The Development of Factory Politics in Britain

Engineering craft unions faced mounting criticism from their members during the fifteen years before World War I. For a significant portion of the ASE rank and file, the problems faced by engineers required a clear break with craft exclusiveness. The power demonstrated by federated employers in 1897–1898 suggested to many engineers the need for amalgamation among craft unions, as did continuing technological change, which blurred traditional trade boundaries and rendered obsolete the continuing demarcations among unions.^[1] For similar reasons some engineers went further and advocated organizing less skilled engineering workers. Dilution increased the number of specialists and narrowed the gap

between skilled and unskilled hands. Unorganized, less skilled workers might be recruited as blacklegs during strikes; standing together, engineering workers would have a stronger bargaining position and be better able to prevent employers from playing one grade off against another. Radicals, often connected with local Amalgamation Committees, accordingly called for "One Big Union for Metal, Engineering and Shipbuilding Workers."^[2]

Such endorsements had minimal impact on ASE structure or policies. Joint consultation among union executives through the General Federation of Trade Unions or the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, for example, scarcely contributed to united action at the local level. Regular petitions from district committees requesting the ASE Executive Council to pursue more complete amalgamation achieved little before 1920. Similarly, support for industrial unionism was substantial but ineffective.^[3] Running on a platform of "one union for engineering, working class solidarity and direct action," Tom Mann received 25 percent of the vote for ASE General Secretary in 1913. Delegate meetings in 1902 and 1912 created new membership sections for specialists and unskilled workers. But conservatives retained control in most districts, and local and national officials alike remained content to leave the new sections empty.

The Development of Local Organization

Unable to win significant reforms at the national level, militant engineers increasingly turned to joint local committees and, above all, to organization within the shops to coordinate policy, conduct negotiations, and manage strikes. Through Joint Engineering Trades Committees (JCs), representatives of craft union district committees could plan common local policies and bargain with employers' associations on a more equal footing. If engineers made little progress toward amalgamation at the national level, JCs provided one base for cooperation among crafts. And as unrest and unionization among less skilled workers mounted after 1910, engineers had in JCs a local alternative to exclusive organization: a body through which representatives of craft and general unions could work together. Because JCs were not subject to the direct authority of individual unions' executives, they also offered local

engineers a base for action independent of sectional union constraints. Such independence led to frequent conflict between union leaders and district officials over the powers of JCs.^[4] Although not active in day-to-day industrial relations and devoted largely to propaganda, local Amalgamation Committees in London, Birmingham, Coventry, Manchester, Tyneside, Sheffield, and Liverpool offered similar opportunities for workers of different unions and skills to discuss shared problems, develop joint strategies, and overcome sectional identities.^[5]

The more important developments in local organization took place within the factories. After 1898, shop stewards and works committees gained new powers and exercised greater independence from formal union policies and leaders. Changes in the character of workshop organization reflected, in part, continuing efforts to combat management encroachments and to defend district work rules. Engineers relied on shop stewards to contest infractions of work rules and negotiate such idiosyncratic workshop issues as abusive supervision or compensating pieceworkers for faulty materials—issues for which union officials were too distant to be of timely and knowledgeable assistance.^[6]

The crucial stimulus to expanded shop organization, however, came from the new industrial relations setting established in 1898. Engineers fighting dilution and piecework confronted not merely the encroachments of individual employers but also the management rights formally conferred on EEF members by the Terms of Settlement (called the Terms of Agreement after 1907). Under these conditions strong workshop organization became crucial to prevent employers from realizing the full benefits of their new entitlements. The Terms, for example, gave employers full authority to select, train, and assign workers to machines. Engineers responded by refusing to instruct green hands or rectify their work and by striking against the two-machine system.^[7] Such strategies were usually organized within the shops, and they were often successful despite their illegality under the Terms.

According to the 1898 settlement, employers also enjoyed the right to introduce incentive pay. The ASE reaffirmed this right in the 1902 Carlisle Agreement, dropping all objections to premium bonus systems so long as management guaranteed overtime and minimum wage rates and did not cut prices unless "the methods or

means of production" changed. Here, too, shop-floor organization became crucial for safeguarding rank-and-file interests. Shop stewards fought price cuts disguised as changes in manufacturing methods, and they ensured that piece rates and bonus times were set by collective rather than individual bargaining.^[8] And if the workers in the shops could not prevent the introduction of obnoxious incentive schemes, they could at least make sure those systems did not pay. Following complaints that engineers could rarely make more than their time wages under a bonus scheme at the Humber automobile plant, the Coventry District Committee conceded the legality of the system but called on "the Intelligence of the men as to what speed they go at for only Dayrate pay."^[9] Shop stewards helped make output quotas known—and they helped make them stick.

