Contracts

Unions are formed for the reason that the interests of the capitalist and the laborer are not identical and the workers can expect nothing which he has not the power to enforce. The union should at all times be the fighting machine of the working class.

The contract is a negation of the very thing for which the union was formed as it rests upon the false basis of mutual interests of the men who work and the men who work those who work.

There are many bad features about the contract. First it is a virtual agreement to scab upon any workers who have a grievance with the employer in the shop where the contract holds. It means that the engineers may run a train manned by scab firemen. It is simply a weapon in the hands of the employers which to club labor into submission.

But the worst feature of the contract is the fact that it places in the hands of a few officials the setting of the terms on which the men shall work and in that measure it destroys the initiative of the rank and file. Once the contract is signed the members lost interest in the union meeting and only attend when forced to do so by a system of fines. They figure that their wages and conditions will not be altered and therefore there is no need for striving to better their lot in life, at least not until the time for the signing of the next contract. They see that they will not be allowed to fight even if they want to, and as a consequence they lose interest in the union almost entirely, regarding the organization as a sort of machine into which they must drop so much dues per quarter to receive a guaranteed wage if the labors of the officers are effective.

The cost of living jumps each year and sometimes the result can he noted in just a month’s time. Signing an agreed seale means to tie the hands of the workers so that the rising prices act as a cut in wages against which there is no counter. And just as surely as a pugilist degenerates when out of training, so do the workers lose their strength when they sign a contract and cease to wage the class war for even so brief a period as six months. The contract, instead of freeing its users, means nothing more than added slavery.

The time is coming, is almost here now, when the very ones who are upholding the contract will curse the rank and file of the crafts for not making a bolder stand, and yet they themselves will be to blame for the apologetic spirit of the craft union movement.

Let every worker who understands his class interests preach uneeasingly against the contract. Do not talk against it on the outside and then vote in your union for its acceptance. Prepare to break any contract that has been signed if the keeping of that contract means scabbery upon your fellow workers or if it means the imposing of a worse condition on yourselves.

No contract is valid, for they one and all are obtained by the employers holding the whip of hunger over the workers. They are obtained by force. They are not agreements between equal parties, for the man with the hungry wife and child cannot be said to be on the same footing as the man whose wife is giving her poodle dog an outing at Newport.

“To Hell with all contracts” is the slogan of the I.W.W. For the craftsmen perhaps this seems too great a jump to take all at once and they will take the slight forward step that means the expiration of all contracts at the same time.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz