Arthur Miller

By Arthur J Miller - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, November 17, 2015

Casting a stare of confusion out to the cosmos Why do things just get worse no matter how hard we work to make them better? We still labor to produce all needs and we can't even produce our own needs within this system of all possible wealth going to a few at the expense of the many. Food workers who produce the simple most important production of all (if we can't eat, nothing else matters) and yet they are the poorest paid workers around. Makes a lot of sense don't it?
Think about it, those who do the work to provide the needs of society only receive in payment as small of a return that the corporate system can get away with paying them.

This dirty rotten system, I call corporate fascism. It is 100% controlled by the corporations. They control the greatest part of the wealth produced directly. In order to advance their wealth and control, they created an institutionalization of policies that benefit them. Such policies as racism, sexism, nationalism, and so on, all benefit the rich, not the poor and cannot be reformed. How do you reform racism?, may I please ask?

We live under a military dictatorship. We are forced to fight other poor folks in wars that only benefit the rich. In these wars of conquest we defeat other poor people, we are then used to oppress those poor folks into submission to the compute state. How do you reform corporate wars? You can't. The dirty rotten system is meant to be just that, the dirty rotten system that steals from us all and that it uses us poor folks as their collateral damage in industry, in wars and political posturing.

The system uses tactics to get us thinking we have a say in things that we don't. Like the political parties. Both corporate political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are equally the institutionalization of corporate fascism. They work hand in hand to deceive us into thinking we have a chose to choose from. Then we are told to pick the lesser of the two evils. And there you have it, the dirty rotten system cannot be reform to be anything other than what it is, an evil. You cannot reform that which is created to be evil. And when the liberals come up with the next new White Rich Savor to be that lesser evil that others should follow, we need to reject them outright.

When we understand that the system cannot be reform, then we must look at changing the social system ourselves. We can trust no one else to do it for us.

In my view Syndicalism is the most effective means of true social change and it has the most rank and file control that is possible. Part of this is that it came out of work place resistance and organization thus it was always organizing at the source of the problems. That meant those in control were that same as those with the need. That is the only way to get real working class unions. No so-called reform is possible in capitalism, the state or statist institutions they control like the business unions and political parties. Simple, we can let others from the outside organize us and tell us what to do. Or we can organize ourselves at the source of the problem by those in need and are most effected.

Fact is undeniable that the mayor cause of our problems comes directly out of industry. Given that, industry must change. And thus Syndicalism would say that we need to change at the point of production by those who do the work. We know how to make the changes but it has been these outside people who pay no attention to us. Simple example, after a major tanker oil spill, folks were meeting about what to do.

Many answers based upon outside ideas. I tried to explain what would make tankers much safer based upon my experience working on tankers.

That had no place in their discussion. Even when I advocate something so damn simple as to ask the question: Why don't tankers carry no oil spill equipment? Two small power boats and enough booms for two containment circles? Booming a ship is easy, I have done it a number of times. Rather when a spill happens everyone just sits around waiting for some oil spill ship to come in from some far away port.

Nearly every social struggle that starts from the people at the source comes into conflict with those. on the outside. Thus you have the basic Syndicalist organization at the point of production. This Syndicalists have been doing long before the term Syndicalism was ever used.

It has become much more than just about one expression of organization, but rather stands as an example for nearly all working class struggle. My class analysis is very simple. There are two classes, the rich and the poor. Between them is an area that gets rather foggy as some have a little money identify with the interests of the rich and thus should be seen as on that rich side. There are those that identify with the interests of the poor and are on our side. The rich try to exploit everything that can be exploited for profit and suppress those that resist. That includes develop social projects against about every one except what we think we are. Thus such issues as racism, sexism, and so on are based in the industrialized of class in the dirt rotten system. In my view we must organize around the complete oppress of poor folks and their needs, if for no other reason there are always connections to them in industry and must be changed.

By Arthur J. Miller - IWW, February 22, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Though there are more than enough reasons to stand in solidarity with Native people on this issue, there is a lot more to it than just that. Those Native folks were workers and that was the real point in what Serra did, FREE LABOR, SLAVERY OF WORKERS! Just because a group of workers have a different skin color or culture does not make them any less workers as any other workers. So dear labor activists, is it OK to you that a group of workers are enslaved, murdered and exploited without pay? Or is it just OK because they look different than you? And the fact that the Pope and the Catholic how is making Serra into a saint sends a very clear message of what that church and the Pope are really at and that nothing has changed over the years. It speaks clearly that they do not support workers or their rights. This is not just about what was done long ago, but rather also what is being done right now! The Pope could not issue a more anti-labor statement than to make Serra a saint. I guess from the bosses point of view this is great because now they finally have one of their own to pray to.

