organisation

Sugar workers in Guyana on strike for second day

The sugar industry is Guyana's main employer

Sugar workers in Guyana came out in thousands to demand wage increases.

The Guyana Sugar Worker's Union is demanding automatic wage increases for sugar workers to compensate for the introduction of a 16% value added tax starting in the new year. Around 14,000 Workers from sugar cane fields and factories, had their second day of strikes on Wednesday, and belong to the country's most powerful labour union.

The Six Panther Ps

Useful organising tips taken from the Black Panthers community organising strategies.

Financing a group

Finance is one of the most essential things to get right when setting up a group. This articles highlights some basic finance strategies and argues that the best method to use a system based on a membership subscription.

Subscription membership is where all members are required to contribute a percentage of their (gross) income on a weekly or monthly basis. A percentage system is fairer then a flat rate as an unemployed member (on ₤100 a week) pays ₤5 where as someone working and earning ₤500 a week pays at least ₤25.

Federations and networks guide

Information about different ways of setting up effective organisations that have more than one group or section within them.

What is a federation?

Decision making and organisational form

An essay about different methods of organising for political groups, discussing the merits and downfalls of using consensus, chairs, majority voting and more.

"Consensus" has had a certain popularity as a decision-making method among social change groups since the '60s, especially within the anti-nuclear movement but also in anarchist and radical feminist circles. I think we can understand why if we consider what sorts of organisations exist in this country. Mass organisations in which the membership directly shape the decisions are hard to find.

A Brief Interview with an IWW organiser, 1998

We recently heard of that the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) had managed to establish a job shop in Hampshire, and took the opportunity to interview Ray Carr, the IWW delegate involved, recently.

The Impotence of the Revolutionary Group (Sam Moss, 1930s, USA)

"It is the writer's conviction that the day of the revolutionary party is over; the revolutionary groups under present conditions are tolerated, or rather ignored, only as long as they are impotent; that nothing is so symptomatic of their powerlessness as the fact that they are permitted to exist. We have often stated that the working class which will endure while capitalism lasts, and which cannot be obliterated under this system can alone wage a successful struggle against capitalism and that the initiative can not be taken out of its hands.

We may add here after all the conservatism of the working class today, only reflects the still massive strength of capitalism, and that this material power cannot be cast out of existence by propaganda but by a material power greater than that of capital."

From International Council Correspondence.