Who else does the IWW organise?

"The flying china ducks of the British IWW"
In regard to the British IWW's bizarre "organising
accompilishment" of its parliamentary "shop" a sort of kitsch syndicalism as some one have mentioned -the problem to me is not that it is "organising" some dubious grouping but that it highlights the issue of the "strategic senselessness" of much of its organising drives since its resurgence in the late 1960's in the US - that its members have lost the plot or never knew what the plot was re building a mass syndicalist union movement as a critical vehicle in the overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the realisation of the workers control project.
Certainly in the period of the late 1960's to early 1960's in the US - the major focus has been on small shops which often ended in failure or successful organisation of a shop which later down the track would see the loss of the shop due to bankruptcy or financial inviability etc - at least these organising drive did involve organising actual workers "engaged in wage labour relations" - in contrast to the ludicrous "kitsch" drives of today - panhandlers in Canada, "big issue" sellers in Melbourne, parliamentary "workers" in Scotland, etc. However this "organising" was never focused upon the most fundamental issues confronting syndicalists - the psychological - how to raise morale of workers generally,how to slow down the employer offensive and turn the tide re the employer offensive - Rather it has focused on an "existential" organising as end in itself - the establishment of iww "shop" or conducting of organising drives without any view to the big picture - leading to the above absurd "kitsch" phenomena -
which is contributed by the "sect" phenomena - the group is seen as an end in its - expanding "organising" for its own sake without relevance to the general class struggle - the great fascination with the "regalia and minituae - the formalism of organisation" (perhaps similar to the "growth of the other anarcho federations in Britian today?")- the climate in the iww grouping being no doubt highly anti-intellectual - anti -scientific - pandering to all the absurd antics of the habitues of the left subculture such as reverence to identity politics and its "imagined oppressed communities" of woman, queers, blacks etc and encouraging the "recruitment" of left subculturals or workers in marginal sectors - small shops, cafes like starbucks and welfare places. Rather than pursuing long range "organising" drives in a sectors of strategic importance in the economy involving the interaction of outside the job and on the job organisation which could win the major victories which could lead to break throughs in the general class struggle against the employer offensive and massive growth for the IWW of course.
(The early wobblies in the US and elsewhere were of course doing just that - see the account of organising auto workers in Detroit in the early 1930's in Fred Thompson's memoirs - it failed but it showed the wobblies at that time had a serious approach to building mass syndicalist unionism.)
Encouraging the above it seems to me has been the role of students in the 1960s in the IWWs resurgence, the lack of a core of veteran industrial militants -the legacy of stalinism on the left just to name a few. The early IWW and the early general syndicalist movement was in fact built by such a core of veteran activists - encouraged by the ease of moving around the world for workers in those days and the era of the rise of international syndicalism.
I'll now pack up my dusty old syndicalist history books.
mark

spot-on.

correct.

asn: "However this "organising" was never focused upon the most fundamental issues confronting syndicalists - the psychological - how to raise morale of workers generally,how to slow down the employer offensive and turn the tide re the employer offensive". Yes, and this can't be done by purely propagandistic means. What is needed are ways of organizing so as to convince workers they potentially have the power to change things, and can move forward collectively.

asn's point about "strategic thinking" is good, too.

t.

Yeah I actually agree with a lot of that post. However, your examples are pretty selective eh? I mean sure harp on the parliament workers, panhandlers unions etc. But what about the Chicago couriers union, Portland's organising in the social services, the warehouse workers in NYC, starbucks and so on, I think these actually fall outside what you are (correctly in my opinion) criticising the IWW for.

I dunno about calling panhandler unions "kitsch". They're not trot party workers, or ngo workers, they're the worst off of us all. Hell, the IWW focused on organizing Hobos, those folks worked when they could and panhandled when they couldn't. Itinerant workers made up most of AWO.

in the early 20th century the American IWW did not organize hobos as such. The members of AWO were itinerant because they were migratory farmworkers. There was a whole annual cycle of movement of farmworkers in that era from Texas and Oklahoma north to Washington and then south into California, or something like that. This was the life of farmworkers in that era in western USA. Many timber workers were itinerant, and there were also itinerant butchers in meat packing plants. But agriculture is a fundamental industry, as were the other extractive industries in the western USA at that time. This is not the same as organizing small NGOs or other small, marginal areas of the economy.

t.

