Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

By New Syndicalist - Industrial Worker, July/August 2015

A few months ago New Syndicalist (a group of Wobblies from the United Kingdom writing about worker-led, anti-capitalist theory and strategy) was approached by the Workers’ Power column with a request to write a reflective piece on the recent growth of the IWW in the United Kingdom. People who have been following our online media presence will know that the U.K. IWW hit an important milestone this year—exceeding 1,000 members. This was celebrated recently at our annual conference in Bradford, England. An older member recalled attending the 2005 conference in the same city that had just seven members in attendance. In 2015 most branch delegations were larger.

We have seen fantastic growth over the past decade, particularly in the case of some of our larger branches that now have between 100 to 300 members. What is it like to have branches of this size and how did they get built? These were the key questions posed to us. These are obviously very big questions and have by no means simple answers, particularly in terms of attempting to represent the dedicated and patient work of IWW organizers across the United Kingdom over the past 10 years. Nonetheless, we did put our heads together at New Syndicalist and decided to focus on what we thought were the five most important factors in helping to grow our branches in the North (where we are based), some of which have doubled in size over the last year.

The list is by no means exhaustive, and some more experienced Wobs may feel we may be trying to teach them to “suck eggs” here as they will recognize many fundamental concepts within our existing organizer training program. We nonetheless present them in the hope of solidarity, shared dialogue and spirited debate.

Review by Juan Conatz - Industrial Worker, July 3, 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.

Among the list of legendary figures of the historical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Frank Little stands out as one of its most tragic figures. Although known more than some others, such as Vincent St. John, Matilda Rabinowitz or Frank Cedervall, he didn’t leave behind a cultural legacy like fellow martyr Joe Hill. Nor did he live long enough to write a memoir, like Ralph Chaplin. We remember Little mostly as a victim; a victim of wartime hysteria and anti-union violence. Secondarily, we might remember him for being biracial, the son of a white Quaker husband and Cherokee wife. But his activities as a member and organizer for the IWW are mostly little known.

“Always on Strike: Frank Little and the Western Wobblies” by Arnold Stead aims to change this. Published by the International Socialist Organization-affiliated Haymarket Books, it is the only book-length work on Frank Little. Although relatively short, it does offer some information that is hard to find elsewhere.

Overall a sympathetic account of both Little and the Wobblies, much of the book covers territory previously incorporated in other histories of the IWW. The IWW’s efforts in the Western United States, its mixed opposition to World War I, and the repression it faced during the first Red Scare, are all given ample room.

By Káráni: Escribir o Volar - Káráni, June 30, 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.

Bellingham, WA – Farmworker families in northwest Washington have brought their berry boycott to Costco Wholesale, a respected Washington grocer that purchases berries from Driscoll’s, global small-fruit supplier that sources berries from Sakuma Bros. Farms and from several farms in the San Quintin Valley in Baja California, Mexico where there are ongoing labor disputes over unfair wages and wage theft, mistreatment and sexual harassment in the workplace, and against the dependency upon child labor for production.

A small independent farmworker union called Familias Unidas por la Justicia began their boycott of Sakuma Bros. Farms berries in 2013, successfully forcing the firm to discontinue selling fresh market berries with under their own label. In 2014, after discovering that the firm had shifted production towards processed berries and began packing fresh market berries exclusively into Driscoll’s label cartons, the farmworker union began to focus their campaign on Driscoll’s because the wholesaler refused to meet the union’s demands, stating instead that they fully supported Sakuma Bros. Farms, Inc. and had not found any wrongdoing via their corporate audits of their supplier. A finding that the Skagit Valley Superior Court’s legal register disproves when it comes to the firm interfering with the farmworker’s right to engage in concerted activity, reprisals, their tenant rights, and the firm’s failure to follow Washington state’s legislation regarding paid rest breaks. Meanwhile, the farmworker union’s boycott campaign convinced five US cooperative grocers and the University of Washington to discontinue sourcing berries from Driscoll’s by early 2015.

On March 17, 2015 over 50,000 Mexican farmworkers organized a general strike in Baja California’s San Quintin Valley in the berry fields of Driscoll’s subsidiaries, BerryMex and MoraMex, Reiter Affiliated Companies along with several other fruit and vegetable growers in the region. As a result, J. Miles Reiter, the owner of the subsidiaries, stepped down as CEO of Driscoll’s on March 31, 2015 and was replaced by Kevin Murphy. The powerful strike immediately impacted the supply chain for all fresh market commodities in California on the U.S. side of the border.