Shop organization thus acquired a new strategic value in combating employers' prerogatives under the Terms and the Carlisle Agreement. Perhaps more important, these Agreements committed the ASE to upholding management rights. The union thus became much less supportive of rank-and-file control struggles and in many cases openly opposed them. The result was greater self-reliance at the district and shop levels. Only rank-and-file vigilance could deny employers their right to introduce premium bonus schemes—a lesson emphasized in 1907 when engineers at Vickers struck against a new bonus scheme, only to be ordered back to work by the ASE Executive Council.^[10]

Strong organization in the shops also proved necessary to overcome the constraints of the Terms' Procedure for Avoiding Disputes. The Procedure passed grievances not resolved at the workplace to local conferences between union and employer association representatives and, failing agreement, to a central conference between national leaders. The original disputants were to remain at work under the "current conditions," pending a final decision. This system encouraged workshop organization in two ways. Despite the Terms, engineers often refused to let grievances stand while the Procedure took its leisurely course—especially under favorable business conditions, when immediate strikes promised prompt rewards.^[11] Engineers striking unconstitutionally were usually ordered back to work and the Procedure set in motion, but shop-floor vigilance remained essential for a second reason: to remove the bias in the "current conditions" clause. If engineers could

prevent an employer from initiating an obnoxious change in work practices, forcing the employer to invoke the Procedure, then the benefits of the status quo lay with the employees, pending a decision at a local or central conference.^[12]

In these responses to the Procedure, rank-and-file engineers once again found themselves at odds with their own union officials as well as with organized employers. ASE leaders were committed to the Procedure as the only legitimate means for dealing with shop-floor disputes.^[13] Under the Procedure centralized negotiation not only took grievances out of local hands, but excluded local representatives as well.^[14] ASE officials also assumed responsibility for enforcing the Procedure's ban on strikes while conferences were under way.^[15] Workshop organization and activism offered a means for retaining local control and some freedom of action. Work slow-downs, overtime bans, and strikes initiated by the rank and file often succeeded in imposing domestic settlements on employers in violation of the Procedure and in defiance of ASE constitutional requirements that local action receive prior approval from the Executive Council.^[16]

From 1909, the problem of long-term wage contracts at once reinforced and illustrated these dynamics. In 1908, Newcastle engineers struck to resist a wage reduction, bitterly attacking the Executive Council for its recommendation to accept the cut. To avoid similar antagonisms in the future, as well as to forestall wage reductions elsewhere, the Executive Council increasingly negotiated agreements for individual districts, fixing pay rates for periods of three to five years. Although these agreements appeared to safeguard members' interests during the trade slump of 1908–1909, after 1910 they became clear liabilities. Engineers found their pay frozen while the cost of living increased rapidly, and they saw their revived bargaining strength fettered by long-term contracts.

Under these conditions the agreements appeared to exemplify the pitfalls of centralized bargaining. The contracts had been negotiated in central conference, without proper account given to local participation and interests; and they deprived the rank and file of the freedom to exploit temporary advantages for immediate gain. Long-term agreements thus helped shift the terrain of struggle to the shops. Given strong organization at work and a willingness to defy procedural and union constraints, engineers could

force wages above the agreed district rates. In some cases they did so by informally abrogating the agreements, in others by securing compensating concessions on piece rates and bonus times. Even where economic gains remained limited, militancy contained in wage matters found expression in other forms of self-defense, including battles for closed shops and restrictions on the manning of machines.^[17]

Consequences for Factory Politics

For a significant minority of ASE members, changes at work demanded radical changes in the union's constitution and policy. Conservative views prevailed, and progressive energies turned to local alternatives to established craft unionism. Under new conditions, pragmatism required greater reliance on unofficial leaders and action, even among skilled workers firmly committed to traditional goals. New forms of protest followed. The effect of industrial relations and union constraints was to make rank-and-file organization both more independent and more antagonistic to ASE officials and the Terms. This outcome played an important role in a broader shift in factory politics. Traditional craft interests mobilized through new organizations and under new circumstances began to converge with radical programs, making possible tacit alliances between progressive leaders and militant conservatives.