Well, my point isn't that we shouldn't organise them, and of course I disagree with calling it 'kitsch', but in the long term a panhandlers union is more a campaign you take on because it is the right thing to do. Not because it is of strategic importance.

Yes they organized them by job, but also as hobos. The IWW exalted the hobo, as a real proletarian. Songs like "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" were aimed at organizing tramps, hobos etc regardless of their current job. Hobo encampments often acted as a sort of wob GMB, where they organized the camp, helped each other get food, and ostensibly panhandle.

Organizing a panhandler's union doesn't seem out of the wob tradition, nor does it seem marginal.

Nowadays organizing among the homeless doesn't work by building panhandler unions. It tends to work through organizations that look at the whole situation of such a person, their whole life. In regard to panhandling, they'd tend to fight laws to deny people their right to panhandle. I mean, not that panhandling performs any social purpose, it isn't work, in that sense, but if the society isn't providing jobs for people, jobs that can enable them to live (quite a few homeless people have jobs), then how can it legitimately attack panhandling? But I don't think IWW organized hobos in this holistic way. It was concerned with them as a labor army in motion, as wage-laborers, not in their situation as hobos, as outcasts, even when it did fight against the disparagement of them by the larger society.

t.

Why do you say that it doesn't work? I would think that most homeless that work do so informally, or as temps. As a result, they must switch jobs around a lot, making it difficult to organize them. Since many of them panhandle, it would seem that this is a good outreach tool for organizing them on the job. They learn about the union, and come to the job having already engaged in collective struggle. Obviously it isn't everything, but it certainly has some strategic merit for the IWW.

The IWW organized them as wage earners and as outcasts. Ostensibly the focus was on their labor, but their "hobohood" certainly wasn't ignored either. The IWW featured in hobo culture in staggering ways. IWW controlled the boxcar traffic, hobo jungles were collective iww encampments etc. Many bums probably the joined the union out of these developments, rather than simple workplace organization.

Some homeless people collect bottles and cans, that is, they are working informally as recyclers. Unlike panhandling, this is socially useful work. In Brazil there is a major movement of scavengers, which anarchists have been heavily involved in. They have organized associations of the recyclers. They also organize homeless families to seize land and build houses on it, and then organize barrio commitees to defend this conquest. This helps them to build a social base among the poor. But I'm not sure how you could translate this to the USA today. The IWW's orientation to hobos, tho, was justified by them in terms of the role of this social stratum in many basic industries.

t.

My take on the chicago couriers union is that, IT'S NOT A UNION. It's an ideological milintant minority of the industry that isn't aiming for wider recognition and isn't attempting to really expand beyond bike messengers.

Sure, when there is a general state of pissed offness (not a word) amongst couriers they might be able to pull something off, but it's not a real union. It doesn't set or enforce standards, it has no funds and conduct no industry wide campaigns, it also has no longer term vision in a wider industry outside of a few hundred messengers.

Portland social service workers....they are non profit NGO's with a few dozen workers TOTAL. Who are not spreading to other industries, like hospitals, etc. It's stagnant. And not connected to other organizing outside of portland.

Warehouse. Glad, but where is the connection. These aren't local companies. It's like poking a bully with a toothpick when he's holding a bat.

Starbucks is interesting, and the IWW should put it's resources around the entire country into this campaign, but it won't because the IWW can not and will not have a centralized campaign that makes sense.

All this discussion about hobos fails to place any sort of economic or historical context to the IWW's organizing in western North America.

In the 1900-20s period perhaps 40% of the western workforce was transient 'hobos'. Both my grandfathers were transient workers of this sort building railroads and highways.

So the conventional wisdom of the IWW choosing the most down and out is incorrect. Out here in the west, by organizing hobos, the IWW was organizing with-in the mainstream working class - perhaps the largest single portion of workers.

The greater question is does a union, especially one who claims to be for all workers, pick and choose who belongs according to political ideology? The IWW should work with any group of workers who come to it. If you don't you stop any desire of being a union and become a political organization.

I don't think anyone argued that priests or pastors were workers. I know that I only argued that we shouldn't dispute that religious leaders CAN be helpful in organizing the working class.

On the warehouse workers, not sure what Chuck's beef is here. I'm not IWW and have nothing vested in it (the IWW), but this is a for real campaign. But I am, however, biased as we've known Billy and Burt (the two IWW point folks) for decades.

