(Editor's note: This article discusses the strike of subcontracted and freelance technicians working for telecommunications giant Telefónica’s Movistar, which began in Madrid on March 28. For background on this strike, see “#ResistenciaMovistar: A Strike Of This Century In Spain” on page 1 of the June Industrial Worker).

“We must favor understanding and collaboration. Not only workers are involved in this conflict. Also, there are collectives interested in creating tension and making it difficult to reach a solution.” – Felip Puig, Counselor for Enterprise and Employment of the Generalitat de Catalunya

The Movistar strike is interesting in many ways. We could look at the joint action of thousands of freelancers and subcontracted workers, the surprising organization in the beginning (based, literally, on thousands of isolated individuals acting together through smartphone messaging systems in order to make information flow instantly) or the fact that the major institutional unions were overwhelmed by the workers.

We could also talk about the company’s many complaints about sabotage or about the thousands of breakdowns that accumulated over time, causing many problems to clients and businesses.

However, we prefer to focus on the concept of “total strike” as opposed to other strikes that are only labor strikes and are closed in on themselves; strikes that don’t go out of the limits of the company, like the eight-month strike at Panrico; strikes with determination but with the handbrake on.

Everyone has witnessed how this is an active strike with a growing presence of workers in the street. Social support has been extending progressively, adding pressure along with the strike itself, which culminated in the last 10 days of May. Paradoxically, when the strike’s following was at its lowest, the company was under the most pressure.

Other territories have looked at what was happening in Catalonia with healthy jealousy at first, then as a spearhead for their own aspirations.

Why has the strike been stronger in Catalonia?

We’ll overlook the cohesion and internal organization of the strike. One thing we could point out is the intelligent use of existing resources in order to deal with the predictable attrition. Sparse objectives were set aside in favor of specific targets where we could hit harder.

However, what made this strike different in Catalonia was the socialization of the conflict. If we look back to strikes that we can remember, they’ll probably have one thing in common: the participation of the common people.

Complying with our own agreements in the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), on the first day of the strike we initiated contact with social movements along with strikers. A few days after, a large number of organizations were present at the union’s premises and agreed on the relevance of this strike and the need to join efforts.

Solidarity fundraising events multiplied, up to tens in a week. Money was never enough, but it allowed workers to keep the struggle up without resources. A credit line of €120,000 (or approximately $135,187 [USD]) was set up by Coop57, a credit co-op, in order to advance what would be collected afterwards.

Conferences about the conflict fulfilled the goal of making the strike better known by the general population, promoting awareness and thus preparing the people for participation. Movistar has tried to make the strike invisible through a powerful campaign, which involved the “free press” in the hands of capitalists. This front has been attacked by local events and coordinated work in the social media.

The first demonstration took place on April 20 in Barcelona. After that, almost every action that took place in the streets had some reference to the Movistar conflict. There have been many coordinated occupations and demonstrations in Movistar shops in many locations. These actions have grown in frequency. In the last two weeks, the company knew an action of this kind could take place in any city at any moment. Attacks came from all possible flanks.

Occupations at the Mobile World Centre

Social movements participated in the labor conflict and taught strikers their methods. The first occupation of the Movistar store at Plaza Cataluña (Barcelona) in the Mobile World Centre (MWC), a worldwide mobile technology congress, took place thanks to coordination by strikers and people in solidarity with them. A milestone was achieved since, for the first time, the company showed signs of weakness. An agreement was reached that the occupiers would leave the store and the company committed itself to negotiating with the strikers. Unfortunately it was a trick, since once the strikers left the store, the company returned to its previous inflexible position. This deceit angered protesters and encouraged solidarity.

The fact that some political parties have shown support for this strike since the middle of May is a symptom of the social relevance it has achieved.

Following the motto “one eviction, another occupation,” strikers and those in solidarity with them did what seemed impossible: despite the security measures, which had been reinforced due to the MWC, they occupied the store again in order to hit the company where it hurts. This took place on May 23, the day before the local elections.