There is a lot of information on this out there. And there are people trying to do something about it. We working folks need to support that. You will find a lot of information on my facebook page. There are some important events coming up and there needs to be labor support. So the question comes up again, is the labor movement just about some white agenda? Or does it include all workers even if they maybe different than you are?

just an old retired shipyard worker,
Arthur J Miller

By Arthur J. Miller - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 12, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

1. ALL THINGS ARE CONNECTED: There are many needed struggles, but they are all connected because in one way or another, we all struggle against the same oppressors and the same abusive system. In the natural world all life is connected.

2. LIFE IN BALANCE: Life out of balance with all is the greatest threat we face to our survival. Life out of balance, a violent world of pursuit of greed and power for some at the expense of the many is leaving our world a wasteland of human folly and suffering. Life in balance with all around us is our only means of survival.

3. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL: The right to exist, the right to food, shelter and medical care, the right to dwell upon the land, the right of free speech, free assembly and the right to organizing for better conditions, the right to live without oppression, should be the rights of all of humankind.

4. DIVERSITY AWARENESSS AND RESPECT: Humankind is a great diversity of cultures. When we treat that diversity with acknowledgment and respect, that diversity becomes our strength and not our weakness.

5. INCLUSION: The oppressed and exploited are a great mass of people. But they are not all the same. Seeking to include all people and their concerns makes real social change possible. Seeking to exclude people makes real social change impossible. For in that you only change things for the better of some at the expense of the many.

6. SELF-DETERMINATION: The oppressed organizing against our oppressions and struggling to control our own fate.

7. SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES: The oppressed and exploited people need to be able to speak for ourselves by means of writing, speaking, art, music and so on, because we are the only ones that are truly able to understand what we are going through. And that understanding is necessary in order to free ourselves from the way things were not meant to be.

8. GENERATIONS IN BALANCE: Creating balance between the old and the new. What came before lays the foundation, the new adds to it and passes it on to the future generations.

9. THE 7TH GENERATION: Instant gratification of greed is a suicidal direction. In all things, look to the 7th Generation to come as to what we do now will effect the future, many Indigenous cultures teach us this.

10. WORKING FOLKS: We live in a class society where those that do the useful work are of a lower class while those that oppress and exploit us exist as a higher privileged class. There is great dignity in the labor of working people, for we do all that is needed for our needs and wants. No society can exist without us. There is no dignity or usefulness in the class that oppresses and exploits us, they do nothing useful, they are unneeded and they stand in the way of the well-being of all.

11. FOR A CLASSLESS SOCIETY: The idle rich on top living off the labor of the classes below them, and thus creating endless class conflict. Organize for a classless society for the peace and well-being of all humanity.

12. REPLACING EUROCENTICISM WITH MULTI-ETHNIC INTERNATIONALISM: Eurocenticism seeks conquest of the world by the domination of a few imperialists, and to impose their cultural/political/economic system on all, which they view as superior to all else. Eurocentic supremacy needs to be replaced with multi-ethnic internationalism. True multi-ethnic internationalism is open to all the knowledge and cultures of the people of the world.

13. ENDING THE GENOCIDE: The Western lands are built upon genocidal policies against the Original People. It is important to understand this so that we can put an end to those policies that started with Columbus and continue to this day. FREE LEONARD PELTIER!

Contributed by Emma Hartley - October 21, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

There are key sectors of the economy and workforce where unions--like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)--are rarely present, due the isolated or remote nature of some workplaces that effectively function as camps. Yet the need for union representation in some of the most difficult and dangerous working conditions is perhaps the greatest, especially where temporary and contract labor is widely used. Those contract workers, for instance who are employed in oil refineries often get only minimal safety training and were sent from one work site to another by the employment agencies who hired them out at far below union rates to major multinational oil companies. One such worker told the IWW of how at his work site, even his team's supervisor was unclear about safety regulations concerning hazardous materials and expected workers to evacuate the work site using a path and area that were both heavily contaminated. The oil industry, as well as those sectors of the economy that rely on employment agencies to offer cheap, temporary labor are often black holes for workers, where there remains much work to be done in terms of workers' rights.