One phase of the "labor
personnel" work was a rather wide experimentation with "industrial
democracy" plans. These plans varied in form and content, from simple
provision for shop committees for collective dealing, many of which had
already been installed during the War under the orders of the War Labor
Board, to most elaborate schemes, some modelled upon the Constitution of
the United States. The feature which they all had in common was that
they attempted to achieve some sort of collective bargaining outside the
channels of the established trade unions. The trade unionists termed the
new fashioned expressions of industrial democracy "company unions." This
term one may accept as technically correct without necessarily accepting
the sinister connotation imputed to it by labor.
The trade unions, too, were benefiting as organizations. The Amalgamated
Clothing Workers' Union firmly established itself by formal agreement on
the men's clothing "markets" of Chicago, Rochester, Baltimore, and New
York. The membership of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers' Union rose to
175,000. Employers in general were complaining of increased labor
unrest, a falling off of efficiency in the shop, and looked askance at
the rapid march of unionization.
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