64 
EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATION 
continuing agreement. . . . . This agreement never comes to a 
termination, but either side may cancel the agreement by serving 
one year’s notice.” 
As a “continuing agreement” employee representation may be 
said to be a step in advance of most collective agreements between 
employers and unions. In those concerns where employee represen- 
tation operates effectively, it is regarded not as a treaty, grudgingly 
entered into because of force or economic pressure strategically 
applied, but as a vital part of managerial policy and program. This 
does not mean that it is merely a device of management and that its 
development is wholly determined by administrative fiat. Rather, 
that management regards it as a means for achieving certain results 
which are quite as important to the management as the benefits 
which employees may derive are to them. 
RELATION OF EMPLOYEE REPRESENTATION TO UNIONS 
Many labor leaders have regarded the managerial objective of 
employee representation to be completely expressed in the phrase 
““destruction of unions.” This reaction to the employee representa- 
tion movement was most positively expressed in the resolution 
adopted by the American Federation of Labor at its Atlantic City 
convention in 1919.5. The thought of this resolution has been fre- 
quently reiterated in union publications, from the platform, especially 
in the course of strikes, and in letters received from many union officials. 
In 1922 a form letter was sent out from the headquarters of the 
Amer’can Federation of Labor, over the signature of Mr. Samuel 
Gompers, containing the following comments: 
In a number of industries the employers who refuse to bargain collectively 
with their employees have inaugurated a work council plan through which they 
hope to avert organization. These work councils are composed of not only repre- 
sentatives of the employees but also of the employers. Naturally men working 
¢ Comstock, Louis K., “Council on Industrial Relations in the Electrical Con- 
struction Industry,” in The Proceedings of the Eighth Annual New York State 
Industrial Conference, December 2—4, 1924, p. 43. 
8 American Federation of Labor, Proceedings, Thirty-Ninth Annual Convention, 
p. 302.