Recomposition's blog

Juan Conatz reviews a new pamphlet by Solidarity Federation. We’re excited about the new pamphlet. You can read excerpts from it here.

John O’Reilly discusses the ways that organizing campaigns make themselves and others see them as legitimate.

Recomposition started at the end of August, 2010. We’re pleased with what’s happened in the last two years, and we hope you are as well. It seems appropriate to celebrate the two year mark with a work story and by getting more more interactive for a change. Below, Siobhan writes about her first job. In the comments, please tell us what your first job was, how old you were when you got it, and what that job was it like.

Preview excerpts of the forthcoming text by the Solidarity Federation setting out the background and the tasks ahead for anarcho-syndicalists in the 21st century.

This post gives a brief account of some of the history of the capitalist state’s sponsorship of contracts for unions in the United States, with an emphasis on the reasoning that politicians and judges gave for their support of collective bargaining. The piece argues that what the U.S. government wanted out of introducing state support for collective bargaining was, in the words of the National Labor Relations Act, to ‘Promote the flow of commerce’ through ‘friendly adjustment of industrial disputes.’

Several of us in the Recomposition editorial group have been very interested in recent events in Quebec, and found the students’ struggles inspirational. We now share a letter from a comrade calling for support and mobilisation to further support and spread these struggles.

This article is based on several interviews with workers that IWW members spoke with while supporting a couple strikes at Canada National Rail. The piece deals with the politics of the several unions who were all vying to become the One Big Union on the railways. It’s also worth looking at the rhetoric and practice of current contemporary Industrial Unionism and the revolutionary vision of the early 20th Century. There’s a lot of talk about mergers and consolidation right now in the labour movement. This is something pay attention to over the next few years.

Our friend Amédée Garneau sends along this story about small scale tenant organizing in New York.

Attached documents from the Provincial Labour Central of Quebec and the Canadian Labour Congress designed to wipe out any Canadian union assistance to the radicals in the Quebec student movement.

At the bottom of this article are links for how your trade union or community group can support the students’ struggle. That will help tremendously, but spreading the struggle to your own job or school will do even more. This article is meant to help explain how, by showing how students in Quebec were able to organize their general strike.

A member of Seattle Solidarity Network shares some steps she thinks organizations could take to encourage involvement from their members with children.

A central part of our organising practice at Recomposition is direct action. In this piece our comrade Marianne addresses criticisms of Occupy Wall Street and the importance placed in that movement on a direct action strategy.

Our series on sleep and dreams continues with a post about stress and lack of sleep in the education industry.

Our series on sleep continues with a piece by Gayge Operaista discussing divisions and oppression within the working class.

Our series on work, sleep and dreams continues with a story about a sleepwalking postal worker.

Our series on work, sleep, and dreams continues with a story by our friend Invisible Man, about race, stress, and family.

This post continues our series on work and sleep with a piece about stress and dreams in the education industry.

More on our series on work, sleep and dreams. This one features Lou Rinaldi describing a nightmare and how it's his subconscious taking the very real alienation he feels at work and running with it.

An account of working without much sleep and the dreams associated with this.

Scott Nappalos writes about the problems of working in a hospital and how conditions seep into his dreams.