On April 8, 2015 the emerging independent farmworker union named La Alianza de Organizaciones Nacionales, Estatales, y Municipales por la Justicia Social joined forces with Familias Unidas por la Justicia by announcing their endorsement of the Driscoll’s boycott and calling for it’s expansion to an international scale. Familias Unidas por la Justicia leadership had reached out in solidarity to the emerging union shortly after the strike because their extended family members who lived in the San Quintin Valley had participated in the strike and were reporting incidents of reprisals.

By Stephyn Quirke - Earth First! Newswire, June 24, 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.

Is our weather getting funny?

Some bushes and flowers started to bloom near the end of January this year, and in the spring cherry blossoms were blooming weeks early. This capped a winter with extremely low snowfall in the Cascade Mountains. The abnormal heat, combined with the drought now covering 80% of Oregon, has actually raised temperatures in the Willamette River above 70 degrees, recently killing chinook salmon as they made their way up-stream to spawn.

In March, tribal leaders from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians converged in Portland to discuss this ongoing phenomenon of strange weather, which they cannily dubbed “climate change”. These changes, they said, were related to a pattern of global warming, and were creating unique hardship on Northwest tribes. In 2013, the ATNI also passed a resolution opposing all new fossil fuel proposals in the Northwest, citing harm to their treaty rights, cultural resources, and land they hold sacred. Now the Affiliated Tribes are discussing plans for adaptation and mitigation, and asking how to undermine the root causes of climate change.

In addition to the sudden onset of strange weather, Portland has also seen the abrupt arrival of strange, mile-long trains loaded with crude oil – a very unusual sight in the Northwest until just two years ago. In the event of a derailment or crash, these trains are known to increase the temperature of surrounding areas by several hundred degrees – a strange weather event by any standard. This phenomenon has become so common that the train engineers who run them actually call them “bomb trains”.

While the danger of unplanned explosions is universally recognized, the risks of strange weather, and the planned explosions that take place in our internal combustion engines, are typically less appreciated. But the connections are becoming more obvious as the figure of the oil train valiantly pulls them together.

The sudden appearance of oil trains in the Northwest is one effect of the unprecedented crusade for oil extraction in North America – one that has produced a massive wave of opposition from residents and elected officials. In Washington state alone, nine cities representing 40% of the state’s population have passed resolutions that oppose oil trains. In Alberta resistance to oil politics recently replaced a 44-year ruling party with socialists. And in Portland, anger against oil trains just smashed a city proposal to bring propane trains into the port.

In recent months rail workers have become increasingly vocal about the industry-wide safety problems that lead to fiery train accidents. They are also critical of the latest safety rules that allegedly protect the public from accidents. Rail Workers United, a coalition of rail workers and their unions, says that the best way to make trains safer is to increase worker control and self-management; they propose a host of reforms that profit-obsessed rail companies are not interested in hearing. For many rail-side communities there is a parallel interest in community control over the railroads: no fossil fuel trains are safe for them as long as trains derail and the climate unravels. Together, the two movements are calling for a better future for our railroads and our environment, and demanding more public influence to safeguard both.

By Scott Nicholas Nappalos - Miami IWW, June 17, 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.

Miami IWW Web Editor's Note: The IWW is has always been centered around the debate between trade unions and industrial unions. That debate has fallen by the wayside after the 1930s when industrial unions rose on a mass scale. Today’s article comes from healthcare worker Nappalos, where he explores division between trades, professions, and industry in today’s health care. Looking at a world wide debate between revolutionary unionists in the IWW’s heyday, he offers a critique of both craft and industrial unionism and suggestions to reform the IWW’s vision in light of this.

Healthcare today is built around key divisions of labor between craft specialities. It is highly regulated and the state plays a strong role in determining who can do what work, for how much money, and under who’s authority. There are strong differences across borders and within, but within the US the schema is roughly like this. To keep it simple, we’ll ignore all the crucial technical crafts for the sake of argument. The main players are doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. Doctors diagnose and prescribe treatments. Pharmacists check and dispense the treatments (when they’re medications). Nurses administer the treatments prescribed and monitor/assess the patients course of illness. This is a gross simplification, but it’s instructive.

