FIVE REASONS THE IWW ARE CHALLENGING THE CULTURE OF THE UK LEFT (AND WHY YOU SHOULD BE TOO!)

We can’t put our faith in the ballot box The recent election of SYRIZA in Greece has invested a lot of hope in the emergence of a popular anti-austerity front across Europe. However the deep resistance that SYRIZA are facing to even the modest social reforms they are proposing from their European partners gives an indication of the intrinsic limits of parliamentary action alone to wider, and particularly deeper, social change. That is not to say that there are no important lessons to be drawn from this situation. Part of SYRIZA’s success story is in the way in which it has effectively capitalised on political ground that has been largely conceded by the parties of the social democratic centre in their widespread commitment to “responsible” economic policies and continuing austerity. This is a situation repeated across many European democracies. The so-called PASOKification of the centre left (in the UK and particularly in Scotland) has left a certain degree of political space “up for the taking”. The recent explosion in Green Party membership in England and Wales fits this story nicely: some might even find themselves feeling optimistic about alternatives to the Political status quo. Nonetheless, we need to be hard-headed in how we deal with these recent trends. Poverty, hopelessness and powerlessness have drawn many throughout Europe, including a considerable section of both our own and the Greek electorate, to the populist and far-right. Understanding why it was the left that triumphed recently requires more than looking to SYRIZA’s leadership and electoral strategies – we need to look at the way broader Greek anti-capitalist culture operates. For decades a vibrant network of extra-parliamentary parties, social movements and trade union groups have sustained the continuing case for basic social solidarity through the maintenance of left spaces, solidarity networks and other forms of community engagement. This genuinely life-sustaining work has highlighted the pragmatism of socialist ideas above the individualistic solutions offered by the far-right and pro-austerity left. The future of SYRIZA’s relation to these social and extra-parliamentary movements is very unclear at this stage. Similarly, but on a smaller scale, is it possible to understand the surge in SNP popularity following the independence referendum without also appreciating the explosion in grassroots activity that preceded it? In England and Wales the outlook is even bleaker. Not only is the left generally lacking in the basic forms of outreach and engagement that has empowered our Greek and Scottish friends, but the electoral system is stacked against any chance of even a modest swing in electoral sentiment. Even if the Green Party was to mobilise an army of supporters comparable to that seen in the Scottish referendum the “breakthrough” would be underwhelming, at most a victory of a handful of parliamentary seats. The splitting of the political centre ground, combined with the massive disenfranchisement brought about by austerity policies, leaves a great deal of potential for any movement offering real and practical non-parliamentary alternatives. As solidarity unionists we believe that grassroots engagement and direct action are not merely the means of realising that latent potential, they are the basis for the worker-run society we’re trying to build. Meaningful and lasting victories can be won through these activities in a number of highly adaptable and scalable forms – from the group of workmates who march on the boss to win back their tip jar to the occupied and collectivised factory employing thousands of workers, we’ve got a working model for building the society we want. 2. Whose movement is it anyway? Trade union membership in the UK has been in steady decline since the late 1970s. In the last decade membership figures have largely plateaued with a few thousand dropping off the figures each year. The most active and visible unions, as well as those with the largest memberships, are those employed in the now shrinking public sector. Since the 2008 financial crisis the TUC has offered little to nothing in the way of meaningful resistance to public sector cuts, stagnation in pay and attacks on workers’ rights. Tribunal fees, one of the earliest and most damaging legal changes introduced by the coalition government have been subject to a number of unsuccessful legal challenges by the larger unions but there has been no effort to mobilise collective opposition. One-day strikes and repeated, progressively dwindling protests and demonstrations against attacks on their pensions, pay and conditions have delivered nothing. At the IWW strategy conference three years ago it was resolved that the mission of this union was to organise “the unorganised, the abandoned and the betrayed”. For many of us in the IWW the first category is a familiar one as (like a massive section of service, hospitality and restaurant workers in the UK) our members frequently find themselves in workplaces without a union. That shouldn’t, however, detract from the fact that we are in desperate need of rank-and-file initiatives within the existing trade union apparatus that can affectively mobilise a cynical and worn out membership. Trade unions have wholesale retreated from actual day-to-day engagement and organising in favour of top down and institutional action. Our networks of dual-carders spread across the existing trade unions need to cut through the inertia and get workers mobilised and enthusiastic again. Not for a new officer or protest or lobby but for those principles that should be the bedrock of the labour movement: common action on the job to improve the conditions of your workmates. 