Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

By J.P. Wright - Railroad Workers United, July 11, 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.

Holding the Line on the W&LE

It's been nearly 2½ years now since bargaining commenced between the Wheeling & Lake Erie (W&LE) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers & Trainmen (BLET) for a new contract for engineers and trainmen on this Midwest regional carrier. Negotiations have "gone nowhere" as the two sides are diametrically opposed on the issue of single employee train operations.

By August of 2013, things came to a head when the W&LE insisted upon single employee operations of trains, while the union stated that they would never accept such conditions. Then on September 13th and 14th, the carrier unilaterally opted to run a pair of trains with a single manager. The engineers and trainmen of BLET #292 went on strike September 20th, but they were quickly ordered back to work under a temporary restraining order (TRO) by a federal judge. The strike by more than 100 union members completely shut down the railroad's operations in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Bargaining then resumed on the 23rd. However, the company remained intransigent and refused to negotiate the issue of single employee crews.

Since then, no negotiating sessions had been scheduled throughout the winter and spring. For nine months the two sides did not meet. Finally, after Local Chairman Lonnie Swigert's efforts, including a barrage of phone calls to Mediator Jack Kane, the NMB, the BLET national office, numerous BLET VPs and the General Chairman, the mediator scheduled a bargaining session for June 10-12th in St. Louis. Predictably, the carrier remained steadfast, and refuses to bargain on any issues unless and until the union concedes to run trains with a single employee. The union is holding fast, determined to stop any effort by the W&LE to open the door to single employee operations.

By x365252 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, July 11, 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.

On July 13th, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) will be organizing a march from the Capitol Building to the office of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to protest FERC's refusal to conduct an environmental impact statement on the liquid natural gas export plant Dominion is planning to build in the Cove Point area of Lusby, MD. FERC has also basically been cozying up to Dominion, and has not taken the residents of Cove Point's concerns about health and environmental safety into account.

While CCAN's efforts against the proposed LNG plant at Cove Point is being supported by some mainstream unions and environmental groups alike, there has been growing frustration from the residents and rank-and-file members of CCAN that the group is ineffective in stopping the plant.

To this end, some Fellow Workers from the DC GMB and members of Chesapeake Earth First! will be forming an anti-capitalist bloc at the protest to show that unless capitalism is abolished, agencies like FERC will do the bidding of companies like Dominion, with no regard for the environment or the safety of working class citizens.

We are meeting at the Capitol Building on Sunday, July 13th, at 12:30 pm. We will be marching from the Capitol Building to the FERC office, which will end at 2:30pm.

If you're free on Sunday afternoon, please come out and show your support! While I'm not sure the bloc alone will be effective in any immediate change, it can serve to help us get contacts with people interested in organizing workers around environmental safety issues.

For further details, contact x365252 [at] iww.org

Terra Verde, KPFA 94.1 FM - June 27, 2014 at 2:00pm, Hosted By Laura Garzon Chica

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.

(On this show) we explore the condemnation of eco-activism as terrorism punishable under the law (or outside the law) in the name of national security. Does the government's attack on civil disobedience signal an end to a legitimate democracy in the USA? What does the corroding of civil liberties and the gutting of the Bill of Rights mean for those who struggle to protect our environment, ourselves as a species, and other creatures? What about corporations and the intelligence industrial complex at large? How do these non-state actors engage in the push to prosecute environmentalists involved in nonviolent direct action as terrorists and/or spies? Guests Will Potter, Shahid Buttar, and Steve Ongerth tackle these questions with host Laura Garzon Chica.

Download this clip (mp3, 5.13, megabytes)

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By Shane Burley - Labor Notes, June 2014

A crew of nine marijuana legalization canvassers walked off their jobs and into the Portland office of the Industrial Workers of the World June 5, looking to form a union.

The workers at the Oregon Campaign for the Restoration and Regulation of Hemp had been refused paychecks they were owed. This was on top of several past bounced paychecks. After their checks did not arrive on the late schedule and management would not even discuss it, they walked out.

With IWW support, the canvassers have formed the United Campaign Workers. In a joint statement they pointed to a “culture of secrecy and information repression that make incidents like this an ongoing problem.”

Before they will return to work, they want a written agreement from management offering them the $15-an-hour pay rate and correct overtime they were promised when they were hired.

After a first march on the boss, they started a call-in campaign, asking supporters and union partners to phone the campaign headquarters and express support. Meanwhile, the campaign has hired other canvassers to replace them.

A second demonstration June 13 brought dozens of supporters from the Portland IWW, Portland Solidarity Network, Jobs with Justice, and Rose City Resistance, who marched up the street and into the campaign office. A worker spokesperson tried to present the demands to canvass director Kyle Purdy—who screamed and swore at the protesters, claiming he represented a “real grassroots” campaign.

