Chapter 2. 2 Business Unionism

Almost everyone who joins a trade union and is active within it does so for reasons of mutual protection against the uncertainties and predatory behaviours of the economic system at large. Historically, this has meant that arguments on different sides within the trade union movement largely unfolded within the context of how best to interact with employers to gain better security of employment and a decent standard of living. In order to resolve these difficult issues, the concept of “business unionism” quickly became the generally agreed-upon outlook for the IBEW, a secure philosophical anchor in sometimes dangerous seas. What was business unionism? Put in forthright and unambiguous language, the term has been used by certain left-wing critics to describe unions that leave “unquestioned capital’s dominance, both on the job and in society as a whole.”1 In the case of the IBEW, founded in St. Louis in 1891, it has also traditionally meshed this point of view with a narrow trade (or craft) outlook, as opposed to any other perspective. The outward appearance of these “sensible” unions is such that their organizations champion a business-like approach to trade unionism, often appearing even as supporters to employers, including outsized salaries for their own leaders.2 They are highly centralized, in that decision-making and political power rests with a small group at the top of the union structure, which, in the case of the IBEW, consisted of individuals at its International Office in Washington, DC. Philosophically, then, the core of the argument put forward by champions of business unionism was equally candid and readily promoted by one of its own: “We recognize that labor cannot receive a fair wage unless business receives a just profit for its investment.”3 The result was that craft-oriented business unions like the IBEW did not like to deviate very far from promoting the narrow and religious-like trilogy of higher wages, better working conditions, and job security. Outside political entanglements were mostly to be avoided, as they would serve only to divide the rank and file and divert funds away from immediate membership-specific needs. Yet, constantly threatened from within and without, business unionism was not like a ready-made and off-the-shelf item found in a grocery store; on the contrary, it was honed and moulded over many decades of actual lived experience, with demonstrable success in this case, as the IBEW steadily grew in numbers and influence. As can well be imagined, the growth and importance of business unions was not accomplished in predictable sequential and linear fashion. Serious setbacks sometimes occurred and included, but were not limited to, sudden economic downturns and depressions with employers going out of existence, expensive court battles, picket line defeats, and serious internal factional splits—such as the one lasting six years that divided the IBEW into two competing entities from 1908 to 1914.4 When encountering stormy waters, business unionism was nevertheless a fundamentally proven safe harbour in which to moor the union boat. While individual electrical locals might challenge the hours of work required per week or deplore the myriad ways in which employers found ways to circumvent aspects of the collective agreement, the International Office rarely ventured into such treacherous ideological terrain. Capitalism was here to stay, needed to be embraced, and both employers and employees would benefit as long as there was a bit of give-and-take from both sides to make it work.

Competing ideological currents, such as business unionism’s main competitor in the twentieth century—that of a Marxist-oriented labour theory of surplus value and an accompanying class struggle set of strategies—were repeatedly rejected as too radical for the membership, too combative, often ruinously expensive, and lacking in pragmatism.5 Considered beyond the pale in this regard would have been the preamble of the amended constitution of industrial unions such as the International Union of Mine-Mill and Smelter Workers (or simply “Mine-Mill”). Highlighted as a point of comparison since it briefly became an issue in IBEW Local 213, Mine-Mill brought under one industrial union roof what was considered mostly a large mass of unskilled workers. By 1951 its constitution had six main clauses. The first two clauses affirmed basic Marxist tenets for true believers, in that it declared “there is a class struggle in Society,” and that this “is caused by economic conditions” with the “producer . . . exploited of the wealth which he produces.” What really put up the proverbial red flag for business unionists, however, was clause 3, which boldly stated: “We hold that the class struggle will continue until the producer is recognized as the sole master of his product.”6 Following the successes of the Russian revolution in 1917, Marxist-inspired ideas such as these were effectively belittled by the IBEW’s International Office as communistic—the foreign ideas of a belligerent power, the sum total of evil that was incompatible with American trade union interests. By the mid-twentieth century, one of its regional representatives in California could even confidently testify that, in the United States at least: “We have always construed it that the Communists were a dual organization and had as its purpose the destruction of the American Federation of Labor. Therefore any proven Communist would not be eligible to get membership or retain membership in the IBEW.”7 As well, pursued to its logical conclusion, collective agreements with employers would be yet more difficult to achieve if there was a constant disputative basis questioning the right of the latter to fundamentally exist; though, of course, a reciprocal understanding did not always hold true as employers had successfully argued in both Canada and the United States that unions, in certain circumstances, should be considered criminal conspiracies engaged in restraint of trade standing in the way of a company’s God-given right to make a profit.8 Business unions like the IBEW thus fell back and relied upon an uneasy, yet practical analysis. Relying on reasoning that had its origin in simple financial theory relating to the fundamentals of supply-and-demand economics, it believed the relative scarcity of most electrical workers’ highly specialized set of skills allowed it to demand that the profits generated for employers be more equitably shared.9 Even more, that good working conditions be encouraged as it led to increases in productivity, and that continuity of employment be maintained as much as was feasible to retain the loyalty of reliable workers.