Where did these divisions come from? Healthcare is not only divided by crafts, but other social factors divide the workforce. For instance we need to add to this the highly gendered nature of the work. Male nurses still represent only around 10% of the US workforce and nurses are the largest trade in the entire country. Florence Nightingale herself reinforced the patriarchal thinking of her day, either unknowingly or exploitively, in helping form nursing under the strict control of physicians giving nurses only a subservient role due to the prejudices of her time. Physicians are becoming more diverse, the rigid hierarchies between doctor and nurse themselves have proven difficult to break with nurses on the bottom in terms of power, respect, and working conditions.

It’s worth questioning the divisions all together. In frontier medicine in the US nurses often played the role of doctor, nurse, and pharmacist. The history of midwifery is riddled with other ideas about performing medical servies than the model of physician-nurse-techs we have today. Pharmacists used to prescribe medications and still do in some countries. Much of what doctors did 30 years ago is now done by nurses. The divisions between the trades are fluid and constantly changing, and are far from any natural division. An even deeper question we should ask is are these divisions of labor the best for society and individuals, or could we do better by transforming how health care is done?

By That Green Union Guy - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 17, 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.

I have been closely following the debate between various members of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and Tom Wetzel (a syndicalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area) which began with Tim Goulet's review of Ralph Darlington's Radical Unionism: The Rise and Fall of Revolutionary Syndicalism on April 22, 2015 and has bounced back and forth since then [See: Misunderstanding syndicalism, by Tom Wetzel, April 29, 2015; Contradictions of syndicalism, by Tim Goulet, May 21, 2015; Syndicalism and taking power, by Brian Kelly, May 26, 2015; and Confusion about political power, by Tom Wetzel, May 28, 2015].

I want to say, before I go any further, that I consider myself a syndicalist, specifically a green syndicalist (the very first IWW member I met was Judi Bari, in 1995, and it was through her that I found my way to the Wobblies). I have been a dues paying IWW members since 1995, and I have a fairly deep knowledge of IWW history, as well as contemporary discussions on matters of strategy and tactics within the IWW.  Two years ago, I cofounded the IWW's Environmental Unionism Caucus with two other IWW members. I am also a member of System Change not Climate Change, and I work fairly closely with a handful of ISO members that also belong to SCnCC. I think there is little to be gained by engaging in sectarian squabbles when our very existence is threatened by the capitalist economic system which all of us, syndicalists and socialists alike agree, must be overthrown and replaced by something different, and I suspect that we'd find much agreement on what that different system would look like and how it would function.

However, I also recognize the need to debate strategy, tactics, theory and praxis if we're to be effective as revolutionaries and devise a winning strategy to successfully combat capitalism. This debate on syndicalism to some extent qualifies, but I've also noticed a good deal of sectarianism from some of the ISO folks in this discussion, not to mention some rather glaring omissions and inaccuracies. The most recent entry, from comrades Joe Richard and Ty Carroll (The Wrong Place at the Right Time), represents for me a particularly egregious example.

By Juan Conatz - Thinkin' Through It, May 19, 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.

Recently, I came across something that mentioned an article I wrote for the Industrial Worker back in April 2012 titled ‘Some objections to Occupy May 1st‘. At the time, I was deeply involved in Occupy Minnesota’s May 1st committee, and wanted to push back on some stuff coming from other radicals and lefties in the labor movement. Looking back, I mostly still agree with what I wrote, although with some regret of possibly contributing to the redefinition of ‘strike’ that has allowed some of the Fight For 15 ‘actions’ to be passed off as ‘strikes’….but that’s a different conversation.

 Anyway, my article’s mentioning was part of a larger ‘Criticism of the Industrial Workers of the World‘ made from someone who seemingly was a part of the Autonomy Alliance, a synthesis anarchist group based in St. Louis (although I’m told it is now dissolved).

The perspective is mostly familiar. The author disagrees with revolutionary unionism in favor of participating in the AFL-CIO unions. Ironically named after one of the most well-known revolutionary unionists in history, Buenaventura Durruti, the blog offers a confused mixture of politics in its critiques of the IWW, but can be boiled down to being against anarcho-syndicalism or the revolutionary unionism of the IWW.

Press Release - Mobile Rail Workers Union, May 20, 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.

The workers from the Mobile Rail Workers Union have won ONCE AGAIN another round of ULP's in 2015 (Unfair Labor Practices) The full settlement details are below. We continue to fight and bargain for our first contract.

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT IN THE MATTER OF Mobile Rail Solutions, Inc.