3. We’re making gains where it counts The rules of the political game may have changed, but how we play in response to it remains the same. Building a mass movement for social change has to start with an active engagement with the issues that exist in our workplaces and communities. Your neighbours, workmates and fellow claimants need to see that action can and must be taken to re-build the broken links of social solidarity that have been so effectively dismantled over the past thirty years. In addressing those real, immediate challenges that people feel in their everyday lives we can start to work together to build alternatives. A modest but important example of this is the campaign that Sheffield GMB recently conducted against the owner of a local deli. The campaign was in response to a fellow worker who was unfairly (and possibly illegally) dismissed from the deli following an incident where they addressed the bullying and harassing behaviour of the owner. In spite of the limited scope of the focus – a single employer operating one business in the restaurant and hospitality sector – it became an incredibly vibrant and energising campaign that involved members from a number of IWW branches, a great turnout from the local community, ex-employees of the deli, TUs and many others too numerous to name. We believe that this additional momentum behind the campaign was due to a number of key factors;  The campaign filled a vacuum of Left engagement with local issues except on an electoral or purely symbolic level.  It was very focused with a clear measure for victory by having strictly defined demands. This focus allowed us to channel the energy from more general grievances associated with precarious and zero-hour work (particularly in the restaurant and hospitality sector where these issues are widespread) that might otherwise be seen as isolated and individual cases.  It sent a clear message to other restaurant owners in the city that unfair labour practices should not be accepted as normal and provides an example to others in precarious and zero hour work on how to take action.  The strength and passion of the response on the part of the union serves as a very real counter-example to the generally weak and capitulating attitudes of the TUC (even when the issues they deal with are far more serious abuses of workers’ rights). Contrary to conventional wisdom, it seems that there is not necessarily a blanket unwillingness to engage with radical alternatives. Rather, people’s faith has been tested too often. We need to demonstrate that we have the capacity, organisational skills and determination to win small in ways that allow us to think big. This allows us to credibly push the principle and practice of a fighting union across workplaces and in areas where union engagement is unknown. However, visible campaigns like the above shouldn’t detract from long-term, steady work of those organising amongst their workmates or the less exciting organising work that underpins the campaign itself. In both cases the principles of the IWW approach are underlined by a belief that in order to challenge capitalism we should not be looking “to the skies” but to how we can shift the balance of power in our everyday lives. 4. Thinking outside the box room of a pub What would a branch of one hundred Wobblies look like? This was a question that was considered largely academic to seasoned members over a decade ago when local meetings would be composed of a handful of members in scattered industries. The IWW is still a small (but growing) union. A healthy growth in membership has, however, led us to seriously address what a genuinely inclusive and active union culture at this scale should look like. As we grow, learn and experiment it is becoming increasingly apparent that many of the presumptions we brought from the activist milieu are just as unfit for purpose as those of the traditional trade union movement. A branch meeting dictated by the local paid officials and organisers can be as alienating as the mystifying codes and practices of consensus decision making. It has become apparent that structures need to be able to accommodate a culture of debate and grassroots democracy as much as they need to be balanced by a healthy and accountable centre. These challenges have also led us to question our own assumptions when it comes to internal organisational culture. This is particularly the case in terms of our experiences of a continuing attitude in the Left that meetings should be considered an end unto themselves. That simply attracting x number of people to a public meeting or holding a successful conference or gathering is a sufficient measure for organisational success. This is a dangerous approach not only for its basic insularity but also for its flattening of organisational success to the simple measure of “bums on seats”. If workers’ organisations are to be effective they need to be not only building greater but stronger levels of participation. That means raising the bar in terms of both the quantity and quality of membership, or as we like to say – aiming to turn every member into an organiser. Our measure of success should not just be the number of people who “get” what we are trying to achieve but how we have made them better equipped to do something about it through organising, campaigning, or rep assistance. 