The IBEW, tired of endless conflict and close to financial ruin on several occasions, achieved a perceived breakthrough in the United States with the successful establishment in 1920 of the Council on Industrial Relations (CIR). This was a bipartite body made up of equal numbers of management and union representatives and tasked with the goal of resolving collective bargaining disputes before they occurred. Even though unanimous consent is required from both sides (a difficult proposition for any organization), the CIR continues to function to this day, with the IBEW even proudly proclaiming to its members that it is “the most important IBEW program you haven’t heard about.” James P. Noonan, IBEW International president in 1921, explained the union’s original rationale for its commitment to the CIR: “It is the part of good judgment to cooperate with employers who are fair to organized labor and further strengthen the reasons why such employers favor organization among their employees.” He added: “It is useless to make the sacrifices which strikes occasion if it is possible to reach an honourable adjustment by conciliatory methods.”10 Part of an obviously long-term outlook on the superiority of discussing issues as opposed to any of the alternatives, the IBEW’s International Office has been firmly committed to the belief that unions like their own can peacefully co-exist with capital. For this to succeed, an important part of what was required was to have in place neutral structures like the CIR that would ensure constant conversations with employers took place, leading eventually, it was hoped, to consensual agreements.

Critics, on the other hand, have pointed out that these labour-management bodies are often used by employers to impose their own agenda on participating unions, manipulating the latter into participating in the exploitation of its own rank and file. The so-called greater good often masks the reality of workers continually putting aside their interests for corporate efficiency and the never-ending quest for a more profitable bottom line. There is also a get-out-of-jail card as organizations such as the CIR constitute a consultative body only; employers, if they so choose, can simply walk away from the table and ignore its findings. That the obverse is also true, that the IBEW can also walk away from any CIR findings, makes its century of existence all the more remarkable. In the “Report on the IBEW Pension Benefit Trust Fund,” submitted to the US Senate, the Board of Trustees recounts an incident involving a reporter who attended one the CIR’s quarterly meetings and captured the problem with the union’s involvement with the CIR succinctly. During an opportune moment he said to someone who was waiting to address the meeting: “I’ve observed for over an hour and listened to the questions asked by the Council members, but I can’t distinguish at all, which men are management and which union. Can you point out which is which?”11 That corporate executives and top-flight union officers might be able to reconcile the traditional gap in their respective outlooks speaks volumes about the potential for social and cultural convergence by sitting around a table on a regular basis. That this meeting of the minds at the top did not always miraculously reproduce itself to reflect positively in wages received or conditions experienced on actual job sites, was only too predictable. A few chummy men in expensive suits figuring out what was good for the thousands who were putting in repetitive weekly grinds at work could easily leave out the people most affected by these decisions. When rank-and-file electrical workers eventually learned of the CIR’s existence, they might have consequently been openly cynical and unsurprisingly skeptical as to its value. While the CIR was originally called the “Council on Industrial Relations for the Electrical Contracting Industry in the United States and Canada,” the country references were eventually dropped. By 1966, the year of the Lenkurt strike, an equivalent of the CIR for electrical contractors and the IBEW in Canada did not functionally exist.12

The IBEW also had large, powerful, and innovative locals within its organization, such as New York City’s Local 3, which historically ran ahead of the conservative International Office. Yet the early history of Local 3 was not very pretty. In the early 1920s it was the theatre of a dark period of internal corruption and racketeering. It was then subject to what has been portrayed as a “draconian” six-year trusteeship imposed by the IBEW’s International Office. Emerging in 1932 out of this morass was a fierce yet visionary union man, Harry Van Arsdale Jr., who subsequently became Local 3’s business manager from 1933 to 1968; in addition he also served as president of New York City’s Central Labour Council from 1959 to 1986.13 A devout Catholic, but not much of a saint as a young adult, Van Arsdale Jr. did not hesitate to resort to strong-arm tactics to continue the rigid practices imposed by the International Office and also to silence critics within Local 3.14 He was eventually able to recruit a like-minded executive board, then successfully construct what has been described as an innovative “hybrid industrial/horizontal and craft/vertical organization.”15 Emulated to this day elsewhere in the labour movement, this confusing term meant he took the opportunity to bring in all kinds of electrical workers, both from an assembly-line industrial setting and from a skill-based craft setting, and had them all participate together in the political and organizational structure evolving in Local 3. This trade union hybrid form and content was considered groundbreaking in the IBEW at the time and was emulated, seemingly by osmosis, in remote Vancouver-based Local 213.

