation in England, to which we 
 naturally turn for information and guidance on mat- 
 ters both of political and of industrial government. 
 The trade union movement in England is older and 
 more mature than it is in this country. The ques- 
 tion of union recognition has there been decided in the 
 main in favor of the unions. We are consequently 
 not surprised to find in the Whitley report that works 
 or shop committees are strongly recommended, not as 
 a means of supplanting the unions, but as a means of 
 supplementing the work of the unions of employers as 
 well as the unions of employees. We read in the 
 supplement to this report : * 
 
 ". . . Our proposals as a whole assume the existence of 
 organizations of both employers and employed and a frank and 
 full recognition of such organizations. Works committees es- 
 tablished otherwise than in accordance with these principles' 
 could not be regarded as a part of the scheme we have recom- 
 mended, and might indeed be a hindrance to the development 
 of the new relations in industry to which we look forward. 
 We think the aim should be the complete and coherent organ- 
 
 i See Appendix.
 
 98 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 ization of the trade on both sides, and works committees will 
 be of value in so far as they contribute to such a result. 
 
 " We are of opinion that the complete success of works com- 
 mittees necessarily depends largely upon the degree and effi- 
 ciency of organization in the trade, and upon the extent to 
 which the committees can be linked up, through organizations 
 that we have in mind, with the remainder of the scheme which 
 we are proposing, viz., the district and national councils. We 
 think it important to state that the success of the works com- 
 mittees would be very seriously interfered with if the idea 
 existed that such committees were used, or likely to be used, 
 by employers in opposition to trade-unionism. It is strongly 
 felt that the setting up of works committees without the co- 
 operation of the trade-unions and employers' associations in 
 the trade or branch of trade concerned would stand in the 
 way of the improved industrial relationships which in these 
 reports we are endeavoring to further." 
 
 To the great mass of American labor the statement 
 of these principles has doubtless been a cause of satis- 
 faction : certainly these principles meet with the ap- 
 proval of organized American labor. To the great 
 mass of American employers the quotation just given 
 will doubtless appeal as an excellent argument against 
 the establishment of shop committees in the United 
 States. Viewed in the light of the Whitley report, 
 the shop committee is seen to be an adjunct to the 
 trade union, and the encouragement of the one appar- 
 ently means the encouragement of the other with all that 
 that implies of renewal of the old conflict, abuses of 
 privilege, and the like. 
 
 But this overlooks the vital fact that the shop com- 
 mittee is a dual or joint form of organization. This 
 fact brings into the situation an entirely new element, 
 affecting the situation fundamentally. Moreover, it 
 must be remembered that the shop committee is but 
 one branch of a new system of industrial government, 
 already in existence in England and rapidly taking root 
 in the United States also. This system of government
 
 SHOP COMMITTEE AND THE UNIONS 99 
 
 was outlined in the Whitley report. 1 Like the shop 
 committee, it is dual or joint in character. The shop 
 committee is but the lowest unit; the next highest is 
 the joint industrial council for the locality; the next 
 highest the joint industrial council for the industry; 
 and the highest we may conceive to be a joint council 
 or parliament for all the industries of a nation. Such 
 an organization of both employers and employees is 
 fast on the road to realization in the United States. 
 
 The Joint Union Principle 
 
 Viewed in this light, then, the question of the re- 
 lationship of the shop committee to the union appears 
 to be a matter of relatively minor importance, for the 
 reason that both the labor union and the employers' 
 union are in process of changing their functions and 
 of adjusting themselves to the new forms of joint 
 union based on the principles laid down in the previous 
 chapters as the principles of the shop committee. It is 
 now, therefore, seen to be the fact that the shop com- 
 mittee promotes unionization of the workers, just as it 
 promotes unionization of the employers, but that it 
 promotes this unionization for a fresh purpose and in a 
 fresh way. Motive in human affairs is everything. 
 The motive of the old labor union and of the old manu- 
 facturers' association was primarily defensive, hence 
 militant, and hence to some extent destructive. The 
 motive of the new union is constructive. It looks toward 
 cooperation instead of competition, towards strife only 
 as a last resort. 
 