5. We’re finding balance Social struggle is hard work, but we don’t need to burn out. Any veteran of social justice activism who has endured a three/four hour meeting on decision-making process will likely agree that there seems to be a particularly masochistic bent to some of the more unique cultural practices of the contemporary Left. On a basic level this is symptomatic of a general level of disorganisation amongst the activist milieu as well as a tendency for political principles to be prioritised over a more grounded and sensible organisational practice. The idea that these things should be taken as par for the course stems from a wider mindset that associates political activity with a form of service or obligation. We feel that these are demobilising and exclusive attitudes that need to be challenged. We are all pressed for time in busy and stressful lives. Balancing work and family life is often hard enough without the additional obligations of political activism. We think it is important then that any time that a group of Wobblies get together we should aim for it to be a mobilising and empowering experience. If this is a public action it should be an affirmation of the alternative we want to offer, we should celebrate the fact that workers have felt confident enough to make their grievances public and that we are strong enough to take to the streets. If it is a meeting or a gathering it should aim to develop the membership, through skill-shares, education, training, union culture or even just hosting a vibrant social event. Members should always feel that they have gained something extra from their union. That’s not to say that if something isn’t “fun” it shouldn’t be done. Lots of aspects of union organising are quite stressful and demand a great deal of time and patience. What we don’t need, however, are martyrs who feel obligated to sacrifice everything for the cause but people who want to invest in union culture because they feel empowered by it. By newsyndicalist https://newsyndicalist.wordpress.com/2015/02/25/five-reasons-the-iww-are-challenging-the-culture-of-the-uk-left-and-why-you-should-be-too/

An introduction to cyndicalism

Recently i've been looking into what cyndicalism and its roots and origins. As someone with a keen interest in workers rights and as a socialist various forms of trade unionism and how workers organise themselves fascinates me. I've never been part of a large scale unionised work place but still feel close to the union movement and wish to learn as much of our history as i possibly can. I think trade unions are essential to changing society and indeed reading all a bout cyndicalism has convinced me even more about this fact. The idea of a revolutionary big union for me seems a pretty decent blueprint to changing society. We can find common struggle with fellow workers and begin to learn how to run society in our own interests. An introduction about cyndicalism from libcom describes this alot better than i ever can. A short explanation of revolutionary syndicalism and industrial unionism as well as some notes on their histories. Syndicalism refers to the practice of organising workers into unions to fight for their interests. Originally, the term comes from the French work for Trade Unionism (Syndiclisme), but in English the term specifically refers to rank-and-file unionism. There are two major tendencies: Revolutionary Syndicalism, typified by the French CGT, and Industrial Unionism, typified by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). A related tendency is anarcho-syndicalism, but its specifically anarchist politics differentiate it from syndicalism, which is purely economic, or 'non-political'. The idea behind syndicalism is to create an industrial, fighting union movement. Syndicalists therefore advocate decentralised, federated unions that use direct action to get reforms under capitalism until they are strong enough to overthrow it. Revolutionary Syndicalism has its roots in the anarchist movement, and can be traced back to the libertarian tendency in the First International Workingmens’ Association, when prominent Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin argued that: "the future social organisation must be made solely from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of workers, firstly in their unions, then in the communes, regions, nations and finally in a great federation, international and universal." Industrial Unionism has its roots in the Marxist tradition, with the IWW’s famous 1905 ‘Preamble to the Constitution’ quoting Marx’s dictum “instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,’ we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system.’” The origins of syndicalism - libertarian socialists meet at Basel in 1869 Despite these different origins, Revolutionary Syndicalism and Industrial Unionism converged on a very similar approach. The central idea is that trade unions divide workers by trade, which can (and has) end up in scabbing. In America, industrial disputes would sometimes see violent clashes between workers of different unions who would ignore each other’s requests to respect picket lines. The aim of syndicalism is to unite all workers into ‘One Big Union’ controlled by the members, from the grassroots. This is obviously in deep contrast to the current reformist unions who are filled with layer upon layer of bureaucrats who can call off industrial action regardless of the wishes of the membership. This kind of union democracy puts control of workers’ struggles where it belongs: with the workers themselves. Both Industrial Unionism (as per the 1905 IWW constitution) and Revolutionary Syndicalism (as per the 1906 Charter of Amiens) are non-political, aiming to build unions for all workers regardless of political persuasions. However, this doesn’t mean syndicalists are indifferent to the great social and political issues of the day. Rather syndicalists argue that only by building democratic, workers’power at the point of production (‘industrial democracy’) that social ills can be addressed: When the industry of the world is run by the workers for their own good, we see no chance for the problems of unemployment, war, social conflict, or large scale crime, or any of our serious social problems to continue. More information Principles of Syndicalism - Tom Brown - Article by the well known activist explaining the how syndicalist unions organise, and the new society they aim to create. Syndicalism: What It Is - Gaylord Wilshire - Brief explanatory article by an editor of The Syndicalist. What is the union? - Emile Pouget - Essay outlining the aims, priniciples and functions of unions. The General Strike - Ralph Chaplin - Classic IWW text on the concept of the general strike as a tool for change. Syndicalism in South Wales: The Origins of The Miners’ Next Step - Article on the development of syndicalism in South Wales. http://libcom.org/library/syndicalism-introduction