The following week witnessed the outbreak of solidarity in the city and the rest of Catalonia. It seemed like a labor 15M (a protest movement similar to the Occupy movement in the United States) had begun: there were actions every day; there was a constant movement of people acting in solidarity; there were many organizations supporting the strike; there were occupations; and there were demonstrations taking place in Movistar stores all over the territory. It became impossible for mass media to hide these facts. Economic losses reached €75,000 ($84,510 [USD]) each day in the MWC store, added to the invaluable damage done to the image of Movistar.

We must take note of many aspects of this strike: is it possible to unite precarious and atomized collectives in order to fight against powerful machineries specialized in destroying workers’ rights? Do the big institutional unions always have the key to the conflicts in places where they have a majority of representatives?

These questions were answered clearly at a state-wide level. Now we want to stress what made the struggle more powerful in Catalonia than it was in other territories: making solidarity from society work actively in a labor conflict.

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

The Wobblies are back. Many young radicals find the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the most congenial available platform on which to stand in trying to change the world.

This effort has been handicapped by the lack of a hard-headed history of the IWW in its initial incarnation, from 1905 to just after World War I. The existing literature, for example Franklin Rosemont’s splendid book on Joe Hill, is strong on movement culture and atmosphere. It is weak on why the organization went to pieces in the early 1920s.

Eric Chester’s new book fills this gap. It is indispensable reading for Wobblies and labor historians.

One way to summarize what is between these covers is to say that Chester spells out three tragic mistakes made by the old IWW that the reinvented organization must do its best to avoid.

Macho Posturing

Labor organizing flourished during World War I because of the government’s need for a variety of raw materials. Among these were food, timber and copper. Wobbly organizers made dramatic headway in all three industries. At its peak in August 1917 the IWW had a membership of more than 150,000.

Nine months later, Chester writes, “the union was in total disarray, forced to devote most of its time and resources to raising funds for attorneys and bail bonds.” This sad state of affairs was, of course, partly the result of a calculated decision by the federal government to destroy the IWW. But only partly.

According to Chester, another cause of the government’s successful suppression of the Wobblies was that during and after the Wheatlands strike in California hop fields in 1913 some Wobblies threatened to “burn California’s agricultural fields if two leaders of the strike were not released from jail.”

For years, Wobbly leaders had insisted that sabotage could force employers to make concessions, Chester writes. But what Chester terms “nebulous calls for arson” and “macho bravado” only stiffened the determination of California authorities not to modify jail sentences for Wobbly leaders Richard Ford and Herman Suhr.

Chester finds that there is no credible evidence that any fields were, in fact, burned. But after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, this extravagant rhetoric calling for the destruction of crops apparently helped to convince President Woodrow Wilson to initiate a systematic and coordinated campaign to suppress the Wobblies.

Efforts to Avoid Repression by Discontinuing Discussion of the War and the Draft

International solidarity and militant opposition to war and the draft were central tenets of the IWW. Wobblies who had enrolled in the British Army were expelled from the union. At the union’s 10th general convention in November 1915, the delegates adopted a resolution calling for a “General Strike in all industries” should the United States enter the war.

What actually happened was that General Secretary-Treasurer Bill Haywood and a majority of IWW leaders agreed that the union should desist from any discussion of the war or the draft, in the vain hope that this policy would persuade the federal government to refrain from targeting the union for repression. At the same time, the great majority of rank-and-file members, with support of a few leaders such as Frank Little, insisted that the IWW should be at the forefront of the opposition to the war.

Self-evidently, what Chester terms the IWW’s “diffidence” was the very opposite of Eugene Debs’ defiant opposition to the war. When Wobbly activists “flooded IWW offices with requests for help and pleas for a collective response to the draft,” the usual response was that what to do was up to each individual member. Haywood, Chester writes, “consistently sought to steer the union away from any involvement in the draft resistance movement.”

Debs notwithstanding, however, the national leadership of the Socialist Party like the national leadership of the IWW “scrambled to avoid any confrontation with federal authorities.” Radical activists from both organizations formed ad hoc alliances cutting across organizational boundaries.