 " Labor believes," writes W. L. MacKenzie King in the book 
 already quoted in these pages, " that its exclusion from repre- 
 sentation in the control of industry has led to vast injustice, 
 and to the organization of business for profit alone; and that 
 
 iSee Chapter I.
 
 100 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 it has occasioned at times the misuse of official power by the 
 courts, the police, and military authorities in support of arbi- 
 trary conduct on the part of corporations. Herein lies the 
 fundamental cause of the warfare between capital and labor. 
 Denied the right to cooperate with capital, labor competes with 
 capital. Industrial life, instead of being in the nature of a 
 partnership, becomes a sort of guerilla warfare in which 
 capital seeks to increase profits at the expense of labor, and 
 labor seeks to increase wages at the expense of capital. On 
 the one side is a misunderstanding of producing costs; on the 
 other side, a misunderstanding of the workers' needs and 
 aspirations. Strikes and lockouts are the crude expression of 
 the resentment which this mutual misunderstanding begets. 
 Until labor and capital are both democratically represented in 
 the control of the business carrying their respective invest- 
 ments, this warfare and anarchy are certain to persist. The 
 organization of business, its terminology and its spirit, must 
 all change if industry is to fulfill its true mission and be made 
 to reflect a real partnership." 
 
 Except therefore to those minds which do not yet 
 clearly see that the industrial world of to-day and of 
 to-morrow is a different world from that of yesterday, 
 the answer to the questions at the head of this chapter 
 is this: 
 
 The shop committee encourages unionism. It is not 
 the unionism of the past, inadequate, imperfect, strug- 
 gling sometimes blindly towards juster relations between 
 capital and labor. The shop committee, meaning 
 thereby the idea of joint shop, and industrial commit- 
 tees and councils, is a substitute for trade unionism. 
 It is a substitute which the unions and the employers 
 will welcome. The shop committee, therefore, is not a 
 device of capital to prevent unionism: its seeds lie 
 deep in the soil of unionism, so deep that unionism of 
 employees alone can not cause them to grow and flourish. 
 The shop committee has in it the germ of the hope 
 of the future of industrial peace and the cooperative 
 commonwealth."
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY KEPORT ON WORKS COMMITTEES l 
 
 In our first and second reports we have referred to the estab- 
 lishment of works committees, representative of the manage- 
 ment and of the workpeople, and appointed from within the 
 works, as an essential part of the scheme of organization sug- 
 gested to secure improved relations between employers and 
 employed. The purpose of the present report is to deal more 
 fully with the proposal to institute such committees. 
 
 2. Better relations between employers and their workpeople 
 can best be arrived at by granting to the latter a greater share 
 in the consideration of matters with which they are concerned. 
 In every industry there are certain questions, such as rates of 
 wages and hours of work, which should be settled by district 
 or national agreement, and with any matter so settled no 
 works committee should be allowed to interfere; but there are 
 also many questions closely affecting daily life and comfort in, 
 and the success of, the business, and affecting in no small de- 
 gree efficiency of working, which are peculiar to the individual 
 workshop or factory. The purpose of a works committee is to 
 establish and maintain a system of cooperation in all these 
 workshop matters. 
 
 3. We have throughout our recommendations proceeded upon 
 the assumption that the greatest success is likely to be achieved 
 by leaving to the representative bodies of employers and em- 
 ployees in each industry the maximum degree of freedom to 
 settle for themselves the precise form of council or committee 
 which should be adopted, having regard in each case to the 
 particular circumstances of the trade; and, in accordance with 
 this principle, we refrain from indicating any definite form of 
 constitution for the works committees. Our proposals as a 
 whole assume the existence of organizations of both employers 
 and employed and a frank and full recognition of such organ- 
 
 i Supplementary to the Whitley report. Great Britain, Min- 
 istry of Reconstruction. Committee on relations between em- 
 ployers and employed. London, 1918. 
 
 101
 
 102 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 izatlons. Works committees established otherwise than in 
 accordance with these principles could not be regarded as a 
 part of the scheme we have recommended, and might indeed 
 be a hindrance to the development of the new relations in in- 
 dustry to which we look forward. We think the aim should be 
 the complete and coherent organization of the trade on both 
 sides, and works committees will be of value in so far as they 
 contribute to such a result. 
 
