One Big Union (concept)
The One Big Union is an idea originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amongst trade unionists to unite the interests of workers and offer solutions to all labour problems.
Unions initially organized as craft unions. Workers were organized by their skill: carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers, each into their respective unions. Capitalists could often divide craft unionists along these lines in demarcation disputes. As capitalist enterprises and state bureaucracies became more centralized and larger, some workers felt that their institutions needed to become similarly large. A simultaneous disenchantment with the perceived weakness of craft unions caused many unions to organize along industrial lines. The idea of the "one big union" is championed by anarchist syndicalists to organize effectively.
As envisioned by the Industrial Workers of the World, which for many years prior to 1919 had been associated with the concept, One Big Union was not just the idea that all workers should be organized into one big union. In the 1911 pamphlet One Big Union, IWW supporters Thomas J. Hagerty and William Trautmann enumerated two goals: One Big Union needed to "combine the wage-workers in such a way that it can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the workers of today in their struggles for fewer hours of toil, more wages and better conditions," and it also "must offer a final solution of the labor problem – an emancipation from strikes, injunctions, bull-pens, and scabbing of one against the other."
One Big Union was the notional organizational concept, while the IWW's revolutionary industrial unionism was the organizing method by which that concept could be realized. "Organizing the One Big Union of all workers the world over" was meant to achieve "working class control". But the One Big Union organizations were resisted by government and industry, and subverted by existing trade unions. By 1925, only the slogan of One Big Union remained.
One Big Union in practice
The Industrial Workers of the World adopted and promoted the concept of the One Big Union after the publication of the One Big Union pamphlet in 1911; the IWW continues to use the phrase. Members of the IWW historically, and currently, signed and sign letters with the closing, "Yours for the O.B.U." Many commentators regard One Big Union as synonymous with the Industrial Workers of the World. One of the popular IWW publications was called One Big Union Monthly.The IWW promoted the One Big Union concept in various ways, including as an invitation to racial equality. One IWW leaflet proclaimed:
To Colored Workingmen and Women: If you are a wage worker you are welcome in the I.W.W. halls, no matter what your color. By this you may see that the I.W.W. is not a white man's union, not a black man's union, not a red or yellow man's union, but a working man's union. All of the working class in one big union.
The IWW used the same sort of arguments to welcome women into the workforce. The appeal subsequently proclaimed the intent to organize "all wage workers ... into One Big Union, regardless of creed, color, or nationality ... An injury to one is an injury to all." The One Big Union idea had the immediate goals of better pay, shorter hours, and better surroundings. The IWW propagandized, "Organize in one big union and fight for a chance to live as human beings should live. All together now and victory will be ours."
History
North America
Founding organizations
In North America, the most significant early impetus for the One Big Union concept came from the Western Federation of Miners which was headquartered in Denver, Colorado. The WFM and its allies first launched the Western Labor Union. The Western Labor Union was initially intended to displace the conservative American Federation of Labor in the West. The WLU's rebranding in 1902 as the American Labor Union was a direct response to actions by President Samuel Gompers.The WFM and the ALU then cooperated to found the IWW. The IWW was conceived as a global union with the goal of organizing the entire world. The concept of One Big Union, growing out of the IWW's revolutionary program, evolved over a period of time:
n moving toward revolutionary industrial unionism, Denver's labor radicals were not building from scratch; rather, they drew upon and elaborated ideas and strategies generated by the previous twenty years of Denver's labor history ... lthough the labor wars of 1903–4 may have triggered the formation of the IWW, the ideological synthesis it would uphold had been worked out in the American Labor Union's leadership by the summer of 1903 ...