The IWW General Executive Board, meeting from June 29 to July 6, 1917, was unable to arrive at a decision about the war and conscription, and a committee including both Haywood and Frank Little, tasked to draft a statement, likewise failed to do so. In the end, Chester says, “the IWW sought to position itself as a purely economic organization concerned solely with short-run gains in wages and working conditions.”

Disunity Among IWW Prisoners Fostered by the Government

The reluctance of the Wobbly leadership to advocate resistance to the war and conscription carried over to a legalistic response when the government indicted IWW leaders. Haywood urged all those named in the indictment to surrender voluntarily and to waive any objection to being extradited to Chicago. In the mass trial that followed, the defendants were represented by a very good trial lawyer who was also an enthusiastic supporter of the war and passed up the opportunity to make a closing statement to the jury. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis’ superficial fairness deluded Wobs into hoping for a good outcome.

The jury took less than an hour to find all 100 defendants guilty of all counts in the indictment. Ninety-three received lengthy prison terms. Judge Landis ordered that they be imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth, described by Chester as “a maximum-security penitentiary designed for hardened, violent criminals.” Forty-six more defendants were found guilty after another mass conspiracy trial in Sacramento, Calif.

Thereafter, Chester writes, the “process of granting a commutation of sentence was manipulated during the administration of Warren Harding to divide and demoralize IWW prisoners.” The ultimate result was “the disastrous split of 1924, leaving the union a shell of what it had been only seven years earlier.”

Executive clemency, like that granted to Debs, was the only hope of the Wobblies in prison for release before the end of their long sentences. President Warren G. Harding rejected any thought of a general amnesty, obliging each prisoner to fill out the form requesting amnesty as an individual. The application form for amnesty contained an implicit admission of guilt. The newly-created American Civil Liberties Union supported this process.

Twenty-four IWW prisoners opted to submit a form requesting amnesty. A substantial majority refused to plead for individual release. More than 70 issued a statement in which they insisted that “all are innocent and all must receive the same consideration.” The government insisted on a case-by-case approach. Fifty-two prisoners responded that they refused to accept the president’s division of the Sacramento prisoners, still alleged to have burned fields, from the Chicago prisoners. Moreover they considered it a “base act” to “sign individual applications and leave the Attorney General’s office to select which of our number should remain in prison and which should go free.”

Initially, the IWW supported those prisoners who refused to seek their freedom individually. Those who had submitted personal requests for presidential clemency were expelled from the union.

In June 1923, the government once again dangled before desperate men the prospect of release, now available for those individual prisoners promising to remain “law-abiding and loyal to the Government.” This time a substantial majority of the remaining prisoners accepted Harding’s offer, and IWW headquarters, in what Chester calls “a sweeping reversal,” gave its approval.

Eleven men at Leavenworth declined this latest government inducement. In addition, those who were tried in California did not receive the same offer.

In December 1923 the remaining IWW prisoners at Leavenworth including 22 who had been convicted in Sacramento, Calif., were released unconditionally. The damage had been done. Those who had held out the longest launched a campaign within the IWW to expel those who had supported a form of conditional release. There were accusations against anyone who had allegedly proved himself “a scab and a rat.” When a convention was held in 1924 both sides claimed the headquarters office and went to court. An organization consisting of the few hundred members who had supported the consistent rejection of all government offers “faded into oblivion by 1931.”

Conclusion

It is not the intent of brother Chester’s book, or of this review, to trash the IWW. This review has dealt with only about half of the material in the book, for example passing by the story of Wobbly organizing in copper, both in Butte, Mont. and Bisbee, Ariz. Moreover, anyone who lived through the disintegration of Students for a Democratic Society, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers is familiar with tragedies like those described here. The heroism of members of all three groups who were martyrs, such as Frank Little, Fred Hampton, and the Mississippi Three (James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner), remains. The vision of a qualitatively different society, as the Zapatistas say “un otro mundo,” remains also.