Local 3’s big breakthrough occurred in the latter half of the 1930s when Van Arsdale Jr. managed to convince New York City’s electrical contractors to support the city’s electricians in refusing to install manufactured equipment that did not bear the IBEW Local 3 label—a co-operative relationship that was formalized in 1943 through the establishment of the Joint Industry Board of the Electrical Industry (JIB). This combined union-industry boycott effectively froze out competitors behind what was later described as a “Chinese Wall” around New York City.16 Adversaries of this tactic, not unsurprisingly both non-IBEW manufacturers and contractors, immediately accused Van Arsdale Jr. of having craftily built a monopoly within the electrical construction industry and of having then mounted an unrelenting campaign to enforce it. The assailed business manager did not deny the accusations, but at the same time he argued that “we have the legal right to do it. We’re protecting union members’ jobs against non-union competition from out-of-town.”17 The “legal right” to which Van Arsdale Jr. was referring was conferred by a U.S. Court of Appeals judgment that sided with Local 3 by reversing an earlier unfavorable ruling by a district court. But it was not to be. In a landmark decision handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on June 18, 1945, Justice Hugo Black, speaking on behalf of the Supreme Court, declared, “Finding no purpose of Congress to immunize labor unions who aid and abet manufacturers and traders in violating the Sherman Act, we hold that the district court correctly concluded that the respondents had violated the Act.”18

Yet, as was the case with the entire trade union movement, it was mostly the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act that became an important impediment to Local 3’s exceptional influence, as the government legislation banned the use of the local’s successful secondary boycott campaign.19 Van Arsdale Jr., however, was not deterred. He forged ahead, helping to pioneer a myriad of impressive breakthroughs for his local, most notably a continent-wide five-hour workday in 1962 with no commensurate loss in pay. Van Arsdale Jr.’s long-term goal in this regard was to consolidate his vision of systematic work-sharing. Shorter hours were meant to “not only ameliorate unemployment” (a constant scourge of those toiling away in the building trades), but with the time now made available to promote a consequential and laudable “self-improvement of the individual.”20

Despite unavoidably having to lead his local into strikes every so often, Van Arsdale Jr. firmly believed that workers “can gain the most benefit by working co-operatively with employers” as they were in a relationship that was “symbiotic by necessity.” Strikes, he believed, were a weapon of last resort and a physical manifestation of flaws inherent to the human condition; more accurately, organized work stoppages were a sign that something had failed in the collective bargaining process. As with the earlier creation of the CIR in Washington, he openly invited employers to consensually agree to collective agreements through New York’s JIB and to work together with IBEW Local 3 for the greater good. To the general public, Van Arsdale Jr. exemplified the positive results that could be attained by union leaders who sought to expand the boundaries of traditional relationships and had the backbone to follow up on these ideas. Local 3’s business manager never tired of pointing out that a union which negotiates a collective agreement only is not a real union: “It must go further and try to improve the life and welfare of its members in many other ways too. Of course, the contract helps in that regard, but it’s not enough.”21 Not to overemphasize a key point, it goes without saying that much of his success was dependent on the International Office having backed off on its habit of sometimes micro-managing locals with which it had disagreements and permitting the exploration of doing things differently. Having secured a precarious autonomy from the Washington office, Van Arsdale Jr. was arguably a successful pioneer of what came to be widely known later on as “social unionism,” though his efforts were largely concentrated within the supportive contours of IBEW Local 3.22

What helps to explain Van Arsdale’s undeniable success was that he and the 30,000 electrical workers he came to lead in Local 3 (one of the largest locals in the IBEW) benefited from the “long boom.” This was a huge and unusually long-lasting postwar expansion in the economy that lasted from 1945 to about 1973.23 Taking advantage of this economic expansion following the Great Depression of the 1930s wasn’t exactly an effortless, uncomplicated exercise in collective bargaining, but it was certainly easier than in earlier business cycles. As an outlier in the IBEW, it should also be pointed out that Local 3’s successes were not systematically reproduced elsewhere in the union’s continent-wide sphere of influence. Along with the inevitable conflicts and sometimes physically oriented strikes with recalcitrant companies, Harry Van Arsdale Jr. and the electrical workers in Local 3 nevertheless tirelessly worked to prove that their sometimes strong-armed brand of business unionism could indeed help produce a more stable civil society. This was a form of imposed social democracy, in which all could live and prosper within a capitalist economy.

