Origin of Trade Unionism

A critical study of the journey from

‘darkness to light’
Social-Psychological Approach

Robert F.Hoxie
Blanche Grambs- ‘No Work’ 1935
• “A TU has originated because of sheer common
belief generated in a group and this belief is
related to problems confronting the workers and
generalised programme of improvement”

• - Socio-psychological environment of the

workers and not economic reasons.
 Presence of a T.U. affects:

• Employers right to run his business as he

pleases

• Workers right to work where, when and for

whom he pleases

• Ethical standards as class loyalty against

individualism, distribution of profits , social
welfare
 TU Classification

• Basis of Classification:
According to group psychology, structure
and function

• Based on their methods to achieve aims

and objectives.
 Types: Business Unionism
• Essentially trade conscious rather than class
conscious

• Emphasizes that the economic advantages to be

bargained through collective actions like strike
aiming at improvement in wages, working
hours and conditions of work.
…Contd.

• Accepts the existing capitalistic organisation

and the wage system.

• Relies heavily on the strike weapon

• Limited membership,mostly skilled workers.

 Uplift Unionism
• Idealistic in nature. Aspires to elevate the moral,
intellectual and social life of the workers under
which they work.

• Aspires to raise the material standard of living of

the workers and provide them security against
unemployment, accident, disease or old age.
 ...Contd.

• Depends on the process of collective

bargaining through cooperative enterprises
and profit sharing
Faces of American Trade Unionism
 Revolutionary TUs

• Radical and class conscious and hence

rejects individual ownership of production
means and the wage system.

• Strongly inclined towards strike and

violence.
Face Of Revolutionary Trade Unionism...
 Types of Revolutionary Unions:

Two types, namely:

• Socialistic Unionism

• Quasi-Anarchistic Union
Socialistic Unionism

• Ideally wants to establish

a society having equal
opportunities

• Believes in peaceful
cordial industrial relations
through collective
bargaining.
 Quasi- Anarchist Unions

• Believes management class as necessary evil

• Concentrates on direct actions like strikes

sabotage and boycott and resort to violence
as pressure tactics
 Predatory Unionism

• Do not have any ideology, ethics or code of

conduct

• Adapts to any method as per appropriate

time and situation.
 Dependant Unionism

• Totally depends on the support of the

company or the employees

• Parasitic in nature

• Two forms:
Company Union (seeks employers support
 …Contd.

… for survival without caring for workers’

interest)

• Union Label Unionism: Puts pressure on

employers to hire union members.
Scarcity Consciousness Approach

Selig Perlman
 Study: Labour Movements in Russia, Germany,
Great Britain and U.S.

• Attributed Unionism to ‘job consciousness’

rather than ‘class consciousness’

• Collective control of employment opportunities

than towards similar control of the industry.
 Psychology of labouring man
• Psychology of seeking a livelihood in the face of
limited economic opportunity

• Manual workers’ awareness of the scarcity of

opportunity - Union formation- protection of jobs
and distributing employment opportunities among
its members
…contd.

“ The beginning of a class struggle has

nothing to do with machine technique and
capitalists,ownership of the tool of
production…the big underlying cause was
the rapid extension of markets outrunning
the technical development of the industry”

- Perlman
Factors determining character of Labour
Movement

• Capacity or incapacity of capitalist system

to survive as ruling group in the face of
revolution.

• Intellectuals of the society primarily

underestimating capitalism’s resistance
power and overestimating labour’s will to
radical change.
 ...contd

• Maturity of trade union mentality. The

consciousness of scarcity of opportunities
in the market.
Origin of Unionism

Frank Tannenbaum
• T.Us formed in reaction to alienation and
loss of community life to a new
individualistic social system.

• Unions returns to workers his societal life

that he left behind while migrating from
rural background.
Psychology behind Tannenbaum’s theory

Dreams of a better world

allure people to migrate
before it turns to a nightmare
• T.Us inculcate a sense of value and
fellowship

It is a social and ethical system and not

merely an economic one.
- F.Tannenbaum
Origin of Unionism

Richard Ely, U.S. 1886

• Inequality between labour and management
and “almost unlimited control of the employer
over the social and political life of the
employees.”

• TU s in process of locating the best market for

its members learnt methods of united action.
Origin of Unionism

The Fabian School

Beatrice(1858-1943) and
Sidney Webb were pioneering
social economists, early
members of the Fabian
Society and co-founders of
the London School of
Economic and Political
Science
 “…a continuous association of wage earners for
the purpose of maintaining or improving the
conditions of their working lives”

• Institution for overcoming managerial

dictatorship and means of economic
protection for the workers through bargaining
• T.Us are meant for ‘industrial democracy’
ie. more power of the workers in running of
the industry.

• Critical about multi-unionism

“We have industrial society still divided vertically
trade by trade instead of horizontally between
employers and wage earners.”
Origin of Unionism

Mahatma Gandhi’s Approach

• T.Us as reformist organisation having
economic guidelines

• Capitalist and labour are supplementary to

each other with the former taking care of
economic and moral welfare of the later.
• Supported strikes as inherent right of
workers to secure justice.

• Strikes would succeed if :

There is a total unity among strikers
The cause should be just and procedure
should be nonviolent in nature.

Workers to go on strike only after capitalist

fails to respond to moral appeal.
Origin of Unionism

- Karl Marx (1818 - 1883)

Karl Marx
Communist Manifesto and Das Capital
"All our inventions have endowed material forces
with intellectual life, and degraded human life
into a material force.”

“ The philosophers have only interpreted the

world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Thank You !