Why i joined the IWW

The IWW - the international workers of the world or wobblies as they are often known as is a movement i came across earlier this year i find their politics fascinating and a new take on trade unions which i had not come across before. After todays confirmation that Len Mckluskey of unite who i am still a member of also for the time being to fully bankroll the labour party at next years general election i may consider leaving that union. I do not wish my money to go towards backing a labour party determined to carry on the destruction of the gains we as workers have made over the last decades. So much hot air from red Len is too much for me he threatens to break the labour link each time it comes out with another neo liberal policy yet nothing changes and yet again Len and his unite union will be cheerleading for labour in the coming year this is a huge let down for me and may well be the final straw in a union which gives me very little say in things. This is on top of the undemocratic attempt to ram through a merger with the PCS union who have been one of the more left unions of late and do have a reasonable record of fighting back. Why PCS and unite are merging will become clear in time but aswell as financial it is also as i understand it being forced through as a way of moving unite further left and in the hope it'll break with labour. This is all being aggitated for by the socialist party who control a majority on the PCS NEC at present who feel a merger with unite getting themselves onto the unite NEC could be the best way to break the labour link. But do we really need to close down an independent civil service union? Even if we did, surely joining up with Unison, the largest public sector union would make more logical sense from a trade union viewpoint. As usual political agendas are put before members interests in the myopic world of Serwotka & the Socialist Party. PCS needs to put it’s own house in order before going cap in hand to other unions. The whole issue of a merger has led to the creation of at least two Face Book groups The first I came across is simply called No to the PCS-Unite merger and states categorically: Page for PCS members opposed to being consumed by the monolithic bureaucracy of Unite in the proposed merger of the two unions Description The leadership of the PCS is driving the union towards a merger with Unite. This merger is not in the best interests of members: • It will be a takeover rather than a merger, with PCS consumed whole • It is an arrangement of financial convenience to preserve the perks of the paid union bureaucracy • Unite is a vastly less democratic union than PCS on every possible level • Unite is an FTO-dominated bureaucracy, whereas in PCS lay reps run their own branches and have a far greater degree of autonomy • Unite is affiliated to the Labour Party, who are in turn wedded to capitalism, austerity and the boss class Overwhelmingly, PCS members disagree with the concept of a merger or are at best indifferent to it. The possibility of a merger passed through conference in 2013 only thanks to a strong whip from the leadership and the Left Unity faction and we want to make sure that doesn't happen again with the merger proper. A second group is: Members against the merger. They have gone with a much simpler statement: Quite straightforward really: PCS are open to an approach from Unite with a view to merging. This groups is for PCS members who want to stop it. There you go. The Left Unity/Democracy Alliance has run PCS for eleven years. Over that time it has totally failed to overcome successive governments’ divide-and-rule policy of carving the civil service up into a huge number of “delegated bargaining units” and to regain civil service national bargaining. Yet that same leadership now asserts that merely by joining Unite it will overcome the bargaining divisions between public and private sector workers. The PCS leadership effectively assumes that union “merger” is a shortcut to the development of wider working-class political awareness and industrial militancy. The PCS leaders state that “merger” (transfer!) would create “a new, powerful force in the public sector adapted to today’s changing industrial circumstances that can deliver more for members” but has not explained precisely what it sees as the changing industrial circumstances and precisely how this new force within Unite would be better able to deliver for Unite and PCS public sector members. They do not say how the awful defeats PCS has suffered under their leadership would have been avoided if we had been Unite members. The underlying and only very partially stated argument would seem to be that: • PCS cannot “win” against the state on its own (winning is rarely defined by the PCS leadership), • Public sector workers must therefore strike together on pensions, pay, jobs and services (and presumably keep striking until the demands of all the different occupational areas of the striking public sector workers have been satisfied – not a model the PCS leadership followed in the pensions dispute with the last Labour Government) • Unison and other unions cannot be trusted to do so, as shown by the pensions debacle in November 2011 • If PCS “merges” with Unite and a large public sector group is created, then Unite will be able to call out its civil service, NHS and local authority workers at the same time, and thereby put pressure on Unison and other unions to join with it. There is plenty of talk about a “new powerful force”, “making a difference”, needing “a more effective trade union fightback in the public sector” and PCS and Unite sharing the same basic approach of being genuine fighters for members. However, nothing has prevented Unite and PCS from calling such joint action before