These workers represent a segment of the inner-city working class. I suspect all post-industrial cities have similiar workers and communities.

Some of the workers came to Make the Road by Walking community center. Spoke with members of the workers section, Workers In Action about their problems. Some members of WIA are IWW, others not. In any chase, they were beig cheated and screwed. the IWW came forward and offered to assist them in organizing.

The shops now under organization---and fighting off a big-chill bosses campaign-- all are pretty close to each other. They all service one segment of the resturant industry. It appears that they are key shops within ther respective segment of the industry.

I suspect these would be the same sort of shops the mucked-up UFCW would try and organize. So I just don't see the beef, except if its about the IWW.

I think if the IWW loses, it will be a personal set-back for the workers in particular, but a loss for workers in the Brooklyn-Queens foodstuff warehosuing/distribution in general. It could chill the air for further organization amongst these low-paid workers.

I'll put whatever differences I have with the IWW aside and support this fight without a blink of the eyelash.

That said, here's what folks can do to support the fight:

Please Post Widely

Industrial Workers of the World · New York City General Membership Branch
J. D. Crutchfield, Treasurer
(phone number removed) * P.O. Box 7430 JAF Station, New York, NY 10116 *
iww-nyc@iww.org

11 January 2007

Union Workers Under Attack in Foodstuffs Industry!

Dear Friend of Labor:

Bosses in the foodstuffs industry in New York City are staging a concerted attack against organized workers in an attempt to crush union organizing. In the past two weeks, two shops have fired all of their union workers, and others are likely to do the same in a very short time. This is war, Dear Friend, and we need every man and woman who cares about justice and democracy in the workplace to help in the defense of labor.

Since late 2005, the I. W. W. has been organizing workers in small foodstuffs warehouses that serve the New York restaurant industry. Before they organized, these workers, mostly immigrants from Latin America and East Asia, were paid poverty wages, usually well below the legal minimum, and worked fifty to seventy hours a week without overtime pay. Because many do not have legal status, it was an act of tremendous courage for these workers to stand up for themselves and their fellow workers. By organizing with a militant, worker-run labor organization, and with
the help of the wider labor community, the foodstuffs
workers have been able to force their bosses to obey wage-and-hour laws;
they have won wage-raises above the legal minimum;
they have won vacations, sick-leave, and paid holidays, which most of
them never had before. Most important, they have won
dignity and respect on the job.

Bosses don't like having to treat workers like human beings, so they're fighting back. They have money and organization behind them, so we need money and organization to win this struggle. We're appealing to you to help.

Here are some things you can do to help us:
. Send money. We need to protect more than twenty workers and their
families from hunger and eviction. You can send
checks, made out to "IWW NYC GMB" to P. O. Box 7430, J. A. F. Station,
New York, NY 10116; or you can give
on-line through PayPal by making a payment to iww-nyc@iww.org at
www.paypal.com. You can also sign up on
PayPal for a monthly, automatic payment in any amount that's manageable
for you.
. Get your union to support us. Call me to find out where our pickets
are and how union workers can help.
. Write letters. Our web site at http://nyc.iww.org has a list of people
to contact.
. Call the bosses. Our web site tells you how.
. Talk to management at the restaurants that trade with these bosses.
Again, please see the web site.

If you don't have access to the internet, please call me at the number
below to learn more. If you have other ideas for helping,
please call or email me.

The I. W. W.'s treasury is "in the members' pockets". We depend on our membership and the labor community, rather than big reserves of money, to support workers in need. Please do all you can to help. Thank you very much.

Yours for Industrial Freedom,

J. D. Crutchfield

From a WSA comrade who attended the Brooklyn, NY warehouse workers march & rally:

"I attended the IWW march and picket in support of fired immigrant workers at 2 wholesalers today.

The march started at one shop, EZ Supply, and went several blocks to another, Handyfat, both in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn. There were about 100 participants all told, despite it being a damp and grey day.. The march was peaceful, with the cops letting the marchers take the street even though there was no permit (since its MLK Day, traffic was probably a bit quieter than usual).The picket at Handyfat was exuberant, with a local radical marching band, the Rude mechanical Orchestra, adding to the fun.