Before 1898, shop stewards represented the authority of district committees in the plants. They were generally appointed by these committees and charged with monitoring union membership and work rules. In the years before World War I, stewards were more likely to be elected by the workers in the shops; they were also more actively involved in negotiations with management, and they more frequently exercised leadership in calling shop meetings and walkouts. The Terms and Procedure encouraged engineers to develop within the shops a capacity for independent action.^[18] Industrial relations arrangements, however, also placed workshop organization and action in an increasingly adversarial relation to official unions. Craftsmen resented the prerogatives employers claimed under the Terms. ASE leaders had accepted those Terms. They had failed to improve upon them significantly in subsequent nego-

tiations. They had no answer to the usual "failure to agree" at central conferences when local disputes over machine manning or piecework were discussed. Inevitably, the struggle against managerial encroachments directed rank-and-file hostilities against their own union executive. ASE officials appeared spineless at best; at worst they appeared to take the employers' side in conflicts over craft privileges and management rights.^[19]

Under the Procedure the ASE also undertook responsibility to enforce centralized bargaining and to keep members at work. Here, too, union leaders appeared to side with employers in depriving engineers of control over local negotiations and tactics. Because district officials acquired a formal role under the Procedure and corresponding obligations to restrain unofficial action, they too became objects for the rank and file's resentment. A 1914 complaint by an Organizing District Delegate is symptomatic: "In Coventry there have been [in the last month] two strikes.... In both cases the local Committee had been ignored until after members had downed tools, and as this has happened on several occasions the Committee naturally resented what appeared to have become a policy.... However faulty the present methods of negotiation may be we are scarcely likely to find salvation in ignoring the rules we make for ourselves, and the D.C. cannot do otherwise in the interests of the society than insist on being consulted."^[20]

Organizational developments had a broader significance, laying the groundwork for a break with traditional craft politics. Engineering craftsmen valued their control of workshop practices and their autonomy in regulating the trade. But these traditions had an exclusive dimension. Under attack by employers in the 1890s, the craftsmen characteristically responded with sectional goals and tactics. After 1898, new conditions for the mobilization of craft traditions produced a shift in factory politics. Two of these traditions—local autonomy and craft control—adopted a new political complexion and created a common terrain for craft conservatives and radicals. The third—exclusiveness—was significantly eroded.^[21]

Craft conservatives and radicals shared a commitment to local autonomy in trade policy and action. Their motives differed. Conservatives upheld local authority to offset an overly cautious and compromising defense of craft rights by national leaders; radicals did so to safeguard their strongholds from interference by an exec-

utive in which they had as yet little voice.^[22] Under the Terms and Procedure, however, the preservation of local autonomy acquired a distinctly insurgent quality. Conservatives and radicals alike asserted their rights of local control and freedom of action against a distant union officialdom and a bureaucratized system of collective bargaining. One such assertion of local autonomy—the 1908 North East Coast strike in defiance of Executive Council recommendations—led ASE General Secretary George Barnes to resign, citing an undemocratic feeling in the Trade Unions which had worked itself out in the direction of mistrust of officials and officialdom."^[23]

The growing strength and independence of shop committees reflected this repudiation of bureaucratic control. Shop committees also offered conservatives and radicals a common base from which to fight back. An explosion of unofficial and "spontaneous" action followed under the favorable economic conditions after 1910. In 1913, for example, ASE members struck twenty firms covered by the Procedure. Sixteen of the stoppages were unconstitutional.^[24] Other forms of unofficial action (e.g., overtime bans) and cases of shop stewards "exceeding their authority" became increasingly common. These trends—ideological hostility to trade union controls and to centralized union-management collaboration, organizational independence, and what might be termed direct action—have been described as "presyndicalist,"^[25] a suitably cautious formulation. The majority of engineers did not become convinced syndicalists. But there was a convergence between syndicalist ideology and rank-and-file action and a greater willingness of engineers to follow syndicalist agitators rather than official union leaders. In the exercise and organization of local autonomy, even industrial conservatives echoed syndicalist ideas.^[26]

A similar coincidence of practical factory politics and radical ideology characterizes workers' control. Amid the nationwide surge of labor unrest from 1910 to 1914, engineers exploited economic boom and labor scarcity to pursue old goals with new vigor. Disputes and conferences over the manning of machines, premium bonus systems, and the closed shop increased dramatically.^[27] Such challenges to management control differed from those before 1898. Traditional goals acquired an insurgent tone as rank-and-file engineers repudiated not only management's formal rights under the Terms but also union complicity in those rights. Engineers had

developed the organizational means to contest employer prerogatives despite the restrictions of the Terms and an overly compliant union. New constraints and organizational weapons thus mobilized traditional commitments to the craft status quo into more contentious and militant struggles. Nor did prewar factory politics merely advance old ends in new ways. Engineers in many districts, for example, no longer defended the status quo against the introduction of payment by results. Instead, they conceded this innovation but demanded participation in regulating incentive systems. Here, too, engineers won new controls at work through unofficial organization. Shop stewards and pricing committees gained de facto employer (if not necessarily union) recognition to negotiate the administration of piecework schemes.^[28]

