EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATION MOVEMENT
industrial representation installed in 1915 by the Colorado Fuel and
Iron Company.
It was at this time that Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a stockholder
in this company, became one of the most earnest advocates of em-
ployee representation. During the same year and the two following
many other plans were introduced by employers, in certain cases ap-
pearing to be simply formal organization and recognition of previously
informal methods for conferring with employees.
Works committees or other forms of employee representation were
introduced in a large number of plants after the United States entered
the war, as the result of awards by various labor adjustment boards.
Among these should be mentioned especially the National War Labor
Board, The Shipbuilding Labor Adjustment Board, the National
Adjustment Commission (assigned to disputes of longshoremen and
sailors), the United States Railroad Administration, the United
States Fuel Administration, and the Spruce Production Division of
the Aircraft Production Board which organized as ystem of councils
among loggers and lumbermen of the northwest.
The works committees set up under the direction of the National
War Labor Board are probably best known. Provision for installa-
tion of shop committees was made in more than a hundred and twenty
five National War Labor Board awards. In the majority the pro-
cedure as to installation and election of committees was left to be
worked out by the parties concerned. Many of these were estab-
lished in plants which shut down after the signing of the armistice,
and when they reopened for private business the shop committee in
many cases was abandoned.” Some of the employers who instituted
shop committees as the result of adjustment board awards were not
14 Selekman, Ben M. and Van Kleeck, Mary, Employees’ Representation in
Coal Mines, Ch. 2.
BU. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 287, “National War Labor
Board,” pp. 25-6, 37-41, 58-64; Bing, A. M., War-Time Strikes and Their Adjust-
ment, pp. 270-72.
'® French, Carroll E., op. cit., p. 24.
17 National Industrial Conference Board, Experience with Works Councils in
the United States (Research Report No. 50), pp. 14-24; also The Growth of Works
Councils in the United States, (Special Report No. 32), p. 10, Table 6, “Distri-
bution of Works Councils by Date of Organization and Source of Origin.”
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