industrial unionism or anarcho-syndicalism

Bit of a false dichotomy, really.

Industrial unionism makes good sense, in that it stops different "trades" in the same job from (in effect) scabbing on each others disputes.

However, having one union per industry isn't in & of itself revolutionary, in much the same way as single-union deals aren't necessarily a good thing.

So my answer to the question, "industrial unionism or anarchosyndicalism?" is "meh".

the question needs to be re-framed

federations:
1. industrially based
2. nationally based.

1. is industrial unionism, 2. historically has been syndicalist unions.

They are identicle in that they are federations and that they involve local autonomy and horizontal decision making structures. Industrial unionism seeks to build structures for greater international solidarity and coordination across industries.

Seems hard to argue with from my perspective.

the only thing this thread shows is what a numpty you are.

I'm not sure I know enough about anarchosyndicalism to say either way. Industrial unions make sense to me. I'll trust Booey saying that historically syndicalist unions have been nationally based, but that doesn't mean anarchosyndicalism must be, does it?

He's right in the sense that, historically, anarchosyndicalist unions have been affiliates of national anarchosyndicalist federations. However, that doesn't mean that -- where there have been functioning anarchosyndicalist unions -- they haven't been organised industrially.

The SolFed (teeny weeny British section of the IWA) organises in locals & networks* -- a bit like the IWW thing of having General Membership Branches in a locality, as well as industrial unions. The difference is that (from my reading of the IWW constitution), GMBs are meant to be temporary arrangements, until the industrial unions are up & running.

Even with functioning IUs, I'd still want to see local groups of members in different industries.

* Or would do if we were bigger. tbh the only networks that we have at the moment that do anything remotely resembling functioning is education workers and health workers.

Yes anarcho-syndicalist unions organise both industrially and in a Local. This enables the linking of the workplace to the community, one of the positive aspects of anarcho-syndicalism lacking in Industrial Unionism.

I'm going to try to ignore the second part of that question, which is just silly, but for the first part, for it to mean anything explain what you think industrial unionism and anarcho-syndicalism are. Because I think you're confused...

i think this confusion is common, its like the false split between anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism.

So traditionally and today the worlds anarcho-syndicalist unions organise industrially, that is that in any given workplace and industry all workers will join the same syndicate/union. If you look at the bigger A-S unions from cnt(s) to SAC they all organise industrially.

Same goes for SolFed, it is industrial unionism combined with the activity that goes with the local. At the moment if you join solfed you join the local first, and your industrial network second (like Button said, edu workers and health workers are the functioning networks at the moment) and these networks are national.

Imagine you are a cycle courier in London. You join the IWW and find that the IU you are in is transport. You have a really good link with a very sound comrade on Canada's prairies, , and some truck drivers in California. But all the other people in London IWW are working or studying in the Education IU.

You need some help in organising so you go to your IU. No one can afford to come over from North America. You hook up with an organiser in, say, Italy, who tells you what rights you have there. But it's no good, 'cos you need that info relating to England.

By now, of course, this hypothetical situation is daft. Anyone in the IWW in London would go to their local GMB.
I don't need to be in touch with IT workers in India to know that such contact is fairly meaningless without some level of organisation amongst workers where I work. If there was a dispute that needed solidarity, I would expect it to be agitated for by the equivalent of the local, though having an industry-wide presence would help.
If you work for a multinational it makes sense to link up with other militants abroad, but again, if you don't have the local strength it's fairly meaningless.

What does a teacher in a school in Lancashire have in common with a lecturer in the US or an English language teacher in Turkey or a school cleaner in Zaragoza? Other than the fact that they are all workers, the links are pretty marginal. What kind of joint propaganda would such an IU carry out? What language would it be in? North America uses fewer official languages than the Iberian Peninsula, so it's understandable why such issues might be overlooked.

No local presence, no real strength I'm afraid.

Regards,

Martin

the button- you're right GMBs were meant to be temporary, and actually were fought, but there used to be a better structure called the IDC (Industrial District Council), which was a council of the IUs which met and took care of things common to all industries in a city. Portland had one recently for a few years.

languages- I think maybe one piece you're missing is that people who speak different languages get relative autonomy within industrial unionism. In the IWW of old there were autonomous local halls and publications in italian, serbian, yiddish, german, spanish, russian, polish, finnish, swedish, etc. Likewise presently the US, though having only one official language, certainly has more spoken languages than the whole iberian peninsula? That comment confuses me, maybe you're unaware of the ethnic and linguistic diversity of the US due to immigration?

I'm definately not disagreeing that we need local strength, and I agree that it will vary by industry what kind of coordination makes sense and the degree to which it is needed. In an era of increasingly unified production though the need for solidarity seems sharp.