These changes did not transform craft conservatives into advocates of workers' ownership and control of the means of production. Despite persisting differences in their ultimate goals, however, the practical politics of conservatives and radicals converged. Syndicalists and Amalgamation Committee movement activists in engineering, as in coal and transport, aimed to secure worker control of industry. In practice their propaganda and strike leadership overlapped with newly militant demands for job control on the part of craftsmen. For both groups, moreover, the factory was the necessary terrain of struggle, and shop committees were a common base for action. In the syndicalist scheme, organization within the shops was to form the basic unit for workers' control and for industrial government; for craft conservatives it offered the means to retain control over workshop practices and have a voice in management decisions, despite employer and union encroachments on their autonomy. By emphasizing its support for local and craft autonomy, the Engineering and Shipbuilding Amalgamation Committee further bridged the gap between radicals and militant conservatives.^[29]

There remained a third craft tradition, exclusiveness, that divided the two groups. For partisans of syndicalism, amalgamation, and industrial unionism, changes in manufacturing practice rendered traditional divisions of craft and skill obsolete. All-grades organization seemed imperative to keep pace with technological change. The tactical weaknesses of a trade union structure splintered into hundreds of craft societies and general unions (as against

increasingly concentrated capital and closely associated employers) also demanded more encompassing labor organization. Such views received considerable support among ASE members, as Tom Mann's 25 percent share of the vote for General Secretary in 1913 indicates.^[30] Yet most engineers remained committed to sectional privileges and more disposed to close ranks against the advance of semiskilled workers than to join with them in "One Big Union."^[31] This view prevailed in the union's constitution and national policy.

Still, convergence between the practical interests of skilled workers and the more ambitious aims of radicals did occur inside the factory gates. Even for conservatives the divisions among craft unions represented a strategic liability. The workers in the shops could act with greater knowledge and dispatch through their stewards than by reporting grievances to separate branches and district committee officials at some future union meeting. Because the Procedure covered most major engineering unions, members of different craft societies could best retain local control through cooperation on the job. United action assumed further importance given employers' willingness to exploit craft divisions for their own advantage.^[32] Although most shop stewards represented the members of their own unions exclusively, stewards of separate crafts gradually formed works committees to handle common affairs. In some cases different craftsmen in a department elected a common steward.^[33] Day-to-day conflicts at work, combined with the peculiarities of trade union structure and industrial relations, thus favored joint organization on the shop floor. Such organization did not in itself convert craft conservatives into class-conscious militants. But it did afford them needed opportunities to pursue interests shared with members of other trade unions and with radicals—specifically, the defense of local autonomy and workplace control. As engineering workers of different trades worked together—selecting common representatives, devising collective demands, and coordinating strikes—craft boundaries were eroded.

Skill boundaries, by contrast, remained intact. Shop stewards and works committees rarely included less skilled men and women in their constituencies before the war.^[34] Few less skilled engineering workers were unionized before 1910, and they lacked the traditions of local autonomy, the strategic position in production, and

the interests in fighting dilution and piecework that contributed to shop-floor organization among craftsmen. The very success of unofficial action by engineers also preserved exclusiveness. Because organization on the job protected the position and power of skilled workers, most engineers had little need to reevaluate sectional identities.^[35] Exclusive shop committees, in turn, provided few opportunities for employees of different skill levels to develop common policies or act together in day-to-day grievances. Here, then, radicals and conservatives found no common ground. Only outside the shops, in local Amalgamation Committees, did there exist established institutions through which militants from trade and general unions could discuss common problems and plot collective strategies.^[36]

