Who else does the IWW organise?

tom have you ever meet an organization that you weren't better than?

I mean shit. That local had 6 thousand workers that didn't have a contract, were locked out and on strike, etc. for two years. The workers had to hand pay their dues....and after a massive, massive massive fight...they beat the entire hotel industry. Thousands of chinesse, vietnamese and mexican woman beat the fucking hospitality industry that was set on destroying them on a two year fight.

and what were they fighting for: raises? nope. health care? nope. pension? nope.

their fight was to line up their contracts with the rest of the big cities in 2006. why would workers; poor workers fight for that? because the goal was, pressure these companies into letting workers in the south and the midwest have a chance to join the union.

seriously tom....fuck you.

housekeepers take up the fight for thier working class brothers and sisters, not even themselves and you down play it like this.

you are a fucking joke.

you come on here for what purpose, chuck? you tell me.
what i say about the local 2 being top-down is
the truth. it's what i hear from hotel workers. your
only response is to insult people. that proves you're
an asshole but doesn't change the facts. there is an
alternative way to look at it. the alternative would be
to acknowledge that struggles are often organized
thru imperfect organizations, and maybe look to find ways
we can improve organizations. like have elections
of shop stewards. but, frankly, Chuck, i don't give a
rat's ass whether you approve of me or not.

t.

tom. you come here for what? to here yourself and your kind regurgitate the same trite anarchists bullshit thats been said for years. to preach to the choir.

you insult anything and everything that doesn't function on puritan dogma.

that's why your killing anarchism.

our struggle in san francisco was heroic and you demean it.

fuck you. I don't care what you or mitch say.

the struggle in S.F. was heroic. it's a shame that
the organization doesn't live up to the people, to
what the people are capable of.

i'm amenable to reason. i've been wrong in the past, and i learn from all kinds of people. i follow what seem to me to be persuasive reasons. if what i say here is mistaken, it's always up to others to provide reasons to show that i'm wrong. insulting people ain't providing reasons, tho.

t.

ummm....ok. then it's up to you to prove that i'm wrong.

what kind of sense does that make. it's up to you to prove that your right. and it's up to me to prove that i'm right.

or its up to us as adults to figure out the truth.

the problem is that our realities don't mesh. i think your stuck in the past and you think i'm an idiot.

see...how we don't see eye and eye.

I don't think you're an idiot. i think you're quite smart.
you have a lot of good ideas. i agree with some your ideas. but we have some things we disagree on. when people disagree, if they want to have a conversation, they try to give people reasons for seeing things their way.

t.

ok.

i'm having a bad day. negotiated a fantastic contract, the ratification vote was today. workers freaked out....awful ratification vote. then they all voted yes.

ugh...if your pissed and want to fight then fucking vote to fight...don't just yell at me then give me...

what the fuck?

so how big is the IWW there? why are anarchist groups so small?
i believe that all anarchist books etc should be free to download on the net
bill

I'm confused. In the Bay Area IWW(250-500). Anarchists groups, hahahaha, fat chance. Anarchist Books? One of the largest and most succesful Anarchist Book Fairs, An AK Press Warehouse, Bound Together Book Store(anarchist book store). Does that answer yer questions Mikabill?

Actualy Since there are several IWW branches in the Greater Bay Area. I'd say its more like 300-700. We are long over due for an official count. There are also workers we represent but they are not members because they will only be at the job for 1-3 months.

In south australia i have been to many workers actions/community actions ive yet to meet any anarchists in numbers in fact ive seen only a few during refugee protests. there is no anarchist bookstore in south australia and i havent seen many books of an anarchist nature in secondhand bookstores here. Im a member of the Australian greens and they are as radical as we get here haha

Wait, where you asking about American IWW or Ausie IWW?

Ausie IWW:

http://www.iww.org.au/

http://www.iww.org/branches/Australia

Ausie IWW is rebuilding it's self. I can assure you they are more Radical than the greens however I dont know if they have a branch near you. You can always start one!

how do you start one?
bill

I'll PM you.

bill, if you are looking for anarcho's to meet in oz then maybe post something of the like in the oceania forum. As for Adelaide, why not try http://www.threedradio.com/ . I'm sure you'll find friendly folk there. Also, check out https://bull.anarchy.org.au/ . The Greens... pah! If you are interested in enviro stuff, mobs like friends of the earth may have peeps of anarcho persuasion lurking among them. If you journey into anarchism is very raw then maybe even start with some wikipedia searches. They can actually give a very basic insight and have some pretty good links to. Finally, what does an anarchist look like? We come in so many different shapes and sizes and are involved in many different fields it's crazy. Anyway, sorry for hijacking this forum, i'll be off now.

that email addy doesnt work

talking to me?

This is why I'm part of my local. I made a choice to leave the UAW for AFSCME to take 60k workers union with one employer in one state in one campaign. There was a goal that I agreed with and a set of tactics and strategy that I liked. I left AFSCME for SEIU because there was an emphasis on organizing and a re-emphasis on member engagement and they were going to break the AFL. I left the international for my local because my local is to the left of SEIU in terms of militancy and vision and leading in developing tactics for organizing and building power in right to work states.

Why do you join unions?

This is why anarchism will never win with the current milieu. We can't agree on anything. Chuck is clearly a moron. Everyone knows it yet Tom finds the need to disagree for the sake of disagreeing.

I can tell you why i believe in HERE in one short story.

When I first started there was a birthday party for our director of organizing. The staff gave him a book that they had made and printed up for him.