One thing that I thought of in replying actually is that the international sections the IWW had (south africa, nz, australia, chile, argentina, etc), and do to some extent still, autonomy to a great degree.

I don't remember there being any broader IU structures like say timber workers worldwide (history people am I wrong?). I guess that would make the division not worldwide IUs, but rather national industrial unions vs. worldwide ones which actually seems like a less important distinction to me. This is an ideological question rather than the practical one of which international federation structure would be more practical (personally the whole OBU thing always seemed a bit wonky to me). Did this just dissolve before me? *chuckles*

I think your post begs the question of under what circumstances is industrial unionism *revolutionary*. There are certainly many unions professing to be "industrial unions," but then why does the IWW have such a strong critique of them? What is it about the structure of the IWW which makes it more "advanced" or better suited to be a primary vehicle for revolutionary economic and social change?

I think this line would be more productive than repeating the numerous discussions about whether an explicitly anarcho-syndicalist union or anarcho-syndicalist structured union can be that same kind of vehicle for change.

And, DeLeon proposed explicitly socialist industrial unions, orginally stating they should be tied to the SLP, then going back on that to support the IWW, and proposing political action as an inevitable reflex of economic organization which workers would demand. Many viewed this as opportunistic. His followers later set-up an explicit socialist industrial union again after they were drummed-out of the IWW.

Many of these international administrations had complete autonomy because...they were not actually part of the IWW. They were similar enough to use the name, and with the support of the U.S. based IWW, and sometimes their administrations came within the North American-based administration.

I think the traditional anarcho-syndicalist European union, such as the CNT of the 1930s (though its structure changed a bit during this period as well) is quite different from the IWW, with a lot more parallel structures. Bookchin in his book on the Spanish Anarchists has a rather useful chart, if I remember correctly, which can be used for comparison. So it's more than just nationally or industrially federated that we're talking about.

Firstly, your original post was anarcho-syndicalism, or industrial unionism. Anarcho-syndicalism is inherently revolutionary. The vast majority of industrial unionism is not. There are loads of industrial unions (you've heard of the AFL-CIO I take it). Saying you plump for industrial unionism over anarcho-syndicalism when they're so utterly different, and when the latter incorporates the former, is just silly.

What? Firstly, talking about a global transport workers transport strike is just pie in the sky nonsense, and not on the horizon in any way. Secondly, there already is a global transport industrial union, the ITF or something, and like most unions it doesn't do much, and thirdly, a global transport strike (for... against... something?) "could be more significant than the Liverpool dockers strike"? I mean wtf?

Ones that actually do something are. There are international industrial unions as I said, but they don't do much because if you hadn't noticed workers combativity is at very low levels at present after years of defeat.

I joined the IWW (as a red card romantic when i first became an anarchist) a few years ago. Then the IWW claimed to have 3-400 members. People keep touting this 200 figure around, which is a lot lower than the figure a few years ago, and again there's no evidence that these 200 are active or anything. How many members or branches are active? If anything they have a lower profile than the smaller AF or Solfed. (NB I'm not trying to slag them off, just reminding people to be wary and keep their feet grounded firmly in the real world)

Anarcho-syndicalist organisations in Europe are much larger, and some growing at a faster rate, and some of them actually organise workplaces as a union (though actually I think this is the thing which is not so good), unlike the IWW, but you're saying it should be dumped in favour of "industrial unionism"? Even if you mean revolutionary IWW-ism are you saying the tens of thousands in the CNT, SAC, CGT, USI, etc. should all dissolve themselves and join the iww?

The "power"?

I didn't think it was clear you mean IWW-ism, i did ask you to clarify but you didn't really. You said "industrial unionism hopes to organise every 'industry' internationally into its own union". But in the case of the IWW that's not exactly true (well, no more so than anarcho-syndicalist unions), since they seek to organise every industry into their own union - the IWW.

In fact I think the only real difference between the IWW and anarcho-syndicalism really is that wobblies for the most part are wooley about what they actually want - do they want it to be a union for all workers, or revolutionary workers (though a lot of anarcho-syndicalists also don't seem to have decided this either).

The IWW in the UK has one workplace organised - the scottish parliament workers group, who IIRC are all statist socialists, right? And didn't the Hull group of 5 all leave the IWW when they organised that one place and got sacked?

I'd like to believe that, but I don't. Even if the US has 1-2,000 members, where are the other 3,000?

That's for another discussion, I've raised my issues with it in several threads, such as this one.

You're talking about a global union of transport workers, which is revolutionary like the IWW. This is as far off as a global anarcho-syndicalist union.

The ITF is here: http://www.itfglobal.org
There's also the international union of food workers: http://www.iuf.org/ and i found a list of others here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_union_federation

the more threads i see like this the more i die inside. The level of fucking ignorance and formalist thinking that a thread like this displays is beyond a joke.

