Portland dockers honor Honduran pickets
Submitted by Empire Logistics on Mar 6 2014 05:10
On Tuesday, March 4, Central American port workers from the labor union Sindicato Gremial de Trabajadores del Muelle (SGTM) from Puerto Cortés in Honduras established a picket line in front of ICTSI’s Oregon’s operation at Terminal 6 in Portland.
SGTM workers held picket signs that read, “S.G.T.M. LOCKED OUT ICTSI” and stated that they are facing murder, military repression, death threats, and anti-union attacks. ILWU workers honored the picket line in accordance with their collective bargaining agreement.
Portland Solidarity Network: Things Are Heating Up at Fubonn
Submitted by Eviction Free Zone on Mar 5 2014 04:45
Here is a brief look at the Portland Solidarity Network and their Don't Shop Fubonn campaign.
Rush hour is being colored with the fury of workers scorned. The Portland Solidarity Network and the Portland IWW have now announced the Fridays of Fury at Fubonn, a weekly picket and rally to target the abuses and repressions taking place at the Fubonn Shopping Center.
Valuable lessons learned from 1935 play “Waiting for Lefty”
An article by Brandon Oliver about a 1935 play about workers intending to strike.
I was recently pleasantly surprised to see that the local community college in Minneapolis was putting on Clifford Odets’ 1935 play, “Waiting for Lefty.” It turns out that it was also presented in London this year after a 30-year absence, so perhaps there is something in the play that speaks to the current moment.
All in a day’s work: life and labor in the day labor industry
An article by Everett Martinez about the day labor industry in the construction trades.
Whether it means the arduous toil of building a house or the technical knowhow required to unclog a home septic system, “day labor” is the catch-all term for an industry defined by its instability, unreliability and illegality for those who work in it.
Contracts are not a tool, they’re a trap
Scott Nappalos' reply to 'The contract as a tactic', which appeared in the December 2013 Industrial Worker.
In the December 2013 Industrial Worker an article defending contracts for the IWW appeared (“The Contract As A Tactic,” page 4). The author pointed out the union’s historic hostility to contracts (the General Executive Board [GEB] even expelled a group of workers who signed a contract in the union’s early history), but he missed the reasons for the opposition.
Toward equal employment for women
Jane LaTour on gendered pay disparities in the workforce.
Now that March Madness—and Women’s History Month—are upon us, we pause for a look at the distance women have traveled since the Civil Rights Act, with its Title VII provisions for equal employment, became law in 1964. As I wrote in “Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality,” “[W] omen today enjoy many gains won by the barrier-busting advocates for gender equality.
The challenges of administering misery in the two New York Cities
An article looking at New York City as a new 'progressive' mayor takes power.
The background for our tale is the story of a more laborious problem: class. This appears as a specter haunting the Dickensian narrative emphasizing inequalities within the city which Mayor Bill de Blasio used during his campaign.
A reader’s response To “Nonviolent direct action and the early IWW”
A response to an article that appeared in the December 2013 IW about the IWW and 'nonviolent direct action'.
If Stephen Thornton’s article on nonviolence in the early IWW (“Nonviolent Direct Action And The Early IWW,” December 2013 Industrial Worker, page 11) was meant as an argument in favor of nonviolence being or becoming a “strategy” (his term) of the IWW, it deserves a response.
Industrial Worker newspaper
Partial archive of articles from the newspaper of the revolutionary union, the Industrial Workers of the World.
Originally the voice of the IWW in the Pacific Northwest during the 1910s and 1920s, the Industrial Worker eventually became the main officla publication of the union, which it continues to be today.
[i]For paper subscription info, please visit iww.org
Unity for what and with whom? A polemic against left unity
Submitted by s.nappalos on Feb 28 2014 15:47
An analysis of the contemporary situation in the United States, the conditions of the left, and a critique of promotion of activity unifying the left. It ends looking to another form of political action in today's environment.
The absence of any organized popular force acting on the political landscape is the defining feature of the previous decades in the United States.
Can comment on articles and discussions