The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-09-26
Mistakes In Our Trade Union
Work
Work

were merely playing with the question of
serious struggle against the stretchout and
wage-cuts, and the prestige of the union suf-
fered accordingly.
If, on the other hand, we had concentrated
all our forces and energies on one mill, or
the mills in one town, where conditions were
especially bad, with the definite prospect of
building up a strong mill committee with its
ramificatons extending to every department,
and determined to take advantage of the first
favorable opportunity, such as wage-cut
or stretch-out or widespread victimization of
union men, for a strike, the present situation
of the National Textile Workers Union in
Georgia, where today have absolutely moth
ing, would have been far different. We have
nothing in Georgia today because the workers,
who realize as well as we Communists that
nothing can be gained except through the
strike struggle, saw that we were not seri-
ously and competenty organizing and prepar-
ing for strike action. These workers came
into the union to get better conditions and
when they saw we were not preparing in
serious manner to carry on the fight through
strike action for better conditions, they left
the union. Can we blame them? l think not.
In District II we were given this same in
correct theory of building the unions when one
OF our comrades proposed that in order to
fight the A. F. of L. we send forces into new
territory where we had nothing and where
the A. F. of l.. was showing considerable ac-
tivity This would have been desirable, but
with our weak forces it meant inevitable ne
glect of work already started. This comrade
did not see that the way to smash the A. F.
of L. and to destroy it's influence over the
workers is not to rush heller SHELTER over the
country setting up small meaningless COM
mittees, but to concentrate our forces on build
ing up committees in a few shops to which
we can give adequate attention and which
therefore will not remain mere agitational or
gans for time and then collapse but which
will develop into the leaders of the workers,
consciously preparing for strike action and
capable of carrying such action through. One
strike, if only partially successful, will mean
more to us in building the revolutionary unions
than score of still-born organization commit
tees in the shops without any clear prospective
of strike, whose only function is the issuance
OF an occasional leaflet, and which through
lack of concrete program of action are
bound to collapse
We have yet to learn, it seems, the elemen-
tary fact that organization committees and
the bonaflde shop committees, which it is
their task to build, are organs of struggle. It
is possible to build up an organization COM
mlttee of revolutionary union in a shop
through propaganda and agitation and a mini
mum of organization work. 1t is impossible
to keep that committee in existence indefi-
nitely through giving it merely agitational
functions to perform. The workers will Join
that shop organization because our agitation
was conferred around fighting demands and
fighting slogans. They join in order to carry
on the fight. If we fail to convince these
workers through our organizationa activity
that we are preparing organizationally for
the fight, that we are driving steadily along
the path to strike action for definite demands
in that particular shop, we will fail to hold
them. Some few will remain, but these will
be the most class-conscious advanced workers
workers in most cases ready for member
ship in the Party-while the masses of work.
ers will remain outside of our organization
1t is true that we cannot state arbitrarily
that our prospective in every shop and indus
try is for an immediate strike. Ill-prepared
strikes, called at the wrong time; strikes that
are doomed to defeat from the very start, can
do us tremendous amount of harm. This is
another reason for concentrating our best
forces on those industries and shops where