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Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2 THE TOILER SATURDAY, JAN. 8, 1921. The Fight Is On! By Tom. Clark. The fight is on in the needle trades. The Clothing Manufacturers Association has declared war on the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, demanding a standard of production, which every worker must meet, to earn the stand ard wage. Any worker supplying less then the standard of production will have his wage reduced accordingly. The Association demands the right to discharge its employees for incompetency. It wants to remove the impartial chairman, who settles all grievances. The trick is clear. It is the first step toward introducing the piecework system and then the open shop. It is the first step toward breaking the control of the union over the job and over the scale of work and wage. It is a step calculated by the bosses to reduce the payroll, since the needle trade is a seasonal trade, and by means of speeding up, the season can bo shortened. It is a step to throttle the workers and their organization, at a time when work otherwise is hard to obtain and suffering is bound to follow. But the trick is not going to succed so easily. The bosses cannot trifle with 150,000 men and women. They cannot simply order, and expect them to obey, no matter how hard times are. Unite for defense. ALL the workers of the needle trade realize that it is an attack on them as well. The member ship of the International Ladies' Garment Work ers' Union recognizes that if the Amalgamated is crushed, they will be the next to feel the fight. So the whole needle trade of the country 400, 000 men and women has united into an alliance to fighfe the bosses. The alliance includes the above two unions, the United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers, the Journeymen Tailors' Union, and the Interna tional Fur Workers' Union. The United Garment Workers, a unit of the A. F. of L. has also been invited to join the Needle Trades Workers' Al liance, as the organization is called. The fight is on! It is the beginning of the fight that will soon have to be fought by all organized labor in Am erica. It means a life nnd death struggle for organ ized labor in America! Will the workers of America learn the lesson before it is too late? Or will they wait till 'the front ranks are broken and then look for means of protection? For many years, clothing workers were the most miserably paid, the most shamefully housed and the most brutally exploited workers in the country, if not in the whole world. "Sweatshop" work was the kind of work they performed. And that word has only one meaning the worst form of exploitation and degradation. But by or ganization, these workers rose to the front ranks of workers. These "greenhorns", who were sup posed to know nothing of America and American conditions, showed the leaders of organized labor in America how workers could fight and obtain results. The consequence has been that the clothing industry is one of the best organized in the counry. It is made up of fighters, who are denounced as revolutionary. A union with a revolutionary purpose Yes, the rank and file is, to the greatest ex tent, revolutionary and does not hesitate to extol the clause of the constitution of the Amalgamated which states that the purpose of the organization is to "put the working class in acutal control of the system of production," to the end that they shall be "ready to take possesion of it." Their object is simply to force out the employer and to operate the industry in the interest of the working class. Simple and frank ! The bosses know it. It is the response to the spirit of revolution in Europe, where the workers must either take control of production or starve. It is the answer to the bosses in America, who will consent to operate the industry only at a high profit or not at all. It is the challenge that all workers in America must answer within a few months. It is the reply to the threat made by the big capitalists during the election campaign, through their spokesman, the president elect. It is the beginning of the, big fight! Just as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers knew that it would be impossible for them to stand alone, since work has been so slack and their treasury is not well supuplied; and just as the International Ladies' Garment Workers knew that, if the Amalgamated was beaten, the