now if they wanted to. In reality, Unite remains a relatively minor player in the NHS and local government. A fully united public sector fightback would require Unison to play an effective and committed role. That is extremely unlikely under the current Unison leadership. PCS should certainly agitate for joint action, but has to develop its own independent strategy for winning on issues facing PCS members. There is no short-cut through merger with Unite. The PCS leaders hint that they see themselves (in Unite) as competing with Unison for authority in the TUC and members in the NHS and local government. They say, “A merged union would become the second largest public sector union. It would be the first public sector union to hold substantial membership in…the NHS, local government and central government.” PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka spoke at last year’s PCS conference of creating a “left wing pole of attraction” in the union movement. But competition with Unison is unlikely to attract its membership in mass numbers. If a few left-wingers are won over, that will be at the price of them abandoning the fight to replace the leadership in Unison of Dave Prentis or a successor in the same mould chosen in Unison’s next General Secretary poll in 2015. Mark Serwotka or the Socialist Party, the dominant group in the PCS leadership quite clearly see themselves running Unite’s public sector group. They are certainly not going to give up the leadership of an independent trade union just to play second fiddle in one sector within Unite. And Socialist Party must have high hopes of dominating Unite’s “United Left” through the much bigger PCS Left Unity membership. Merger is likely to mean losing PCS’s democratic structures and its actual and potential industrial coherence. PCS has annual elections at all levels; annual national and group conferences; delegates directly elected by branch members; and a widespread membership understanding of the key industrial issues. Delegates to Unite’s national conferences are indirectly elected by regional committees and regional industrial sector committees; national policy conference takes place every two years; national rules conference every four years; industrial sector conferences every two years. Elections for the Unite NEC, Regional and Branch Committees are held every three years. PCS’s very different circumstances enable direct relationships between members and the different levels of the union and within the single “industry” that is the civil service and the private sector support companies that provide services to the civil service. The end result is a membership with common workplace experiences and issues that gives national PCS an explicit and (potentially) unifying coherence of trade union purpose. That makes accountability (potentially) easier to judge and deliver. There is simply no real industrial logic to merger with Unite. There is some opposition on the left and right to merger with Unite because of its relationship to the Labour Party. It’s an opposition which either sees PCS in apolitical terms (a union for state employees!) or sees politics purely in terms of standing would be left-wing independent candidates in opposition to the Labour Party. Both are wrong and fail to outline any way in which PCS can help remove the Tories from government, ease the considerable pressures on members, and replace them with a trade-union based party whose leaders need to be opposed and tested with positive working class policies. For certain an alternative to Labour will not be found through TUSC or similar candidates. Serious socialists opposed to the merger should not get caught up with opposition on sectarian grounds. Well it is a cynical move which ignores members interests once again. It is a lash up for small political means i suspect. Members of both Unite and PCS should oppose any merger as this would not advance any strategy that would benifit them i believe a independent voice in your own union is far better for now. So... Why Join the IWW? It does not take long to figure out that workers and their employers do not have the same interests. Workers want shorter hours, higher pay, and better benefits. We want our work to be less boring, less dangerous, and less destructive to the environment. We want more control over how we produce goods and provide services. We want meaningful work that contributes to our communities and world. Our employers, in contrast, want us to work longer, harder, faster, and cheaper. They want fewer safety and environmental regulations and they demand absolute control over all decisions, work schedules, speech, and actions in the workplace. PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF A UNION The easiest way to stand up for each other in our workplaces and communities and the easiest way to improve our working conditions is to join a union. That is why employers fight so hard, and spend so much money, to keep unions out of their workplaces. Workers with unions generally have higher pay and job security, better benefits, and fewer scheduling problems. More pay equals fewer hours at work and more hours for enjoying the good things in life. Union workplaces are safer and have less harassment, discrimination, and favoritism. This is because a union gives workers the power to make workplace decisions. The less we let our employers make all of the decisions, the better our lives and communities will be. Unions also provide mutual aid and community. This means assistance with problems at work, but it could also mean help with a community project or fighting a landlord. WHY EVERY WORKER SHOULD BE IN THE ONE BIG UNION Whether your job sucks or is "pretty good" (at least today), we in the IWW believe you should join us for the following reasons. We need to start sticking up for our coworkers in our workplaces and in our industries. Ask around on your next shift. How many coworkers have two or three jobs? How many are one paycheck away from an eviction? We have a duty to our co-workers, and those who will follow in our footsteps, to make things better. The only way to do this is to organize together. When we band together around our common experiences and interests, we can improve our jobs and industries. Our labor, not our bosses, is what makes our workplaces tick and we can use our labor power to improve our jobs and our communities in the short term. In a lot of ways, that is what unions are all about. With the IWW, you also belong to a union that has a long term vision and plan for workers' control of their own work, without bosses, making our industries and economy democratic. As an IWW member, you get: 1) volunteer organizers if you choose to organize your workplace and industry. 