Unions Abandoning the Sympathetic Strike
Even union men are coming to realize that at least some of the features of radical trades unionism are not expedient. A press item states that “two powerful trades unions, that of the architectural ironworkers and that of the bricklayers and stone masons of Chicago, have taken a very important step in advance that leads to the abandonment of the sympathetic strike among all the building trades. The unions named have signed agreements with the employers’ association, in which the interference of outside parties to prevent carrying out the agreements is expressly repudiated and forbidden. Any difference arising between the unions and the employers’ associations that can not be settled by conference is to be settled by arbitration.” The Sacramento Record-Union, itself an employer of union labor, commenting on the aforesaid action, says: “The sympathetic strike is bad for employer and workman alike. It injures hundreds of innocent parties who have no relation whatever to the original contestants. Let us hope that unionism is approaching close to that point when the sympathetic strike will be wholly and everywhere abandoned.”