Trade-Unions, Industrial-Unions, Worker-Unions

[Per Levy]

im reading herman gorters "open letter to comrade lenin"(wich is pretty good btw) and in the 2. chapter(http://www.marxists.org/archive/gorter/1920/open-letter/ch02.htm) about the unions some thing confused me a bit, like:

what are the differents between trade, industrial and workers union?

gorter says that trade unions are lead by leaders who sell out the workers/members of said unions, while in industrial unions the workers are the leaders, so:

can trade unions work the way industrial unions work as discribed by gorter?

thanks in advance.

[Die Neue Zeit]

To understand the terms fully, one other term needs to be defined, too: craft union.

Craft unions organize on craft lines. Plumbers have their own union, and so do welders.

Trade unions organize by the end product (hence "trade"). A janitor in a factory belonged to the same union as the grunt factory worker.

Industrial unions organize by industry. All the manufacturing industries would be unionized instead of organization around the immediate end product.



These days, trade unions is a flimsy term to describe almost any form of labour union. What Gorter describes as "workers union" is still too narrow: unionization of the workplace.

What's needed is class unionism.