IWW GHQ Staff Union in Chicago files Unfair Labor Practice

Hello Fellow Workers,

This is a message from the General Headquarters Staff Union. We are the workers at GHQ in Chicago, IL. The four of us have worked for the IWW ranging from 2-9 years. In that time, we have worked with and assisted tens of thousands of members, improved the efficiency and professionalism of GHQ and been a key part of the North American Regional Administration (NARA) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) growing to total membership numbers not seen since the middle of the 20th Century.

We formed a staff union at GHQ in 2017 because we wanted job stability and did not want the General Executive Board (GEB) and General Secretary-Treasurer (GST) to have unilateral and arbitrary power over our wages, benefits and working conditions. Since then, labor relations between the staff union and the dozens of members of the GEB and multiple GSTs have been cordial and collaborative. The few times we've­ had disputes with previous GEBs or GSTs, we were able to discuss these with them privately and come to a resolution. Sometimes this meant the staff union accepted something we felt was unfair and chose to address it when bargaining our next collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Sometimes the GEB or GST made changes that rectified the situation.

But we have also put up with some things that many IWW members would be willing to engage in job actions over. We have had GEB members semi-publicly call us ‘parasites’ and spread made-up allegations of embezzlement. We have had job tasks taken away from us in what we saw was part of an attempt to block a recall election. We have had a GST inappropriately request that we do work alone with them in a rental property and engage in the consumption of substances while on the clock. We have seen unpaid volunteers and interns be used to carry out some of our job tasks, thus undermining us as a bargaining unit. We have had GEBs that have temporarily refused to bargain with us in good faith. But the staff union has never filed a grievance, never filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and never carried out a job action. We have always believed our disputes with our employer were rooted in their inexperience rather than malice and that we could always work things out.

However, the current GST, Alexandra Graff, and the current GEB, which includes Joe Dantona, Laurel Steinetz, Hannah Campbell-Fox, Ryan Kowalchik, Erika Balint and Patrick Guina have decided to take a far more aggressive approach as bosses.

Recently, the GST unveiled a drastic new timekeeping policy. When we asked why she was making this change, she refused to provide any reasoning, the first time any of us remember a GST refusing to explain an order they had given us.

We have been working under an expired CBA since January 2025, the first time this has ever occurred. When a CBA expires, most of the terms of it continue to be in force while bargaining continues. This is called ‘status quo’.

We believed these changes to the timekeeping policy may have violated the ‘status quo’. So, like in the past, we brought this disagreement to the GEB to try and work something out. The professional and pro-union way to approach this would have been for the GEB to deal with us as a bargaining unit and provide a rationale of why they did not think these changes violated ‘status quo’. Then we could have determined whether they were correct or incorrect and gone from there. This is the sensible way to handle things.

But the GEB ignored us. Instead, GST Graff continued to demand we comply with her new policy. Although we tried to insist they deal with us as a union, GST Graff individually pressured and interrogated us, cornering us in the office or calling us on our personal phones while we were off the clock. She even made threats to suspend or fire us.

We stressed that we were not refusing to comply but that we believed the changes were a violation of status quo and made an attempt to work it out with them. But as it became clear the GEB was not interested in responding to us, we complied with the new policy under protest.

A few days later, GST Graff disciplined each of us in the form of a written warning. This is the first time any worker at GHQ has been written up. It also skipped a step in the progressive discipline process outlined in our CBA.

We believed that this discipline was illegal retaliation for concerted activity. However, we did not immediately escalate the situation. In the spirit of a collaborative approach and avoiding things becoming ugly, we sent the GEB and GST a letter, giving them an opportunity to rescind the write-up. They rejected this offer.

The message from the GEB and GST is clear: do what you are told and shut up, even if you think it violates your contract.

So we have been forced to file a ULP with the NLRB.

We are baffled that it has come to this, but we cannot allow our employer to behave this way without defending ourselves. We also believe that this retaliation is part of a pattern of behavior that can only be interpreted as trying to bust the staff union, get some of us to quit or provoke some of us into getting fired. In the last month, the GEB and/or the GST has requested we do a complicated and intrusive ‘time study’ of our job tasks, directed us to create guides of how to do our jobs, restricted our access to the internal forums, revoked access to IWW’s social media and begun to micromanage virtually everything we do, even demanding to pre-approve secondary colors on t-shirt designs and our ‘Away’ email messages before we take time off. As organizers and members of the labor movement for many years, we can recognize when a boss is implementing a strategy to get rid of workers and we believe this is the GST and GEB’s goal.

We are asking IWW members to email or call the GST and GEB and demand they rescind their illegal retaliatory discipline, immediately cease their union-busting behavior and return to a more collaborative relationship with the staff union. Their contact info can be found below.

General Secretary-Treasurer Alexandra Graff

773-270-0284
[email protected]

General Executive Board

[email protected]

Solidarity Forever!
The General Headquarters Staff Union