2) union organizing expertise in areas of strategy, media, community support, infrastructure building, and bargaining. 3) commitment to democratic unionism, which means members control their own organizing campaigns and the direction of the union. 4) an international organization dedicated to working together to build worker power on our jobs and in our communities. 5) mutual aid and support. 6) some practical things: a subscription to the Industrial Worker (union newspaper), the IWW internal newsletter, access to the IWW website, the union's constitution, your local branch newsletter (if applicable), and a member button. ABOUT THE IWW Founded in Chicago in 1905, the IWW is open to all workers. Don't let the "industrial" part fool you. Our members include teachers, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, bartenders, and computer programmers. Only bosses are not allowed to join. You have a legal right to join a union and your membership is confidential. It is up to you whether you discuss the union with your co-workers. If you are currently unemployed, you can still join. We are a volunteer-driven union, and this means we, not union bosses, run the union. The IWW is not controlled by or affiliated with any political party or political movement. No money goes to politicians. Membership dues are used to maintain the union and assist organizing campaigns. As a result, monthly dues are low. So lets not put up with endless bureaucracy lets start by organising ourselves for ourselves and taking control of our own struggles.

The potential for the IWW and revolutionary unionism

During this time of massive upheaval I do believe there is a time of reassessment all that has gone before has not worked up till now and new ideas and tactics are to be re looked at and rightly so. For one I think revolutionary unionism as a movement may make a comeback of sorts. The idea that people will continue to look towards the bureaucratic and hierarchical trade unions of today such as the TUC in the United Kingdom will always be the case is somewhat missing the point. Workers will not stick blindly and loyally by a system of organising that is not producing any progress or results. While the IWW is a small movement and is a long way from making a big comeback I do feel however the conditions for horizontalism and non bureaucratic unionism is possible as we stand today. Where many political parties from the mainstream to the non mainstream including left sects on the fringes are becoming more and more discredited why cant revolutionary unions make a comeback and start to influence the workers movement? It is entirely possible and entirely necessary in my opinion. To organise away from the huge bloated bureaucracy of traditional unions of the TUC is sometimes desirable but also quite necessary. The example I give is the IWGB who at the university of London have organised away from Unison the recognised union there at the workplace but have don little to nothing and often become a obstruction on struggle for the workers involved who have been out sourced to a private company who are not recognising the new union there and their demands still till this day. However big strides have been made in their struggles a and I do firmly believe they will win and win well and shine a light to other workers in similar positions across the land. Each step the class struggle takes forward owes itself to the step taken before it. As Rosa Luxemburg related waves of struggle in revolutionary Russia in her essay The Mass Strike, each wave recedes but leaves “sediment” behind for the next wave to rise from. As it is for Wobblies. The last few years of struggle have washed to shore a great deal of sediment packed full of invaluable "nuggets" of organizing wisdom. Revolutionary organizers would do well to mine these nuggets out, analyze their content, and synthesize the best of it. They can compare these nuggets from different waves of struggle and single out some similarities which they can apply to practice. They test them, share them with other organizers, synthesize what they learn, and develop a distinct, transmutable organizing approach - or method - over time. We believe that we are beginning to establish this method now. The IWW has in recent years made a long-overdue return to the stage of history. Since the 1950s, we Wobblies barely plodded along - almost for the sake of just existing - but gradually got back on our own feet as an organization that organized. Small skirmishes with employers - and some victories - occurred here and there over the last decades of the 20th century. Wobblies made short-lived but impressive advances in the courier industry and among restaurant workers; put the IWW on the map for non-members when they organized low-wage baristas into the Starbucks Workers Union; developed an organizer training program to share past organizing lessons and improve organizers’ skillsets, and engaged in much other significant activity. The generation of Wobblies who established these developments broke new ground on a long-dormant tradition of revolutionary union organizing. Alongside an uptick in membership and activity in the late 1990s and early 2000s