Besides workers fired from the 2 shops, a significant group of workers from another shop, Top city, whcih just organized into the IWW last month came. I had a chance to talk to them some and they told me that they have been getting constant deportation threats from the boss there if they insist on organizing despite 12 hour work days with no overtime or benefits). They're all Mexican immigrants and a strong solid bunch.

There were a lot of anarchists there (it was announced multiple times on local @ listsevs), one ISO person, a guy named Fred from Providence who does something called Working Class Opposition and a few members of the Internationalist Group (Trots), who took part in the short speeches at rally's end (usual 'genral strike, revolutionary workers party' stuff, no one paid much mind). One of the Internationalist guys is also with the Laborers Union and has been helpful, and some Transit Workers Union and Million Worker March folks came out in support as well. WSA did get a shout out at the end when they announced supporters, thanks to IWW for that.

...I think it's a good effort...but certainly bringing together a very exploited group of workers who have shown incredible resilience despite fierce attacks, and bridging the immigrant 'divide' has been a very important part of this struggle.

Best,
Steve"

RPhotos from the Brooklyn march and rally.
http://antiauthoritarian.net/NLN/photo-gallery/2007_mlk_day/

Chuck, in most of the examples you list workers came to the IWW for help and over the course of those conversations it made sense to those workers to join up as members. That does raise questions about IWW strategic targeting etc, but that's another conversation.

Also, in the warehouse campaign there were some great gains won before the boss started hitting back - folks went from below minimum wage to 6 or 8 bucks an hour, among other things. I was in NYC this past weekend and met some of the workers at one shop at a picket. They like the union. And because if I don't say this you'll probly comment on it, no this isn't the first anti-union campaign they've faced. Just the latest round. The others were weathered pretty well. With enough support, this one will be too. The warehouse I was at was totally dead compared to the normal flow of trucks in and out. Lastly, I'm pretty sure at least some of the companies involved _are_ local in the sense that a major portion of their business is done around NYC and that the NYC wareshouses are a key part of the company's operations.

As for Starbucks, I agree that the IWW should put more resources and attention on that campaign. Given the support it used to get, it definitely gets more than it used to, but yeah, it could use more. More people are still coming around, especially among the more solid people in the union. That campaign's also won some good gains (buck an hour in NYC across the city I believe, something comparable in Chicago, and more in the stores that are public w/ the union).

As for the CCU, you're wrong - it is a union. Like the other campaigns, this one's also won good gains though I can't remember them off the top of my head (a lot of work in the industry is piece work and I don't really understand it as I was never a messenger). And you're wrong - they _are_ aiming for wider recognition and wider presence among the messengers, and in units beyond the bikers. It's hard work and it's slow going is all.

Nobody should shit talk the Congress Hotel strikers, I don't see why anyone should shit talk the CCU - in both cases it's great that those workers have hung in there during a long, difficult effort to build and secure organization.

That link does not seem to be working.

i'm not talking shit about CCU. I think they are brave and couragous and what they are doing is terrific. That doesn't mean i agree with the plan or think of it as model for unionism. Your mixing the two things up.

With the congress, if someone wants to to say it's not an example of the future of unionism, and that a three year strike isn't helping hotel workers, then that's a debate.

if folks want to get up on here and say they feel sorry for the workers, and that they need to be more militant or some such bullshit, then they are attacking valient strikers and should fuck off.

see the difference.

dont' start saying you attacked when your not nate. it makes you look weak and pathetic.

deal with the issues. raised. no one attacked the workers.

link works now. Fucking awsome photos. What did the capitalist media say?

*swoons* If only we could be as tough as Chuck. I hear he can pitch a tent so big tyhe entire hotel industry can fit.

Good post Nate.

deal with the issues. did i attack the workers or the strategy?

not as such, but from an outside point of view (since i'm not involved in this little conversation) you were unnecesarily aggressive, forcing others to become more defensive. it's a vicious circle.

great info

oh that is fucking retarded.

wobs attack other unions strategies and their reasons for such strategies all the time. when someone does the same to their campaign they can't take it and get all pissy.

yet another reason while wobbly organizers can't be taken seriously. they can't be challanged or pushed.

hence they can't organize workers.

I dreamed i saw joe hill last night,
Standing large as life
I said but joe your ten years dead
No says he i'm the MP for Fife

God is this thread still going