What it seems to me we must soberly consider is what practices we can adopt to forestall disintegration when different members of a group make different choices. Hardened secular radicals though we may be, we can learn something from King Lear’s words to his daughter Cordelia: “When you ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down and ask of you forgiveness.”

Transcribed by Juan Conatz

Stead, Arnold. Always on Strike: Frank Little and the Western Wobblies. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014. Paperback, 220 pages, $16.

Reviewed by Juan Conatz

Among the list of legendary figures of the historical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Frank Little stands out as one of its most tragic figures. Although known more than some others, such as Vincent St. John, Matilda Rabinowitz or Frank Cedervall, he didn’t leave behind a cultural legacy like fellow martyr Joe Hill. Nor did he live long enough to write a memoir, like Ralph Chaplin. We remember Little mostly as a victim; a victim of wartime hysteria and anti-union violence. Secondarily, we might remember him for being biracial, the son of a white Quaker husband and Cherokee wife. But his activities as a member and organizer for the IWW are mostly little known.

“Always on Strike: Frank Little and the Western Wobblies” by Arnold Stead aims to change this. Published by the International Socialist Organization-affiliated Haymarket Books, it is the only book-length work on Frank Little. Although relatively short, it does offer some information that is hard to find elsewhere.

Overall a sympathetic account of both Little and the Wobblies, much of the book covers territory previously incorporated in other histories of the IWW. The IWW’s efforts in the Western United States, its mixed opposition to World War I, and the repression it faced during the first Red Scare, are all given ample room.

The author also concerns himself with refuting certain myths about the IWW. Whether from hostile historians, foaming- at-the-mouth-press, or friendly, if condescending, writers, Stead defends the union, its Western sections in particular, from a number of slurs, assumptions of motivation and unhelpful categorizations.

The best part of “Always on Strike” is the information and summary of the nearly forgotten 1913 ore workers strike in Northern Minnesota. Mostly crowded out, for some reason, by the failed 1916 Mesabi Range strike, I had personally never heard of the event. The author acknowledges the strike’s almost ignored status:

In 1913, Frank Little led an ore dockworkers strike that has been all but ignored by history. Even historians of the IWW like Philip S. Foner, Joseph R. Conlin, and Patrick Renshaw make no mention of the 1913 conflict; nor does Big Bill Haywood’s autobiography. Melvyn Dubofsky briefly mentions Little being kidnapped and rescued but does not deal with the strike’s contribution to a major labor offensive in the northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan mining area.

There are also some useful accounts of the Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO). The AWO was a hugely important part of the IWW around that period and was arguably its most successful attempt at sustainable organizing. It changed the way the union used delegates and took in dues. It apparently abandoned the prevailing pacifism in the organization in favor of militant self-defense, and brought conflict in the union over what “industrial unionism” meant, or if it was actually important at all. Despite this, there are currently no book-length treatments of the AWO. Most histories that partially focus on the AWO are brief and a bit superficial, so the author’s inclusion of it as a topic is valuable.

Little was vehemently anti-war, and the descriptions of the IWW’s wrangling over whether to oppose and how to oppose World War I are interesting. There are a number of authors, even ones friendly to the IWW like Staughton Lynd and Eric Chester, who have claimed that the IWW did not oppose World War I. This is not true. It passed resolutions against the war and published material that was anti-war and anti-nationalist in nature. The IWW did formally oppose World War I, but never came to an agreement on what it meant to oppose it. There were mixed opinions on this, ranging from “do nothing, wait for the storm to blow over” to “actively oppose and disrupt conscription.” There were Wobblies that participated in antiwar or anti-conscription coalitions and other bodies that encouraged buying war bonds and enlisting.