came the prominence of "Solidarity Unionism,”5 a grassroots organizing approach which put workers themselves in charge of their own struggle for justice in the workplace. A relative flurry of activity and a wave of new members accompanied this significant new development. Naturally, this activity waxed and waned, but the IWW and its practice of solidarity unionism established itself in the contemporary labor movement (even if it’s still on the margins). Much has happened in and around the IWW in the last several years. New high-profile organizing drives have taken off, some won, and some failed (though we challenge rigid discernments between victory and failure). The Starbucks campaign, for example, inspired new organizers to establish similar unions in several low-wage workplaces that most other unions ignored. Where Wobblies worked in unionized workplaces, they organized among the rank-and-file along IWW principles, winning gains through direct action that their “official” union could not or would not pursue. On the national scale in the US, IWWs played visible roles in both the Wisconsin Uprising and the Occupy Wall Street movement that swept the country and brought an unprecedented many thousands of everyday working people onto the streets and into political life. Through all this, the IWW has learned much, and organizers have improved their skills a great deal. The IWW is not what it used to be. The organization has gone through stages of historical evolution, and in order to understand the current situation it’s necessary to be aware of its place in this history. The early IWW of Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Vincent St. John, Ben Fletcher and so on, from which Wobblies draw so much pride and tradition, no longer exists. It is a memory - one that is essential to hold on to because of its importance to the history and culture of the working class, but as an organization it is no more. Decades of ruling class repression, containment of working class rebellion through state (legal) channels, capitalist advancements in managerial control and internal IWW conflict--subjects critical to an understanding of how the IWW got here, but which are beyond the scope of this piece--drove the IWW to a point in the 1980s where it could claim few members, little activity, and almost no power in the working-class. Though the union still held on to relics of the original IWW in the form of Joe Hill's ashes and membership records, and on paper the organization was technically the same one that was founded in 1905, its content had drastically changed. What was once a powerful, revolutionary force for organized class struggle, stretching across the continent with influence throughout the world, had long since faded to a withered husk - an organization better characterized as a labor history club than a revolutionary union. Let's stop to note that this observation is not meant as an attack on anyone who was a member during the 80s, or an attempt to say that everything after World War I isn't the “real” IWW. It is just as real of an organization, but a different organization, which changed over time due to a multitude of historical factors, not least of which being the relative strength and consciousness of the American working-class, which had reached a similarly low point in the 1980s. Individuals who were members of the organization had ultimately very little capacity to do much within those limits, and can't be held responsible for what was the product of historical dynamics far out of their control. But it's important to recognize that the IWW had reached a demise. Though not a final demise, since it was brought back from the brink and into a new stage of development in the 1990s. Rising class-consciousness and growing interest in “radical” politics attracted more members to the IWW starting in the 1960s, with membership spiking in the mid to late 90s. The spike in the late 90s was largely activists - some of them politicized workers - immersed in the anti-globalization and anti-war protest movements. But while the organization’s membership scale increased, its content was still fundamentally different from the content of the union that led the Bread and Roses strike8. Those traditions of struggle had been broken and the union was forced to re-establish itself in a barren terrain. The 90s IWW largely functioned as a history club of greater size, but took on another dimension that sharply diverged from the union's organizing roots; increasingly (but not exclusively) the IWW became an activist organization. Here we use the term “activism” critically, in our examination of a kind of activity that is not rooted in class struggle, but instead devoted to expressing moral outrage at the capitalist system's superstructural contradictions. At its most basic, a union is “an organization of workers formed to protect the [...] interests of its members”11 over time. Where an instance of self-activity could dissipate or pass, unionism is the practice of consolidating workers into an organization that acts to protect their interests on an ongoing basis. In recent decades, this has often meant that union representatives do the “protecting” in the form of negotiating with management on the workers’ behalf, thus “unions developed a life independent of their membership and began to operate over their heads”. Solidarity Federation calls this tendency the representative function of unions as we know them now, in contrast to the (once more prevalent) associational function of workers relating directly to each other without the mediation of an entrenched bureaucracy12. This distinction is useful as it demonstrates that unions can have diverging trajectories, leading to them playing very different roles in society. While many ultra-Left positions13 take the representational function of unions for granted, understandably portraying them as backwards institutions who have a stake in maintaining capitalism, clearly there