ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the British, French, and German cases; the complex nature of the interplay between workplace relations, organisation, and industrial relations, however, necessitates the inclusion of the American case as a mediating tertium comparationis. Unionisation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seems to have followed two distinct patterns. The first pattern may be called 'artisanal unionism' which developed in the handicrafts and small workshop industries. The second pattern can be identified as 'strong craft unionism' in early workshop and process flow industries. In the American case, craft unionism dominated a largely party-independent labour movement well into the 1920s. The result was a predominance of pragmatic business unionism and the priority of unionism over party politics. The transition to steel production brought about the erosion of craft unionism and with this – for Germany, France, and the USA – the total demise of unionism from metal-producing industry until the 1920s and 1930s.