It was the HERE training manuel.

There was a table of contents with all the parts you would find in a normal training manuel.

1. How to start a campaign
2. How to target leaders
3. How to win an election
4. How to win grievances
5. How to negotiate a contract...
etc. etc. etc.

When you turned to the chapters, each and every page had one a few words on it, for exmample:

Chapter 22: Fighting the Bosses Anti-Union Campgain

Build the Committee.

Chapter 16: How to sign Union Cards

Build the Committee.

That's what my union believes in and its the only mission of the staff: Build the Committee; Rule the City.

Committees are hierarchical.

good.

There's no way in hell that the Bay Area IWW has 300-700 members. Perhaps 150 on a good day.

memebers in good standing 200-300 is my GUESS. people who have red cards some wierd ass place and arnt up on dues including the ones who have paid dues 300-700. Inless you think the bay area is only oakland, SF and berkeley.

The IWW has perhaps 900 members in good standing world wide. The Bay Area is the biggest concentration, but the UK, Chicago and Portland are all also relitively big fish in the small pond.

How many folks show at your meetings? How many of the Latino and African-American recyclers come to the GMB meetings?

You are right that there are 700 folks in the bay area who *have paid* at sometime in their lives. So what? How many of those 700 folks would come back? How would you get them back? Would you want them back?

I am very pro-IWW, I want it to win. But it won't if its posturing doesn't stop. It needs to face it's endemic structural disfunctionality.

After 12 years of serious activity the IWW's membership is back to where it was. The poorly thought-out street campaigns have gone under, but only after checks were cashed. The truckers never took off the way they should have because of certain Branches having a localist fetish which the membership as a whole can't question. The IWW believes it can demand other unions to organize democratically, but when it's constitution is repeatedly violated by elected officers, that's an issue to be swept under the carpet.

1. Last i heard probably like 10-20 people show up. When i was a member 5-10 people if we were lucky.
2. Ummm never.

That's pretty heavy stuff to level.

Nobody's claimed the IWW's perfect. From what I can tell, the membership has grown - members in good standing that is - but not by a ton. People who've been around longer than me tell me that there's been a lot of qualitative growth in the union, though. Technically speaking, though, the claim about the membership of the Bay Area GMB is probabky true - people stay members according to the constitution even if they're very much in bad standing. Personally I think the constitution should be amended so that paper members are dropped. There's also people who participate in shop committees and actions but don't hold membership cards. I have no idea how many of these there are, but it's probably smaller than the paper members in bad standing.

As for the 'street campaigns', they were well thought out and are a great idea, except for one detail: scope. The amount of work involved in person-hours to really pull one of those off is more than the local branches could handle. That's a shame, and it does mean that corridor campaigns should be put on hold for a while until there's a bigger group involved on the ground.

Also, while this is pedantic of me, it's not really the case that "the IWW" demands that other unions be democratic. Some wobblies think that, others don't (some think other unions are fucked). Your point can still hold about many wobblies, though - wobs should be most concerned over fixing problems in our own organization rather than other unions or any other organizations.

Regarding Street Campiagns, I feel they were poorly thought out because they ignore the one thing the IWW has always stood for - where it's source of potential power lies - in industrial organizing.

By focusing in a neighborhood the IWW has been reinforcing it's two weaknesses, industrial dispersion and localism. The Street Campaign strategy simply de-focuses the IWW even further.

I think Street Campaigns also would drive workers into political campaigns, eg appeals to City Hall, etc. because they don't have/maintain power on shop floors. This tendancy also would be emphasized because the workers involved tend to not have enough in common with each other.

But they think the other unions are fucked and the IWW is good. Precisely my point and one that Chuck and Duke have tried to make, clean up your own house before claiming someone else is fucked.

I want to take up on the strategic organising issue that flint and others have raised - there seems to me some simplistic notions go around regarding what it would mean in practice - it is quite unrealistic -to consider that all in the iww in the us or other groups - "salt" a strategic industry - a little salting however would be of some use and the following up of contacts made in the past eg subscribers to publications - however others in the group - would assist their on the job activity - do the editing and production of a workplace paper - and its distribution on the job - in syndicalist palarance - outside the job organisation - an obvious place would be urban transit in New York for example - similar activity/focusing in other large cities eg San Francisco - - also any militant hostile to the boss workers on the job could contribute - outside the job would play a role re asssisiting these to write articles for the paper - reports on their workplace - many may not have necessary skills or time or morale to produce their own stuff - - in such an industry - this outside organisation would play a particularly effective role re the ease of distributing the paper- sympathizers and members of the group - could just hand out copies during their normal daily routine - and avoid the "on the job activists" being targeted by the bosses - state - via their spies amongst workers, private investigators following workers around and tagetting via CCTV's etc- this outside the job organisation - would not be any formal "so called organisation" but an extensive periphery/network - in other industries - you would have difficulties handing papers to workers at workplaces due to security guards guarding parking lots and having to get up a 4am in the morning to distribute etc -
also on the issue on the lack of strategic organising in the iww in the us and everywhere else today - the anti-intellectual climate which prevades and associatied aimless activism seems to play a role - therefore there is no study of historial precedents to guide activity - and the key role of strategic sectors have played in syndicalist style mass workers upsurges - eg french rail strikes of late 1986 early 1987 and in late 1995 etc
What was going on here was a radiation effect - big actions inspiring other public sectors in france to take direct action and adopt workers assemblies and co-ordinative committee structures. I am unaware of any such "radiations in childcare"
mark