Talk:Craft unionism

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I don't have the time or inclination at the moment to do the research necessary to fix it, but as it stands, much of this article is a POV attack on the AFL-CIO. Arguments that are hotly contested within organized labor are presented as fact ("One advantage of craft unionism is acceptability to the employer"), characteristics are attributed to craft unionism which often apply equally to industrial unions ("Craft unions typically negotiate contracts which include the dues checkoff and the no strike clause"), etc. Fixing it will probably requiring rewriting and/or removing entirely much of the article as it presently exists. RadicalSubversiv E 12:41, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Outdated material

RadicalSubversiv E has removed the following passage from the article as POV editorializing:

The concept of a progression from craft union to trade union to industrial union to one big union is appealing. The reality has been that union bureaucracies tend to resist change, and the rivalry between the AFL and the IWW, and later between the AFL and the CIO before their merger suggests that such a progression is fraught with difficulty.

I would agree. The first sentence strikes me as pure IWW gospel, which is appealing to some but not all workers. While I think that the second sentence is true, it is so general as to be nothing more than editorializing. The body of the article says as much, at least as far as U.S. unions are concerned (the experience of unions elsewhere does not necessarily fit this pattern). And suggesting that the CIO was a step along the way to "one big union" is simply wrong: that was never the ideology of any of those who organized it.

But I would go further and knock out the preceding paragraph, which is drawn from a work written before the founding of the CIO:

==From craft union to one big union==

We frequently use the terms "craft union" and "trade union" interchangeably. Writers Albert & Vera Weisbord make a distinction between the two. They have written, "As capitalism rapidly developed, compelling some crafts to disappear, skilled workers to become unskilled, the skilled of one factory to replace the skilled of another, the employers to co-operate one with the other, etc., these local craft unions were forced to broaden out into trade unions, embracing all those of their craft throughout the country, or taking in others besides their particular craft, either directly into their own local, or into other locals affiliated with them. As small business gave way to large trusts, the workers attempted to match the combine of capital by efforts to fuse together all the trades of a given industry into an industrial union and to band all the industrial unions into one central organization."

The first sentence is, I believe false. While this confusion between "craft" and "trade" unions might have been common in 1935, I do not believe it is now. In addition, this distinction between "craft unions" and "trade unions" is somewhat creaky. While craft unions may have been localized organizations, they went national more than 125 years ago. And our British readers use "trade unions" in a different way, to refer to labor unions generally.

As for the quotation, I don't think it adds much. It is written in the vague ahistorical language of economic determinism—"the workers" did this or that—that assumes that economic development, concentration, etc. drives historical events. While I don't quarrel with the broad outline suggested by this passage, it is so sketchy as to be useless. I say leave the link, which is an interesting artifact, but take out the quotation.

Yours in struggle --Italo Svevo 17:23, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Agreed 100%. RadicalSubversiv E 17:35, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)