CHAPTER 16

Unifying the Trade Union Movement

In that same election year, 1922, an historical event took place that played a very important part in the history of the Jewish labor movement in Poland: the unification of the entire Polish trade union movement.

It was really a double unification: (1) the unification of the Polish Trade Union Movement with the Jewish Trade Union Movement, under one central administration, to be called the Central Committee, and (2) the unification of all the Jewish trade unions in Poland, also under one administration, to be called the Landrat, or National Council.

The Bund’s position had always been for a unified national trade union movement, with autonomy for each ethnic group’s organization.

Right after after World War I when Poland regained its independence, the Bund took the initiative in unifying the Jewish and Polish trade unions. The Bund’s Dovid Mayer, then Chair of the Bund’s Central Committee, began the discussions, concluded by him and Viktor Alter, who, as the Chair of the Jewish Trade Union National Council (Landrat), stood at the very head of the whole Jewish Trade Union Movement in Poland.

The chief negotiator for the Polish trade unions was Zygmunt Żuławski, one of the finest PPS leaders.

The unification did in fact provide cultural autonomy for the Jewish workers, as well as autonomy, largely, in trade union issues.

Cultural autonomy meant that each union in any city with a large Jewish component would be required to form a separate Jewish affiliate. In the larger cities, where there were a large number of unions, all these separate Jewish affiliates would be required to create one central administrative center, to be called Cultural Bureau (Kultur Amt). This Bureau was to be responsible for satisfying the cultural needs of the Jewish workers, and also to care for their specific trade union needs. In some cities, for example Warsaw or Lodz, this central administrative center retained its old name, Central Council.

Figure 34. The Presidium at a joint meeting of Jewish and Polish Workers. Among the PPS and Bund leaders, Henryk Erlich, seated second from left, and Artur Ziegleboym, seated first on the right. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

Figure 35. Executive Board of the National Association of Jewish Labor Unions in Poland. Standing, first on left, Yoshke Ofman; Seated, first on left, Lichtenstein; Seated, center, Sarah Shveber; Seated, second from right, Khayim Vaser (Chaim Wasser).

At the head of the whole Jewish segment of the general united trade union movement was the National Council, chosen at a convention of all the Jewish trade unions. It would also, at the same time, be the official central Cultural Bureau, representing Jewish workers on the new, unified, Polish-Jewish Central Committee.

In this way the Bund, for the first time, successfully realized its principle of a unified Polish Labor Movement, making the Bund an integral part of the broader Polish Trade Union Movement while recognizing and ensuring national-cultural autonomy for its Jewish workers. On this issue, the Bund achieved a principled victory over the Communists who, on the question of national-cultural autonomy, vehemently fought the Bund.

It didn’t take long for this Bundist achievement to have a practical outcome. It happened first with the Leather Workers Union.

After the split, the Jewish Communists, as I mentioned earlier, became the leaders of the Shoemaker and Shoe-Leather-Cutters-and-Stitchers Union. To head us off, they quickly came to a unification agreement with the Polish Shoemakers-and-Stitchers Union—without any special conditions, without any special cultural rights for the Jewish members, and without the slightest sign of any kind of autonomy for the Jewish workers.

The Jewish leather workers totaled 6,000 members nationally; the Polish ones, only 2,000. But at the unification convention, the Polish Communists demanded that the Central Committee consist of a majority of “naszych” (“ours,” that is to say, Poles); the Jewish Communists acceded to this demand.¹ Later the Polish Communists demanded that the regional secretaries and other leading officials should also be “z naszych,” and here again the Jewish Communists yielded. As for having union proceedings and correspondence carried out in Yiddish as well as Polish, the Polish Communists wouldn’t hear of it. The Jewish Communists swallowed this demand as well, without any protest. (There was one single secretary of theirs, let it be said, who persisted in sending his reports in Yiddish.) In the end, the Jewish Communists paid dearly for this policy: they quickly began to lose their influence over the Jewish shoemakers and shoe leather cutters and stitchers.

Figure 36. First Convention of the Bundist Leather Workers Union, 1919. Seated, fifth from left, Rubin Zuckerman, translator’s father. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

The Jewish Shoemaker and Shoe Leather Cutter and Stitchers Union in Warsaw was located on Nowolipki 7; the Polish one, on Żytnia 32. They each remained in their separate offices. But only Polish was spoken when the two affiliates came together at a meeting, even though the Jewish workers were the overwhelming majority. If a Jewish worker stepped up to the platform to say something in Yiddish, the Poles would not tolerate it. They would ridicule the speaker and even shout antisemitic remarks. The result was that the Jewish workers came less and less often to these meetings. The more the Jewish workers cooled toward the Communist Union at Nowolipki 7, the more they warmed to the Bundist Union on Pawia 32 (later moved to Leszno 19). The Bundist Union quickly formed locals for the shoemakers and later, after a time, the Bund acquired a majority of the Jewish leather workers in all the leather trades, except for the shoemakers, who remained with the Communists.

At the unification convention of the Jewish trade unions in 1922, the Bund was the dominant force. Of the 38 delegates from all corners of Poland, the Bund had 28, the Jewish Communists 5, the Labor Zionists 4, and the Uniteds 1. After the convention, the non-Bundist Jewish unions in the various cities joined their local Cultural Bureaus, all of which were under Bundist leadership.

Figure 37. A Conference of Bundists and Trade Union Leaders, Warsaw. Bernard Goldstein standing behind and to the left of central figure seated and holding papers. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

When all the Jewish trade unions in Warsaw joined the Central Committee, I was asked to familiarize myself with a few of the unions that had recently joined, among them (1) the Slaughterers Union and (2) the Transport Workers Union.

In the following two chapters I will describe these two very special unions. Each had its own special character; each added its distinct color to the overall picture of the Jewish Labor Movement in Warsaw.

Note

1.A similar situation occurred in the Garment Workers Union, where the majority of the workers also were Jewish. Appropriately, the Bund had a majority on the Central Committee; it never even occurred to the PPS to demand a Polish majority on the Central Committee.—BG