Despite rejecting some common myths about the IWW, “Always on Strike” nevertheless accepts other myths itself. For example, making the same mistake as many other historians who focus on syndicalism or the IWW, the author matter-of-factly relates the vision and outlook of the early IWW back to French intellectual George Sorel. In reality, there is little evidence that Sorel had even a negligible influence. To the extent that French syndicalism had an influence, people like Confédération générale du travail (CGT) militant Emilie Pouget had a far greater impact. Pouget’s writings were translated, published and distributed in the IWW. He is mentioned dozens of times in the Industrial Worker. Sorel, on the other hand, receives only a passing mention in the same series in the Industrial Worker about French syndicalism. None of his writings seemed to have been translated, published or distributed in the union. As far as I could find, only one article focused on his ideas ever appeared in the IWW press, and not until 1919, a full decade after this influence was supposed to have occurred on the formative IWW. Concepts such as the revolutionary general strike and the “militant minority,” which some historians and writers claim the IWW adopted from Sorel, already existed as concepts and terms within French syndicalism years prior to Sorel writing about them. Furthermore, these terms were used by syndicalists that Wobblies would have been far more familiar with than Sorel.

Why is this important? Well, Sorel’s writings on violence and myth making, his move to the nationalist Right and his influence on fascism have been used in the past to tar syndicalism or revolutionary unionism by association. Other authors have demonstrated how Sorel’s supposed influence on syndicalism was an exaggeration made by early, lazy historians and then repeated over time. Apparently, such is the case with Sorel and the IWW, as well.

Another shortcoming of “Always on Strike” is that there are large parts of the book where the author assumes Little is at an event, such as a strike or a free speech fight. Sometimes the evidence provided for these assumptions is convincing. Other times it is not. The author also, occasionally, “imagines” what Little would say about a situation or event. Maybe Stead felt this was necessary because there is very little information on Little’s activities. While this reason is understandable, it should have been avoided. It is one thing putting words in someone’s mouth based on you knowing and collaborating with them, such as Friedrich Engels finishing the works of Karl Marx. It is another thing altogether when, 100 years after a person’s death, a historian does this in a biography. While well intentioned, it would have been preferable to stick to the evidence, even if that meant shortening the book to pamphlet-length. For an author rightly concerned about inaccurate historical myths, he very well could be creating them by these assumptions and imagined statements.

Lastly, it would be a disservice to readers of the Industrial Worker not to mention the background of the author, Arnold Stead. During the early 1970s in Kansas City, around the time Students For A Democratic Society met its demise and the Weather Underground was established, Stead and some others were arrested and charged in a bomb making case. Stead cooperated with authorities. Although he now claims he was tricked and later went back on his testimony, people spent hard time in prison because of his cooperation. Whatever we may feel about the “urban guerrilla” groups of the 1970s, it is simply reprehensible to cooperate with authorities and send fellow radicals off to the dungeons of the state. While the book is appreciated, our martyrs deserve better historians, better admirers, and better people than Arnold Stead to keep their story alive.

Originally appeared in Industrial Worker (July/August 2015)

In this month’s column we focus on some news from Germany. In May, the 39th congress of the Freie ArbeiterInnen-Union (FAU), the German syndicalists Free Workers Union, took place in Berlin. The delegates shared their current struggles and campaigns and discussed the recent plans in response to legal changes by the federal government. The principle of labor unity would be mandatory which just allows the biggest union to come up with collective agreements and activities around it. In fact, the options of minority unions in a shop are cut and limited.

Beside the participation of delegates from all branches across Germany, international guests from all over Europe showed up and shared their struggles and strategies. Our delegates from the German Language Area Regional Organizing Committee (GLAMROC) described the congress as very productive and fruitful for all participating unions.

Also in Berlin, the FAU signed a collective agreement in a small business operating an online shop and dispatch center. After tough and long negotiation the FAU Berlin managed to increase the pay level by 30 percent and limit the weekly hours to 35 as the major achievements in the agreement.

But the main difference to other collective agreements in Germany is that all workers have the same rights of participation as one workers council. All eight employees in that small businessare organized in the FAU workers’ group and make decisions together as one of the main principles of the FAU.

The IWW sends warm congratulations to our comrades from the FAU. Thanks for inspiring the workers to fight!