workplace groups

By Sean West

Beginnings and Endings

In this wide-ranging interview with IWW organizer Daniel Gross conducted by the UK-based Now or Never!, Gross discusses the innovative worker-controlled organizing model, known as solidarity unionism, that has made gains for Starbucks workers where the bureaucratic union model has failed.

This text is taken from the December 2006 issue of the Industrial Workers of the World Australia's newsletter, Direct Action.

An interview with a former member of revolutionary UPS workers group Uprise! by libcom, based on a libcom questionnaire. Uprise! was active in 2002 and 2003.

December 2002

An article by Sphinx addressing workplace activity and the potential for organising disparate individuals in a Japanese workplace. The article is distinguished by its acceptance of, and engagement with, real world conditions, and yet is able to maintain a light and transcendent tone. It is also articulates the necessity for workers to establish their own goals.

The article, written by one of its members, outlines the group's birth, growth and decline two years later.

Written by Des Patchrider, this pamphlet was printed and is available for sale from the Kate Sharpley Library. Our thanks go to the KSL and the author for permission to host this text online.

So, who are you?
The proletarian formerly known as Funnywump.

Briefly, what was McDonald’s Workers Resistance?

As we have heard, in the beginning, some time in 1997, the roots of what we now know and love (or hate as the case may be) as MWR started as an attempt to unionise a McDonald's store, bringing forth comments from managers such as- "do you want to keep your job? You could go far".

Transcript of a speech by Wayne from MWR to the Canadian Labour Congress' Mid-Term Conference in Ottawa on October 18 2003

An open letter by the IMPACT group in Ohio, USA, to rank-and-file workers. The letter cointains short accounts of sell-outs and closed-door deals done by union leaders, as well as suggestions for grassroots activity.

A brief history of MWR, by MWR - a network of McDonald's workers in the UK fighting to organise in the multinational anti-union food giant. Young, dynamic and exciting, MWR unfortunately mostly wound down in 2004.