National Workers' Secretariat

The National Labor Secretariat (Dutch: Nationaal Arbeids-Secretariaat, NAS) was a trade union federation in the Netherlands from 1893 to 1940.

In the late 1880s and early 1890s the idea that trade unions should no longer be branches of the Social Democratic League (SDB), as they had been up to this point, became increasingly influential. In 1893, the National Labor Secretariat (NAS) was thus founded. At first, it encompassed both the SDB and the seven unions involved in its founding — the Cigarmakers and Tobacco Workers' Federation, Typographers' Federation, the Furnituremakers' Federation, the Brushmakers' Federation, the Carpenters' Federation, the Diamond Workers' Federation, and the railway union Steeds Voorwaarts. The NAS was declaredly politically neutral, but in practice it was dominated by the SDB.

After the SDB split into the revolutionary Socialist League and the parliamentary Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP) in 1894, both remained members and the NAS did not get involved in the conflict between them, but the relations between the NAS and the parties soon deteriorated to the point that in 1896 both the Socialist League and the SDAP were expelled from the NAS, leaving only unions in the organization.

By 1896 thirteen national and 16 local unions were part of the NAS. Conflict soon ensued over the distribution of financial means within the NAS. All unions in the federation had one vote, no matter what their size, but financial contributions to the union funds were on a per capita basis. Moreover, the NAS supported in principle all strikes - be they by NAS members or by non-affiliated unions or even individuals, because all strikes were seen as a learning experience for the working class. The financial shortage that resulted from this as well as increasing anarchist tendencies in the NAS soon led many of the larger unions to leave the organization. By 1903, only fifteen national, but 61 local organizations were part of the NAS.

1903 saw relations between the NAS on the one hand and the SDAP and many of the large non-NAS unions deteriorate further. A successful general strike which started in January 1903 led to strict laws prohibiting such strikes. A "Resistance Committee" consisting of the NAS, the SDAP, and the General Diamond Workers' Union of the Netherlands (ANDB), the largest non-NAS union in the country, soon fell apart. In late 1903, the SDAP leader Pieter Jelles Troelstra then claimed the NAS was "done for". In 1906, the Dutch Confederation of Trade Unions (NVV) was founded as an SDAP-loyal union federation. It had more members than the NAS from the start.

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