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{{Short description|Trade/labor union which is dominated or influenced by an employer}}
{{labor|sp=us}}
A '''company''' or '''"[[Yellow socialism|yellow]]" union''' is a worker organization which is dominated or unduly influenced by an employer
Some
<blockquote>"[...] an accommodationist, or
==International law==
{{see also|List of International Labour Organization Conventions}}
A "company union" is generally recognized as being an organization that is not freely elected by the workforce, and over which an employer exerts some form of control. The [[International Labour Organization]] defines a company union as "A union limited to a single company which dominates or strongly influences it, thereby limiting its influence."<ref>ILO.</ref> Under the ILO [[Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949]] (No. 98) Article 2 effectively prohibits any form of company union. It reads as follows
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HISTOIRE D’UNE USINE ATYPIQUE ''Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire'', '''73''', p. 67-81 (2002)</ref>
In 1959, the CGSI became the [[Confédération Française du Travail]] (CFT), led by [[Jacques Simakis]]. It was declared a representative union on January 7, 1959, but the decision was overturned by the [[Council of State (France)|State Council]] on April 11, 1962, following a lawsuit by the [[Confédération Française des Travailleurs Chrétiens]] (CFTC) based on the funding of CFT by companies. In 1968, it organized demonstrations for the "[[right to work|freedom to work]]" to oppose the strikes organized by the CGT. In September 1975, Simakis resigned and denounced the links of CFT with the [[Service d'Action Civique]]. On June 4, 1977, a commando formed by members of the CFT-[[Citroën]] opened fire on strikers at the Verreries mécaniques champenoises in [[Reims]] (then directed by [[Maurice Papon]]) in a drive-by shooting, killing Pierre Maître, a member of the CGT. Two other members of the CGT were injured. Following this incident, the CFT changed its name into [[Confédération des Syndicats Libres]] (CSL). In the continuity of the company union of Biétry, the CSL is in favor of the association of capital and labor, is opposed to [[Marxism]] and [[Collectivist anarchism|collectivism]], and denounces the [[French Communist Party]] as a civil war machine. The number of adherents of CSL was never published, but in professional elections, it obtained from 2% to 4% of the votes.<ref>Results from professional elections [http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/dossiers/elections-prudhomales/elections1997.shtml 1987-1997] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080406042043/http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/dossiers/elections-prudhomales/elections1997.shtml |date=2008-04-06 }} La Documentation Française</ref> In October 2002, the CSL disappeared as a national union as a result of lack of funds. It called its supporters to join the [[Force Ouvrière]] union in the professional elections.<ref>Elyane Bressol [http://www.ihs.cgt.fr/IMG/pdf/syndicats_libres.pdf Confédération des Syndicats Libres] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081122203903/http://ihs.cgt.fr/IMG/pdf/syndicats_libres.pdf
===United States===
Company unions were common in the United States during the early twentieth century, but were outlawed under the 1935 [[National Labor Relations Act]] § 8(a)(2) so that trade unions could remain independent of management. All labor organizations would have to be freely elected by the workforce, without interference.