While Local 3 could loudly trumpet for a while its motto of “always leading the way,” outwardly projecting a hopeful and progressive image of society from its hard-won fortress in New York City, the IBEW in the past had generally tried to ignore the struggles of unskilled labour elsewhere in the electrical sector of the economy. More often than not centred in large-scale manufacturing plants, these hundreds of thousands of production workers had tried before to improve their circumstances through a bona fide union organization, but to no avail. Employed in huge electric and radio production factories, such as those owned throughout the United States and Canada by General Electric, Westinghouse, or the Radio Corporation of America (RCA Victor), they had been mostly bypassed by the IBEW as they were considered too troublesome and not skilled enough to be able to exert any serious leverage on employers. That began to change in the mid-1930s when the IBEW suddenly took notice of a growing demand for some sort of union representation and the security of collective agreements among the masses of assembly-line production workers. But these previously unorganized workers mostly chose to give their allegiance initially to a new and assertive industrial union, the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE). Under the combined auspices of the protective umbrellas provided both by the Wagner Act and the upstart Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO), UE was spearheaded during the latter half of the 1930s by well-known socialists or self-proclaimed Communists in the United States such as James Matles, Julius Emspak, or William Sentner; in Canada their Ontario-based counterparts and kindred spirits became George Harris and C. S. (Jack) Jackson.24 While they had to accept the legal boundaries of the existing business union model, UE’s leaders worked tirelessly to transform their new union into something better than their denunciations of the rival IBEW; the latter was castigated as a dictatorial top-down organization that long permitted the informal exclusion of African-Americans from full membership, and that did little to have employers stop discriminating against lower-paid women.25 These accusations were accompanied by periodic denunciations that the IBEW devalued factory production workers in general, since a 1935 clause in the IBEW constitution granted them fewer voting rights and mere “Class B” status (a Class “BA” membership was inaugurated in 1946).26 Though the IBEW had succeeded in registering thirty-one B locals by 1937, these were mostly anchored in smaller manufacturing plants.27 When the IBEW came up against UE in organizing conflicts, the new kid on the block didn’t hesitate to accuse the IBEW of toadying up to management and giving the appearance of company unionism. A UE organizer in Pennsylvania even went so far as to write accusingly in 1937 that the IBEW was “being used as a disruptive agency with Company assistance and consent.”28 Comments such as these would unfortunately prove not to be unusual as there would be other, equally distressing episodes, in this hostile relationship.29 In contrast, the procedures and militant bargaining tactics employed by left-wing CIO unions in this era were much more oriented toward an oft-highlighted egalitarian “rank-and-file democracy” and were evidently grounded in something much less hierarchical and more progressive than the usual business unionism.30 Communist UE activists in the 1930s would occasionally cite Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin at mass meetings, sit-down strikes, and on picket lines, to the extent that they were known for regarding unions as “a weapon for the liberation of the working-class.”31 In the end it became inevitable that neither side would be completely innocent in the ugly cut-and-thrust of competing unionization drives.

Organizations such as the “socially transformative” UE and more traditional business unions like the IBEW soon came into regular conflict. In an illustrative incident, in 1940, when the IBEW lost a representational vote at the RCA plant in Camden, New Jersey, International President Daniel Tracy immediately proceeded to red-bait the winners. Standing firm in what appeared to be the customary anti-Communist stance of the International Office, Tracy declared that the UE is “nothing more nor less than a branch of the secret service of Joseph Stalin . . . a puppet of the Communist executive board” and “a branch of the so-called Communist Party.”32 Even more concerning was the accompanying revelation that the secretary of the International Office, G. M. (Gus) Bugniazet, had, at the same time, initiated a contract with a private detective agency in order “to follow up leads on suspected Communists.”33 Reading between the lines, the message from Tracy and Bugniazet was unambiguous: if electrical workers were to be organized, both employers and employees would have been far better off with the IBEW, a representative organization that did not fundamentally question the existing economic and political framework of society. As far as the IBEW was concerned, it was both naïve and dangerous to believe there might be a superior alternative to a business-friendly union.

Eventually overtaken in the manufacturing category in 1949 by the founding of the equally anti-communist International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (IUE), the IBEW nevertheless maintained a presence in this sector. Perusing the few existing histories relating to the IBEW, it becomes apparent that problems with workers involved in industrial forms of production would plague the union throughout its existence.34 This extended to British Columbia as a province and to Canada as a country. Though the political economy north of the forty-ninth parallel was distinct from that which had evolved in the United States, there were nevertheless both similarities and continuities in development, particularly on the trade union front.