By Bill Mee - SPB Searchlight, May 31, 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.

As unfettered capitalism with all its’ unsustainable methodologies of unlimited growth and consumption drives the planet ever closer to environmental catastrophe is there anything that can be done to reverse the damage and put economic activity on a long term sustainable basis?

The answer may just be yes. Most people will be familiar with activist groups such as Trade Unions and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and they would at first glance seem to be poles apart on what they are trying to achieve.

The answer then must lie in the making of common cause. This is now possible. The need for working class organizing across trade or guild lines potentially pitting worker against worker in both the national and international context is, in the early 21^st century, an anachronism. Workplace organizing and the environmental agenda are inextricably linked. For the planet to stand any chance of sustaining human life, especially human life with all the technical advances it has made, sustainability in the long term is now a matter of urgency.

Step up then a little known union that has addressed these issues. This union is called the Industrial Workers of the World or International Workers of the World if you prefer.

By the IWW European Regional Administration (ERA)

The IWW condemns the intensification of immigration raids across the UK under Operation Centurion. We believe that all workers, regardless of their place of origin or legal status, need to support one another in order to fight the common enemy; the present system that upholds the interests of business and other elites at the expense of ordinary working and unemployed people.

The undercutting of the pay and conditions of British workers by migrant labour is not caused by the immigrants themselves but by business owners, managers and government who seek to maximise their profit by forcing working and unemployed people to compete for an ever-diminishing number of jobs. This 'race to the bottom' forces us to work harder for less money, and all workers suffer from this - while bosses happily rake in their profits.

The IWW urges British and documented migrant workers not to demonise those without papers but to look after one another at work and create a strong labour movement to promote the interests of working class people of all nationalities - improving pay, working conditions, and collective power at work for everyone. The first step is to join a union.

What is the IWW?

We are the union for all workers, working across the globe to empower workers to improve their lives together. We are one of the fastest-growing unions in Britain, and we pride ourselves on real democracy and getting results through collective worker-led action. We welcome anyone who works for a wage, whatever their immigration status, because we believe that an injury to one is an injury to all.

Video and Song by J.P. Wright - Railroad Workers United, June 6, 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. J.P. Wright is a member of the IWW and Railroad Workers United.

By Doug G - May 31, 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.

Comrades and Fellow Proles,

As many of you know, Elliot Hughes, member of the Industrial Workers of the World as well as the Stage Hands Union is involved in a variety of struggles and campaigns.

Elliot has thrown himself deep into organizing against the eviction of the Albany Bulb, in which many people have lived there for over 7 years. The push to 'cleanse' the Bulb is part and parcel to the ongoing attack on working, poor, and homeless people throughout the bay area. Elliot has organized events, brought out food and water, and faced down the police for several weeks now. I have personally been out to the Bulb and it is clear that the all of the police there are well aware of Elliot and his activism. Police Sergeant Chris Willis asked to take Elliot to coffee and talk about 'raising the minimum wage' and 'stopping the Keystone XL.' Elliot of course refused. Police have also attempted to ask young people involved in defending the Bulb if they know Elliot.

Yesterday, police raided the home of the last two remaining people on the Bulb with a large amount of police and weapons. They arrested one supporter and even put their name down as "Elliot Hughes." It is clear that they were eager to get Elliot - and do it quickly.

This morning, when Elliot was helping Amber and Phill move their belongings after the raid, police stopped Elliot and arrested him supposedly over an unpaid traffic ticket. They also booked him on two felonies. One, of having instruments that could be used for a jailbreak (?!) and also having stolen property (unclear as to what this is). While we do not expect these charges to stick, we need to raise money to get Elliot out of the clink.

Elliot comes from a working class family in the mid-west. His father is also in the stage hands union. In 2008, Eilliot was brutally arrested and beaten during the Republican National Convention by police, leading him to have residual trauma and damage. He's a tough kid and can hold his own, but we want to support our comrades - especially when we know the real reason why they've been arrested - their organizing!

Please, pitch in - help Elliot out!  

By x344534, May 25, 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.

My path to green syndicalism was anything but a straight line. I was initially ignorant of anarchism and libertarian socialism, because what gets labeled "libertarian" in the United States of America is actually anything but anarchist or libertarian, but instead is the most extreme and dogmatic brand of capitalism.

Let's be absolutely clear here. Capitalism cannot survive without the state. It takes a massive, centralized, armed-to-the-teeth, authoritarian government to enforce business contracts, "private property" rights, virtual "intellectual property" rights (the idea that ideas can be owned and controlled), rent, usury, and the notion that corporations are individual people. Nobody in their right mind would voluntarily consent to a system of institutionalized inequality which results in starvation, homelessness, disease, squalor, wage slavery, sexism, racism, and ecological degradation if they had the freedom (yes, you heard me correctly, I said "FREEDOM!" that ever ubiquitous buzzword that capitalist ideologues cast so effortlessly about in defense of their way of life which is anything but free to those forced into subservience under its dictates) to choose.