• Case 13-CA-129684
• 13-CA-130242
• 13-CA-130243
• 13-CA-132704
• 13-CA-137168

Subject to the approval of the Regional Director for the National Labor Relations Board, the Charged Party and the Charging Party HEREBY AGREE TO SETTLE THE ABOVE MATTER AS FOLLOWS:

POSTING AND MAILING OF NOTICE — After the Regional Director has approved this Agreement, the Regional Office will send copies of the approved Notice to the Charged Party in English and in Spanish. A responsible official of the Charged Party will then sign and date those Notices and immediately post them at the following Mobile Rail Solutions, Inc locations: Chicago (Storage Bay), G1 – Chicago (locations where notices to employees are regularly posted), G2 – Melrose Park (Storage Container), G3 – Rochelle (Storage Container).

The Charged Party will keep all Notices posted for 60 consecutive days after the initial posting. The Charged Party will also copy and mail, at its own expense, a copy of the attached Notice to all current employees and former employees who were employed at any time since December 1, 2013. Those Notices will be signed by a responsible official of the Charged Party and show the date of mailing.

The Charged Party will provide the Regional Director written confirmation of the date of mailing and a list of names and addresses of employees to whom the Notices were mailed.

COMPLIANCE WITH NOTICE — The Charged Party will comply with all the terms and provisions of said Notice.

PAYMENT OF WAGES AND BENEFITS — Within 21 days from approval of this agreement, the Charged Party will make whole the employee(s) named below by payment to each of them of the amount opposite each name. The amount payable to Ahern is for back pay and front pay wages, and as consideration, Ahern has agreed to waive any right to reinstatement.

The Charged Party will make appropriate withholdings for each named employee. No withholdings should be made from the interest portion of the backpay.

The Charged Party will also file a report with the Social Security Administration allocating the payment(s) to the appropriate time periods.

By Out of the Woods - Novara Wire, May 24, 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.

Climate change is an issue so big it can be paralysing. It doesn’t help with the paralysis that proposed solutions tend to be either hopelessly inadequate (change your lightbulbs! buy local!), or hopelessly ambitious (just replace capitalism with global eco-communes!). Out of the Woods is a blog focused on research and theory; obviously, we think that’s important, but it does leave people asking, “OK, but what should we actually do?” In our view, the only meaningful way to fight climate change is to fight the people whose interests and choices are wrecking the climate. In that spirit, here are six ways to become part of the global movement against fossil fuels and climate chaos.

1 Join Blockadia.

From Elsipogtog to Balcombe, a movement Naomi Klein has dubbed ‘Blockadia’ is developing to prevent new fossil fuel extraction. In the case of Elsipogtog this is part of wider indigenous struggles for the land. These kind of struggles have been at their strongest when strong waged through alliances between local residents and environmental activists. Potential ‘Blockadia’ flashpoints in the UK include the ‘new dash for gas’, stopping new coal coming online, and preventing road and airport expansion. With the government opening up large swathes of this country for fracking, Blockadia could be coming soon to a place near you.

2. From divestment to non-cooperation.

We think that divestment campaigns are unlikely to have much impact. This is because many fossil fuel companies are not publicly traded corporations. Those that are don’t typically raise investment capital through the stock market.

That said, divestment campaigns may serve a movement-building function. They have been prominent in universities, where – in the other direction – a lot of funding goes from fossil capital to university research. There are also many cases of curricula tailored to the fossil fuel industry. Divestment campaigns could serve as a springboard to wider demands for non-cooperation with fossil capital. That could start to impact the development of new fossil fuel reserves.

If the world is to avoid climate chaos, new reserves absolutely have to stay in the ground. In fact, at this point the best case scenario is probably mitigating climate chaos. Climate change isn’t a possibility that might happen in the future: it’s happening now and will continue. What we’re fighting over is how fast and how bad climate change will be.

3. Green syndicalism.

‘Green syndicalism’ is a term coined by anarchist organiser-turned-academic Jeff Shantz to describe radical worker-based ecological organising. For example, in the 1970s the Building Labourer’s Federation in Australia implemented ‘green bans’ against ecologically-damaging projects, as recounted in the inspiring film Rocking the Foundations.

Another example is the historic joint ‘Local 1’ of eco-activists Earth First! and revolutionary unionists the IWW, which organised timber workers against the destruction of old growth forest in northern California in the 1990s. Green syndicalist tactics include sabotage, workers tipping off external activists, and activists occupying work sites as a pretext for workers to down tools in unofficial work stoppages.