 4. We are of opinion that the complete success of works 
 committees necessarily depends largely upon the degree and 
 efficiency of organization in the trade, and upon the extent 
 to which the committees can be linked up, through organiza- 
 tions that we have in mind, with the remainder of the scheme 
 which we are proposing, viz., the district and national councils. 
 We think it important to state that the success of the works 
 committees would be very seriously interfered with if the idea 
 existed that such committees were used, or likely to be used, 
 by employers in opposition to trade-unionism. It is strongly 
 felt that the setting up of works committees without the 
 cooperation of the trade-unions and the employers' associations 
 in the trade or branch of trade concerned would stand in the 
 way of the improved industrial relationships which in these 
 reports we are endeavoring to further. 
 
 5. In an industry where the workpeople are unorganized, or 
 only very partially organized, there is a danger that works 
 committees may be used, or thought to be used, in opposition 
 to trade-unionism. It is important that such fears should be 
 guarded against in the initiation of any scheme. We look 
 upon successful works committees as the broad base of the 
 industrial structure which we have recommended, and as the 
 means of enlisting the interest of the workers in the success 
 both of the industry to which they are attached and of the 
 workshop or factory where so much of their life is spent. 
 These committees should not, in constitution or methods or 
 working, discourage trade organizations. 
 
 6. Works committees, in our opinion, should have regular 
 meetings at fixed times, and, as a general rule, not less fre- 
 quently than once a fortnight. They should always keep in 
 the forefront the idea of constructive cooperation in the im- 
 provement of the industry to which they belong. Suggestions 
 of all kinds tending to improvement should be frankly wel- 
 comed and freely discussed. Practical proposals should be 
 examined from all points of view. There is an undeveloped 
 asset of constructive ability valuable alike to the industry 
 and to the State awaiting the means of realization ; prob-
 
 APPENDIX 103 
 
 lems, old and new, will find their solution in a frank partner- 
 ship of knowledge, experience and good will. Works commit- 
 tees would fail in their main purpose if they existed only to 
 smooth over grievances. 
 
 7. We recognize that, from time to time, matters will arise 
 which the management or the workmen consider to be ques- 
 tions they cannot discuss in these joint meetings. When this 
 occurs, we anticipate that nothing but good will come from 
 the friendly statement of the reasons why the reservation is 
 made. 
 
 8. We regard the successful development and utilization of 
 works committees in any business on the basis recommended 
 in this report as of equal importance with its commercial and 
 scientific efficiency; and we think that in every case one of the 
 partners or directors, or some other responsible representative 
 of the management, would be well advised to devote a sub- 
 stantial part of his time and thought to the good working and 
 development of such a committee. 
 
 9. There has been some experience, both before the War and 
 during the War, of the benefits of works committees, and we 
 think it should be recommended most strongly to employers 
 and employed that, in connection with the scheme for the estab- 
 lishment of national and district industrial councils, they 
 should examine this experience with a view to the institution 
 of works committees on proper lines, in works where the 
 conditions render their formation practicable. We have rec- 
 ommended that the Ministry of Labor should prepare a sum- 
 mary of the experience available with reference to works 
 committees, both before and during the War, including infor- 
 mation as to any rules or reports relating to such committees, 
 and should issue a memorandum thereon for the guidance of 
 employers and workpeople generally, and we understand that 
 such a memorandum is now in course of preparation. 
 
 10. In order to insure uniform and common principles of 
 action, it is essential that where national and district indus- 
 trial councils exist the works committees should be in close 
 touch with them, and the scheme for linking up works com- 
 mittees with the councils should be considered and determined 
 by the national councils. 
 
 11. We have considered it better not to attempt to indicate 
 any specific form of works committees. Industrial establish- 
 ments show such infinite variation in size, number of persons 
 employed, multiplicity of departments, and other conditions, 
 that the particular form of works committees must necessarily 
 be adapted to the circumstances of each case. It would, there-
 
 104 THE SHOP COMMITTEE 
 
 fore, be impossible to formulate any satisfactory scheme which 
 does not provide a large measure of elasticity. 
 