What initially blocked my path to real libertarianism, meaning libertarian socialism was the twisted demented pretzel logic of the so called "libertarian" capitalists in their polysyllabic but ultimately empty peonage to their Laissez-faire capitalist religion.

One individual in particular, Bryan Caplan--who lived in the dorm room next to mine at the (state-funded) University of California at Berkeley--even tried to "convert" me to his faith by handing me a reading list if his holy prophets: Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Henry Hazlitt, F. A. Hayak, Robert Nozick, and--of course--Ayn Rand.

Naturally, I didn't bite. I had a good deal of exposure to the demented nonsense of Rand already, and any philosophy or economic theory that supported this crazy dingbat's contention that there's any "virtue" in selfishness or that big corporate business is "a persecuted minority" couldn't have anything useful to say to me.

Thanks to a combination of my intelligence, inquisitiveness, stubbornness, and some plain good luck, I found thinkers and philosophers who offered clues to real libertarian ideas. These included Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin, Vandana Shiva, Rudolf Rocker, Christipher Alexander, bell hooks, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Neil Peart (yes, that's correct, the drummer and lyricist of Rush), Chuck D (of Public Enemy), Graham Purchase, John Bellamy Foster, Carl Sagan, William Least Heat Moon, Bakunin, Marx, Engels, and Kropotkin (among others). Then, I met Judi Bari.

Judi Bari clarified matters for me greatly and showed me how one could be a radical environmentalist and an advocate for class struggle at the same time. Plus, she kept mentioning this group called, "the IWW."

I had no idea who the IWW was or what it stood for. For all I knew they were the International Socialist Organization (whom I was well acquainted with, but not at all interested in joining). Then, one day when seeking out a workers' collective to try and join as an alternative to the horribly depressing and soul killing capitalist retail job I had managed to get after graduating from that fabled weapons laboratory we call a "public university", a spokesperson from a network of such shops clued me in to what the IWW was and is.

I had heard Noam Chomsky (who would later join the IWW himself) describe himself as an "anarcho syndicalist" and a "libertarian socialist", but never fully understood what those terms meant or what an economy and political system organized around those ideas would look like. The IWW revealed to me how that would work in practice.

And, thanks to the influence of Judi Bari and Earth First!, the IWW was (and is) in many ways the first organization to promote green syndicalist ideas in practice (though the IWW is not limited to those concepts).

Over the following years, I came to realize how easy it was to prove just how flawed the thinking of so-called "libertarian" capitalists actually are, and really all I need to have done was read the following passage from the Preamble to the IWW Constitution:

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life.

As time passed and I gained life-experience I saw that capitalism and freedom are actually incompatible. Just to be sure, I read anarchist and socialist literature voraciously and the knowledge that I gained from doing so validated my experiences. My deepening understanding of the interconnectedness of the environment further showed me the flawed pseudoscience that the Ludwig Von Mises "Austrian" school of economics actually is, and I came to realize that ever more fully as I wrote my own book about the green syndicalist organizing efforts of Judi Bari.

As for Caplan, I assumed he'd passed into obscurity (after all, disciples of Ayn Rand are a dime a dozen. The capitalist class spares few expenses in funding ministries of propaganda to promote itself, and said ideologues serve that function all too effectively, but there's nothing particularly noteworthy about most of them). In this particular case, I was mistaken.

By Karen Pickett - Indybay.org, May 20, 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.

Join us to commemorate the 24th anniversary of the bombing of Judi Bari & Darryl Cherney & attack on Earth First! - With a Speak-Out, Sing-Out, and show of solidarity

Sat., May 24 -- Gather @ 11:30 am at Park Blvd @ E.33rd, near MacArthur, Oakland, California
To mark the moment of the bombing: 12 noon

Bring musical instruments, poems & your voice.

A bit of history: Earth First! activists Judi Bari & Darryl Cherney were subjects of a bomb attack in Oakland on May 24, 1990 as they were organizing for Redwood Summer. They were charged with bombing themselves by the FBI & OPD; Earth First! was smeared, & a serious investigation was never done. Judi & Darryl sued the FBI & OPD for civil rights violations, winning the case in 2002. Judi Bari died in 1997. Activists continue to investigate the bombing.

Judi famously said [when asked by an FBI representative if there was anything the FBI could do to restore Bari's confidence in them as an investigative agency], “Find the bomber and fire him!”

We will never forget.

We will never give up.