Review of Fighting for ourselves
Juan Conatz reviews a new pamphlet by Solidarity Federation. We’re excited about the new pamphlet. You can read excerpts from it here.
Who’s in charge here?
My first job – what was yours?
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.
Fighting for ourselves - preview
“Just and peaceful labor relations”: Why the U.S. government supported collective bargaining
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.’
Dear comrades: a call for solidarity with the student struggles in Quebec
The Teamster Raid on the UTU: A Dispatch from the civil war in the Canadian Transport Industry
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.
Direct action begins at home
Canadian Labour Congress sells out students!
Snapshots of the student movement in Montreal
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.
An owie to one is an owie to all: A six-step plan for helping your parent-friends remain activists
Direct action makes history
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.