The WFM had been founded as a conservative trade union after a bitter and violent strike in Coeur d'Alene in 1892. The WFM conducted a successful strike in Cripple Creek in 1894, notable for the exceedingly rare intervention of the state on the side of the striking miners. But the strike which some historians believe shaped the philosophy and tactics of the WFM, and which ultimately resulted in the WFM embracing revolutionary industrial unionism and the eventual promulgation of the One Big Union concept, occurred against mine owners in Leadville. Out of that struggle came the November 1897 proclamation of the State Trades and Labor Council of Montana, a document which broke with the past – declaring that "the old form of organization is unable to cope with the recent aggressions of plutocracy" – and called for a new type of labour organization.
The WFM wasn't that organization. It had poured resources into the Leadville strike, and yet was defeated. Additional resources which had been promised by the AFL were not provided. The solution was organizing western labourers and western unions into a new umbrella-like federation. These conclusions represented "an absolute rejection" of the AFL, of its conservative philosophy and its complacent demeanour.
But the WFM did undergo substantial changes. In contrast to the AFL, the WFM,
... opened itself to all potential members and also to ideas and values in conflict with Capitalism. It accepted any member of a bona fide union without initiation fee upon presentation of a valid union card. It demanded neither a closed shop nor an exclusive employment contract. It sought jobs for all, not merely the organized and highly skilled few.
Members of the WFM "... saw no advantage to huddling within their traditional crafts; they sought to mobilize all workers across a given industry to confront employers – and governments – with their aggregate clout. With little stake in the status quo, they invested their faith in sweeping political programs to remedy the grim conditions in which they worked and lived."
In 1905, WFM leaders initiated a meeting of thirty prominent socialists and labour radicals in Chicago. This group analysed industrial and social relations from the revolutionary viewpoint and drafted a manifesto. Enumerating labour's grievances, it criticized craft unions for creating a skilled aristocracy, and suggested "one big industrial union" embracing all industries and "founded on the class struggle". Printed in great quantities, this invitation to the first convention of the IWW was sent around the country.
The One Big Union concept grows
The IWW organized in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other countries, employed creative tactics, and advocated the general strike as a favourite method for workers to gain control of industries. But One Big Union spread far beyond the IWW. The revolutionary character of the OBU can be appreciated from a statement by the Brotherhood of Metal Workers' Industrial Union, a 1909 offshoot of the International Association of Machinists. In 1919, this organization published the following,
The workers, not only of America, but of all countries, are determined to get the full value of the price they paid and will yet pay. There can be no peace until the workers not only control, but also own, the means of life, liberty, and happiness. To accomplish this, it necessitates the ownership of all industries by a government of workers, for the workers, which can and will be accomplished by the One Big Union.
Also in 1919, the International Federation of Workers in the Hotel, Restaurant, Lunchroom, Club and Catering Industry called upon its members to terminate any AFL memberships and was judged by investigators, on the basis of an explanation of industrial unionism in the Hotel Worker, one of its publications, to be a "revolutionary organization based upon the One Big Union principle, having for its objective the establishment of a new social order and the seizure of industry." The Hotel Worker stated, in part:
Under industrial unionism, all the Workers in one industry form One Big Union of that industry.
Instead of being split up into a lot of separate units, with divided and often conflicting interests, they strengthen and unite their forces in one mighty and irresistible combination.
The Journeymen Bakers' and Confectioners' International Union of America came under suspicion for hosting a delegation of the IWW, and for forming a committee to explore a merger with the IFWHRLC. Investigators concluded that such events confirmed "the organization of One Big Union along I. W. W. lines to control all the workers in the food industry in this state, as well as in the greater part of the country." Cognizant of repression of the period that came to be called the Red Scare, the JBCIUA passed a resolution which stated, in part, "... that our best friends and are being by the capitalistic system, in the present period of worst reaction, and have been thrown into jail for long terms."
In 1919 in the United States the newly formed Communist Labor Party sought to attach itself to the One Big Union movement, and to industrial unionism. The CLP urged all its members to join industrial unions. The IWW concluded that the Russian revolution and local communist activities had a divisive effect on the general anti-capitalist movement, but this effect was not immediately apparent.