Elements of these kind of tactics have been used in the UK, such as the McLibel Support Campaign linking up with McDonalds Workers Resistance in the early 2000s, and the occupation of the Vestas wind turbine factory in 2009, following factory-gate agitation by environmentalists. The basic tenet of green syndicalism is that the interests of capital are opposed to those of both workers and the environment. This provides a strong basis for a ‘red-green alliance’, to counter workers and environmentalists being played off against each other in a capitalist ploy of divide and rule.

By Nick Djinn Kappos - May 16, 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.

As a very ecologically minded Syndicalist, I am sympathetic to and often supportive of some of the Green and Primitivist value systems. The condition that we leave the earth in is the single most important issue facing humanity, even before egalitarian social relations and economic equality/abundance....which I also consider very important. Future generations are not going to congratulate us for acquiring great wealth and status if we leave them a toxic wasteland where they are struggling to find clean water and survive.

That said....I don't think humanity will move backwards without destroying itself. The masses will not voluntarily give up their comforts, especially in a controlled consumer environment where they control the access to food and water. People will consume what is fed to them, since the alternative inside of cities is starvation. People fortunate enough to have yards or sunlit space can grow more of their own food and we can have community gardens....total sustainability is something only the dedicated few will strive for. You could spend your whole life trying to prepare for an ecological collapse, only to find that you are not protected from drought or toxic rain as the rest of the population keeps fucking the place up. I do think that there are advantages to having autonomous communities that live closer to the land and each other. I feel like we could accomplish more to change things by being involved with the rest of society, perhaps building experimental communities just outside of smaller University towns.

Without access to technology we will not be able to put up much of a fight. They just roll over and destroy indigenous communities who lack the tools to fight back. Even just having internet and CB radio would give communities the opportunity to call for help and let the world know what is happening. Technology might be the death of us, but I also think we have an opportunity to do it better.

I won't really consider ourselves to be an evolved or enlightened society until we can produce everything we need sustainably, thinking 7 (or more) generations ahead. Cities that are too densely populated to provide their own food and water locally will inherently adopt exploitative and imperialist agendas. To maintain the import of resources and the export of waste, we must necessarily dominate and exploit the surrounding areas or foreign lands. There is no way around this until we reach a point where we can sustainably produce our own food and water and material goods locally without poisoning ourselves. We can't continue to poison our oceans, clear cut our forests, strip mind our hillsides, and not have it bite us in the ass later....probably as our children are growing up.

Consumer choice isn't really much of a choice. You are either going to pay 3x as much for some eco-friendly products that you can only afford if you are wealthy, or you are going to buy all the same crap that the corporations provide to everyone else. If a few people escape the city, the masses of people will still be stuck and continue to perpetuate the system. The only way out of this that I can personally see, short of killing ourselves, is to put the means of production back into the hands of the people while guiding and encouraging a trend towards sustainability and egalitarian social relationships. If we produced for our own communities as local communities, we could make better and more ethical decisions than would be made by mega-corporations who only care about the bottom line and do not have to live inside of the conditions they create.

I think we should acquire and control our own technology and render the old powers obsolete...and while keeping our sustainable technology, I think we should plant a lot more trees and make our living environment greener, with an emphasis on fruit bearing plants and trees that are freely available to the entire community. I think we could live better if we lived in smaller well networked pod-communities where you could easily walk to most of the places you would need to visit in a day. I envision lite rail systems that connect communities, made in a way that does not cut eco-systems in half. I think we could use a combination of common earth elements and plant resins and fibers for our building materials, instead of cutting down forests. I think we should keep the internet and make it free for everyone to access, and utilize that technology to network local communities with the larger society, and individuals with each other. I think we should get to a point where we can produce everything we need locally without reliance on imports shipped halfway across the world. I think we can reduce our need for cars and traffic, while still having a few vehicles for specialty purposes. You just wouldn't require one to do everything you need to do in a day. I think that if we are not packed like sardines into cities and if we have access to the land and means of production, that we can easily produce more than enough food for everyone and then some. I think we could easily house everyone for a lot less than we are all paying in rent if we abolished the banks and landlord control of our living areas. I think we could realistically aim for a 12 hour work week in our lifetime, and build our communities for social interaction instead of mass consumerism. I think we could have fewer stores and less pavement, and still be able to affordably produce every consumer item we would ever need.

All of these things are possible, but they will never be given to us unless we create it for ourselves.