Between this, the anarcho syndicalism versus anarcho communism and Skraeling arguing that anarcho syndicalism is opposed to work and community mass assemblies because of a vague line in a old CGT document, yeah never mind anything so fucking silly as actual history.

that's my last post before i sink into a deeper depression.

Gotta go to work but the ITF is a federation of national unions, and includes a pretty wide diversity like my hard left social democratic union the CUPW and another union that is raiding it- the teamsters. Got lots more to say but off I am to toil, (and by that I mean work for wages ).

Weird. Most jobs in the UK toil is actually not working - Time Off In Lieue.

I think the IWW membership in the US/Canada is fluctuating around 2,000. I'd guess there are maybe another 500 or so in Britain, Germany, Austria, Finland, Greece, Japan and Australia in total. There are perhaps 220 in the British Isles Regional Organising Committee area. There are General Membership Branches in Clydeside, Edinburgh, Leicester, London, Tyne and Wear and Greater Manchester.There are fairly new Industrial Union networks for education and healthworkers. There is the Industrial Union Workplace Branch at the Scottish Parliament and there is a Local Industrial Union Branch in the process of establishing itself in Leicester.There is the Baristas United outreach/organising project and there are a number of other, local, organising initiatives.

It's really small numbers, it's really small scale stuff, but it is getting itself together and it is growing, particularly in Scotland.

hey Dundee,

Can you more about what you mean by industrial unionism and by anarcho-syndicalism? I'm not totally sure I follow you about IU vs AS. I'm sympathetic to what you say about global transport worker stuff. I've been thinking about this lately in relation to 'minority unionism' or solidarity unionism. One piece of conventional wisdon is that you can do anything without a majority in one shop. Minority/solidarity union campaigns don't listen to that and do manage to accomplish things and then build more organization. My first reaction when friends of mine in the union talk about international networking is to say "build your branch first" but I think I fall into a false either/or there. Sometimes networking with folks in other places can build people's skills and involvement, and might accomplish external gains too.

Have you heard anything about the bike messenger union in Chicago?

cheers,
Nate

That's the DMU branch.

And don't forget, there are four Wobblies at Frontline Bookshop - which would make it a lickle job shop, I believe.

We're doing organising drives at several other places too... so roll on the Industrial District Council.

Industrial unionism in the IWW sense doesn’t really exclude any strategy; it just asserts the primacy of internal structure along industrial lines so that workers across the sector can take action more effectively. The IWA unions tend to do this all the same, just unofficially. The SAC seems to focus its presence among transport workers, USI-IWA is focused in health, USI-Roma is focused around government, and education. This doesn’t seem to upset too many orthodox anarcho-syndicalists. I don’t see why being official about it suddenly makes an industrial focus wrong.

I think a lot of this stuff is kinda splitting hairs. The IWW is not dogmatic about its vision of "industrial unionism". We use GMBs as the primary organ of organization within the union, which are heavily community based. The Philly branch has organized workplaces into community sections in addition to as IUBs. My branch is considering the community syndicate tactic for certain future organizing attempts. Wobs are up for any tactic that shows to be useful in fighting the boss. The union is living thing, not some rarefied historical artifact…ideally at least.

Maybe we should stop trying to analyze the minutia and just go with the diversity of tactics? The IWW is growing and doing constructive work, as are many IWA and non IWA syndicalist unions. Instead of seeing great chasms where there’re only small creeks, lets each move forward with flexibility of strategy in mind.

The way we've described "industrial unionism" in my branch is like this: All the workers in a shop are in the same union. So in a hospital, the nurses, the nursing assistants, the janitors, everybody, instead of having people in different unions based on job class. That's why I didn't get the IU vs AS thing and asked what was meant. FWIW, though, this in and of itself isn't revolutionary. Both AFSCME and SEIU run wall-to-wall hospital campaigns like this sometimes.

What are you talking about? Anarcho-syndicalist unions organise industrially "officially". No "orthodox anarcho-syndicalists" are upset by this - who told you they were?

The problem with this thread is that all of dundee's original presumptions are just totally flawed.

I completely agree though I would add I do appreciate the fact that the folks from the solidarity federation do have some well thought out comments and I would hate to see our worries about a debate turning sour stop what I think is a very high level of discussion. Hats off to Solfed, and keep up the intelligent and civil debate.

I would argue what you are describing there is "shop unionism," not "industrial unionism." And I think it's a logical fallacy to say that just because the SEIU (which I strongly dislike) does something, that makes it not revolutionary. Perhaps some small aspect of what they do is revolutionary, or at least, on the right track, eh? But usually, SEIU organizes nurses separately, for many reasons...Just wanted to point that out, fellow worker.