 We are confident that the nature of the particular organiza- 
 tion necessary for the various cases will be settled without 
 difficulty by the exercise of good will on both sides. 
 
 EXISTING SHOP COMMITTEE SYSTEMS 
 
 As this book goes to press (April, 1919), many large and 
 email industrial plants are putting in shop committee systems. 
 It is therefore impossible to report a complete list of such sys- 
 tems in existence in the United States at the present time. 
 The following list is admittedly incomplete and is offered to 
 the reader for whatever it may be worth. 
 
 Plans installed by the National War Labor Board 
 Bethlehem Steel Co., South Bethlehem, Pa. 
 Corn Products Refining Co., four plants, Granite City, Ills., 
 
 Argo, Ills., Pekin, Ills., and Edgewater, N. J. 
 General Electric Co., two plants, Pittsfield, Mass., and Lynn, 
 
 Mass. 
 
 Maryland Pressed Steel Co., Hagerstown, Md. 
 Mason Machine Works, Taunton, Mass. 
 Munition Establishments at Bridgeport, Conn., over sixty in 
 
 number. 
 
 Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co., Philadelphia, Pa. 
 Smith & Wesson Co., Springfield, Mass. 
 Standard Wheel Co., Terre Haute, Ind. 
 Waynesboro, Pa., machine shops. 
 Willys-Overland Plant, Elyria, Ohio. 
 
 In addition, the War Labor Board ordered shop committee 
 systems in the Virginia Bridge and Iron Co., Roanoke, Va.; 
 the Southern California Iron and Steel Co., Los Angeles, Calif. ; 
 the Worthington Pump and Machinery Corporation and the 
 Power and Mining Works, Cudahy, Wis.; the New York Cen- 
 tral Iron Works, Inc., Hagerstown, Md. ; the Savage Arms 
 Corporation, Utica, N. Y. ; and others. The plans first listed 
 are apparently the most elaborate. 
 
 Other Plans 
 
 Colorado Fuel and Iron Co., Colorado. 
 Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey, Bayonne, N. J. 
 International Harvester Co., Chicago, Ills., several plants. 
 Wm. Demnth & Co., Richmond Hill, N. Y. 
 Packard Piano Co., Fort Wayne, Ind.
 
 APPENDIX 105 
 
 Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation, Sparrow's Point, Md. 
 
 Printz-Biederman Co., Cleveland, O. 
 
 Morris Herrmann & Co., Newark, N. J. 
 
 Irving-Pitt Manufacturing Co., Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 American Rolling Mills Co., Middletown, O. 
 
 Browning Co., Cleveland, O. 
 
 Acme Wire Co., New Haven, Conn. 
 
 Dennison Manufacturing Co., Framingham, Mass. 
 
 Dutches* Manufacturing Co., Poughkeepsie, N. Y. 
 
 Globe Wernicke Co., Cincinnati, O. 
 
 Hart Schaffner & Marx, Chicago, Ills. 
 
 Hickey-Freeman Co., Rochester, N. Y. 
 
 Hydraulic Pressed Steel Co., Cleveland, O. 
 
 Jeffrey Mfg. Co., Kansas City, Mo. 
 
 The Joseph & Feiss Co., Cleveland, O. 
 
 Leeds Northrup Co., Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 Proctor and Gamble Co., Ivorydale, O. 
 
 White Motor Co., Cleveland, 0. 
 
 Carroll Foundry and Machine Co., Bucyrus, O. 
 
 Hercules Powder Co., Kenvil, N. J. 
 
 Sidney Blumenthal Co., Shelton, Conn. 
 
 Morse Dry Dock Co., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 Garner Print Works, Wappinger Falls, N. Y. 
 
 Sprague Electric Works, Bloomfield, N. J. 
 
 Midvale Steel and Ordnance Co., and subsidiaries, Johns- 
 town, Pa. 
 
 Shipyards wherever covered by Government awards. 
 
 Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, Portland, Ore. 
 ( headquarters ) . 
 
 Inland Steel Co., Indiana Harbor, Ind. 
 
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