In 1914, 16 miners and family members (and one national guardsman) were killed when the [[Colorado Army National Guard|Colorado National Guard]] attacked a tent colony of striking [[Coal mining|coal miners]] in [[Ludlow, Colorado|Ludlow]], [[Colorado]]. This event, known as the [[Ludlow massacre]], was a major public relations debacle for mine owners, and one of them—[[John D. Rockefeller
In 1935, the [[National Labor Relations Act]] (also known as the Wagner Act) was passed, dramatically changing [[United States labor law|labor law in the United States]]. Section 8(a)(2) of the NLRA makes it illegal for an employer "to dominate or interfere with the formation or administration of any labor organization or contribute financial or other support to it."<ref>National Labor Relations Act. [http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=67&page=transcript].</ref> Company unions were considered illegal under this code, despite the efforts of some businesses to carry on under the guise of an "Employee Representation Organization" (ERO).<ref name="Bessemer Historical Society" />
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===Guatemala===
In 1997, the [[government of Guatemala]] received a [[loan]] for 13 million
Company unions are also prevalent among the ''[[maquiladora]]s'' in Guatemala.<ref>Coats.</ref>
==Theory==
Supporters of independent trade unions contend that company unions face a [[conflict of interest]], as they are less likely to propose large-scale pro-worker changes to [[employment contracts]]—such as [[overtime]] rules and salary schedules—than independent unions.{{
Proponents of company unions claim they are more efficient in responding to worker grievances than independent trade unions. Proponents also note that independent trade unions do not necessarily have the company's best interests at heart; company unions are designed to resolve disputes within the framework of maximum organizational (not just company) profitability.{{citation needed|date=May 2020}} For example, economist [[Leo Wolman]] wrote in 1924: "[T]he distinction ... between trade unions and other workmen's associations is frequently a vague and changing one. What is today a company union may tomorrow have all of the characteristics of a trade union."<ref>Wolman, 21.</ref>
In their wide-ranging 2017 study of the Canadian company union [[Christian Labour Association of Canada|CLAC]], geographer Steven Tufts and sociologist Mark Thomas draw a distinction between multiple categories of organisation commonly called "company unions", arguing that it is a mistake to regard the company union phenomenon as purely or essentially pro-business and anti-worker (or necessarily beholden to any specific business), and that rather they should be seen as occupying one end of a spectrum of possible relationships between business and labour: the "accommodationist" end.{{sfn|Tufts|Thomas|2017}} A defining feature of "accommodationist" or company unionism is that it "seek[s] compromise with employers and capital ''in the first instance''", that is to say, it holds a priori that workers are not generally in competition with employers, and should not organise to take action in despite of, or demand significant concessions from, employers in order to achieve better employment conditions. They "explicitly advocate for collaborative relationships with employers and disparage conflict as a means of achieving gains for workers from the outset."{{sfn|Tufts|Thomas|2017}}
Though all trade unions do in fact compromise with employers as a matter of arriving at [[collective agreement]]s, the accommodationist attitude more broadly, and the company union as a specific adoption of that attitude, maintains that workers should not exert any strictly independent collective agency with regard to their employment.{{sfn|Tufts|Thomas|2017}} This insistence against the legitimacy of independent worker agency often extends beyond the confines of the workplace, and company or accommodationist unions often seek to dispute the legitimacy of the [[Labour movement|trade union movement]] as a political movement at large.{{sfn|Tufts|Thomas|2017}} This brings them into conflict with traditional trade unions in multiple ways; because these aim to [[Workplace democracy|organise workers democratically]] at their jobs in order to pursue their own collective self-interest, as distinct and separate from the interests of the employer; and doubly because traditional trade unions often view workers' struggles as [[Social movement unionism|interrelated with broader social-political struggles]], and encourage unionised workers to see themselves in solidarity with one another and with broader struggles for justice in society.{{sfn|Tufts|Thomas|2017}}
In particular, because accommodationist or company unions therefore have no intrinsic means of contesting for the rights and wellbeing of workers beyond what the employer is simply willing to offer (since they don't believe in striking for demands), and beyond what the law already provides for or guarantees (since they don't believe that unions should campaign or lobby for political change or mount legal action), this conflict with "real" unions is not merely ideological, but necessarily practical as well: accommodationist unions organise in direct opposition to existing autonomous trade unions, and generally seek to expand by [[Union raid|raid]]ing their [[Union shop|shop]]s and [[Local union|locals]], with the often explicit goal of supplanting them as the "official" or preferred union recognised by the employer to represent workers, thus setting themselves up as eventual company unions proper.{{sfn|Tufts|Thomas|2017}} This aggressive practice they then rationalise via recourse to the same accommodationist theory and rhetoric: according to the logic of accommodationism, traditional militant trade unions can be said to have no one but themselves to blame if an employer would rather bargain with a company union than with one which organises worker power to fight for gains.{{sfn|Tufts|Thomas|2017}}
==See also==
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*United States Congress (1935). ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20090905084607/http://www.nlrb.gov/About_Us/Overview/national_labor_relations_act.aspx National Labor Relations Act]''. [[United States Code]], [[Title 29 of the United States Code|Title 29]], Chapter 7, Subchapter II. Online at the [https://web.archive.org/web/20070831013642/http://www.nlrb.gov/index.aspx National Labor Relations Board]. Retrieved on 29 August 2007.
*Wolman, Leo (1924). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=li64S60enn0C
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