The development of joint organization among craftsmen—and only craftsmen—had clear consequences for factory politics. During the prewar years members of different craft unions acted together in industrial disputes with growing frequency. They did so not only in wage movements but also in control struggles, contesting management authority in matters of dilution, piecework, objectionable supervision, and the closed shop. Unofficial workshop organization provided the underpinning for these trends. Joint action among Coventry engineering workers appears earliest at the two firms with the strongest shop organization: the Coventry Ordnance Works (COW) and Daimler.^[37] These disputes were explicitly concerned with control issues. At COW in 1907, workers went out over victimization, task work, job cards, and dilution, as well as over overtime pay and the district rate. Daimler engineers struck in 1908 against the premium bonus system, bonus cards, incompetent rate fixers, and unjust dismissals. Both strikes were initiated without union sanction.^[38]

Craftsmen and less skilled workers, by contrast, remained divided. Although engineering workers of different skills did occasionally undertake joint action during the wave of labor unrest after 1910, cooperation in negotiations and strikes rarely extended beyond economic issues. Given the continued strength of craftsmen and the absence of solidary organization on the job, the basic conflicts of interest between skill grades over dilution and piecework prevented common policies and action in matters of workplace

control. Even in joint wage movements engineers proved willing to break ranks with less skilled workers, accepting settlements for themselves alone.^[39]

Persisting cleavages between craftsmen and less skilled workers should not obscure the fundamental changes in factory politics between 1898 and World War I. New forms of organization gave radicals a foothold they were unable to achieve through formal union channels. The alternatives they offered—syndicalism, workers' control, solidary organization—had some appeal to workers with different political outlooks who nevertheless all chafed under union and bureaucratic constraints, employer offensives on the job, and the tactical liabilities of established craft unionism. There was a dilemma, however, in the status of workshop organization before the war. Strong unions and the Terms and Procedure provided both a protective and a restrictive shell for shop-floor activism. Despite rank-and-file hostility to union policies and the Terms, engineers clearly benefited from both. The ASE successfully defended union activists from victimization and made a special provision of a year's wage to any steward discharged for "executing his duties."^[40] The Terms and Procedure, in turn, rendered certain grievances legitimate and established ground rules for handling them. The price was union discipline and procedural constraint. It was not always paid, especially during prosperous times when engineers could win disputes quickly, without benefit of union strike funds or fear of being fired. But ordinarily, the prospects of union censure, denial of financial support, and loss of the opportunity to invoke a binding grievance procedure were powerful obstacles to unconstitutional action. The weight of such considerations is indicated by ASE members' willingness, even in the militant year of 1914, to approve (by a two to one margin) a revised procedure for avoiding disputes following their vote to withdraw from the Terms.^[41]

Dependence brings constraints. To the extent that engineers agreed to play by the rules of the game, factory politics remained relatively routine and circumscribed by sectional union priorities. The prospects of union sanctions made shop-floor leaders cautious in advocating unofficial action, especially when such action seemed certain to elicit union censure—as in walkouts in support of less skilled workers. An employer might, of course, decline to invoke

the Procedure if acquiescence to shop-floor pressures seemed prudent. But usually, works committees and stewards eventually forwarded disputes to regular union officials, who would drop demands at odds with craft policies. Thus progressive initiatives were limited by restrictions on the freedom of action enjoyed by rank-and-file organization. Indeed, including plant conferences as a formal stage in the revised grievance procedure of 1914 suggests an effort by employers and union leaders to restrict workshop organization to official union business. Continued dependence on formal union structures also confined unofficial organization and movements to individual shops or, at most, to localities. Militants who might have coordinated insurgence or secured a broader following as yet had no effective institutional alternative to the district committees of sectional craft unions.

These limitations are clear in the period of labor unrest during the four years before World War I. Engineers shared the general enthusiasm for strikes and turned favorable business conditions to their own advantage. Historians have viewed industrial conflict in engineering during this period as limited compared to the conflicts involving coal, railway, and dock workers and less skilled men and women. Engineers' moderation has been attributed to the success of industrial relations procedures and the maturity of craft unions in the trade.^[42] Yet the number of small, brief strikes increased dramatically, as did the use of such tactics as overtime bans.

That these disputes were so often initiated by unofficial leaders demonstrates the extent to which engineers had developed alternative forms of organization to advance their interests. Unofficial organization, moreover, often combined workers of diverse crafts (if not skills) in opposition to union policies and industrial relations rules. It is clear, though, that unrest remained localized and limited in scope. Unconstitutional action continued to rely on craftsmen's strategic workplace position and sectional interests. The absence of large-scale disputes involving skilled workers in the industry also reflects the accomplishments of union-management collaboration through the Procedure. Any large or protracted conflict would have required formal union sanction and risked a lockout by the EEF. Rank-and-file activists had yet to surmount union and industrial relations constraints on broadly based movements for workers' control.