﻿Bargaining Gives Workers The Loser’s End 
By T-BONE SLIM 
 
Collective bargaining still seems to be the issue of the less informed unions. Many workers still believe they can skip unionism and trust the eloquence of their tongue to bring the employer to their way of thinking. Employers who have stood adamant in the face of torrents of tears and the unending whines of children. 
Collectivc bargaining is a right and should not be debated. But the right is a counterfeit. Just how would we go about It bargaining w uh our stewards to get more of our own money? That would be like convincing a chicken thief that he should let the owner have a little more of the gizzard. It looks foolish to me. 
The word “bargaining” is a dead give-away and you will find the bargaining has a hollow sound—like a belly button rasping along the spine. Bargaining with best bargainers in the world, the worker is gonna talk so sweetly that the employer will give him enough to live on (better spade the garden if you don’t expect to miss any meals.) 
My experience has been that the horse power of my union determines how much the employer will loosen up. My gift of gab never brought me anything—and I am good at it. Worker are wasting their time trying to out-argue the employers when such a gifted logicker as myself is howling at the moon. 
Then again, employers do not in reality wish to deny you collective bargaining. Their coyness is all pretense. And they know collective bargaining is a spoon hook without a shred of bait on it. And they know that since you grab that hook their position as master (not steward) is consolidated. A precedent is set and workers have sold their mess of pottage for a bare hook. Of course it looks good—but I think I would rather have a spoonful of that good old German horsen pepper. 
It’s a long way around, my lords, and a better way is not to consult the employer at all. Just inform him as to your wishes, wipe your tools with a greasy rag so they won’t rust, and take a vacation on pay the same as he does. No, you won’t need pickets, you’ve One Big Union now. And you have nothing to bargain for, you go by known facts. Known fact permit of no debate, so why harangue? 
Even school kids know enough to choose their own captain for a baseball team but we workers don’t know enough to choose our own manager for an industry. I wonder where we dropped our intelligence? 
A big raw mouthed man jumps up and hollers “I’m boss!” And we don’t even ask him “How do you get that way?” Truly we are a bunch of blithering idiots! 
It is time now to call things by their right names whether our employer is our steward or our boss. If he is our steward he is our servant—but how does he explain the bigger “bag” he is getting away with? Are we in the habit of paying our servants millions of bucks a year and our own sweet selves a lousy $800? 
If he is our master we must determine how come. Did he appoint himself or was the office handed him, father to son—the way of all kings? We need a One Big Union to unravel that mystery. 
It might be said our employers get the big money because of superior brains? Poppycock! The last few years demonstrated they did not cut the mustard; and it is reasonable to believe a man immersed in the whirlpool of thievery cannot do a good job of management. We have been paying them the big money and we are entitled to a refund. 

Industrial Democracy is the voice of labor in industry accepting or rejecting any and all questions, proposals or practices within each industry as a body or duly elected shop committee without benefit of referee. 
This is possible only in an industrial union. 
Now it happens Industrial Workers of the World is the discoverer and founder of industrial unionism and practices it today. It also happens imitations or copy is never as good as the original. Painted lily is not even as good as a lily that is sick. 
Industrial Unionism has been copied and imitated but they cannot reach the perfection of the IWW. 

This country hates like hell to see a man actually starve to death; rather than see the man pass out they will hand him a sandwich— but he belter be near death or a dam good actor. 

It is said: “Man is the only animal that can reason and won’t.”— 
Tush, tush, it only seems that way. The other do think. 

War between Fascism and Democracy is too high priced for a poor man. Neither has anything to offer labor—except promises. Workers cannot afford to fight workers no matter whose collar they wear.