have also been many workers’ organizations throughout the history of capitalism that have retained their associational function and represented a genuine threat to capital. Whether we call it a council, a union, or anything else doesn’t change the fact that it is possible to create and maintain “an organization of workers formed to protect the [...] interests of its members” - and that such a formation can retain its autonomy from the State and its allied institutions, can win improved conditions for workers under capitalism, and, further, can facilitate the development of a revolutionary politics amongst the workers. The fact that such formations must come up against limitations under this system does not render them irrelevant, ineffective, or “infantile”. Clearly, we believe self-organization is the cornerstone of unionism, and it is the premise upon which we base our argument for Wobblyism. We draw on a rich tradition of working class self-organization in the US, from the Knights of Labor14 Its true that the IWW is small and largely unheard of in the UK but I do believe its method of organising and the idea of revolutionary unions is something all revolutionaries should revisit and take a moment to think can this be of any use to our struggle or for us wishing to change society as I believe it can be if taken seriously. I’d encourage all to read up more on this via this excellent new document put out at http://libcom.org/library/wobblyism-revolutionary-unionism-today

Why the IWW

I am fed up with Unite and how it is besotted with the labour party and gives millions of our own subs to this party who kicks us all the time. I have been doing a bit of looking about and have stumbled across a union called the IWW who has caught my interest. In their about section on their website they state: "We are a grassroots and democratic union helping to organise all workers in all workplaces. The IWW differs from traditional trade unions. We believe that workers have greater voice if we are organised within our own industries. For example, teachers, cleaners and secretaries who work in a school should be classed as education workers and all is in the same union. Furthermore, unions in one industry are far stronger if they are in the same organisation as all other industrial unions. Our aim is to see society re-organised to meet the interests of all people, and not just shareholders and corporations. We are NOT: • Full of stifling bureaucracy or linked to any political party or group. • Led by fat cat salary earners who carry out deals with bosses behind your back. • Going to sell you services, life insurance or credit cards. We are: • Led by membership. We make all decisions and we all have the final say. • For uniting all workers across trades, industries and countries. • Able to offer practical support for members in their workplace. • Flexible so you are still a member even when you change job or contract. Who is the IWW for? We are for ALL workers who do not have the power to hire or fire. This also includes workers who are retired, students, unemployed, part-time, temporary or those working at home. Workers who are members of other unions are also welcome. Britain and Ireland Regional Administration of the IWW " This to me sounds all very appealing. A union with no bureaucracy it does sound good. I will do some more reading of course but this sounds worlds apart from unite and its labour love in obsession. "Founded in 1905, the IWW is open to all workers. Don’t let the “industrial” part fool you. Our members include teachers, cleaners, social workers, retail workers, construction workers, bartenders, and computer programmers. Only bosses are not allowed to join. If you are currently unemployed, you can still join. You have a legal right to join a union and your membership is confidential. We are a volunteer-driven union, and this means we, not union bosses or bureaucrats, run the union. The IWW is not controlled by or affiliated with any political party or political movement. No money goes to politicians. Membership dues are used to maintain the union and assist organising campaigns. As a result, monthly dues are low. Why join the IWW? It does not take long to figure out those workers and their employers do not have the same interests. Workers want shorter hours, higher pay, and better benefits. We want our work to be less boring, less dangerous, and less destructive to the environment. We want control over how we produce goods and provide services. We want meaningful work that contributes to our communities and world. Our employers, in contrast, want us to work longer, harder, faster, and cheaper. They want fewer safety and environmental regulations and they demand absolute control over all decisions, work schedules, speech, and actions in the workplace. Practical benefits of a union The easiest way to stand up for each other in our workplaces and communities and the easiest way to improve our working conditions is to join a union. That is why employers fight so hard, and spend so much money, to keep unions out of their workplaces. Workers with unions generally have higher pay and job security, better benefits, and fewer scheduling problems. More pay equals fewer hours at work and more hours for enjoying the good things in life. Union workplaces are safer and have less harassment, discrimination, and favoritism. This is because a union gives workers the power to make workplace decisions. The less we let our employers make all of the decisions, the better our lives, our family’s lives, and our communities will be. Unions also provide mutual aid. This means assistance with problems at work, but it could also mean help with things outside of work too. Why every worker should be in the One Big Union Whether your job sucks or is “pretty good” (at least today), we in the IWW believe you should join us. We need to start sticking up for ourselves and our coworkers in our workplaces and industries. Ask around on your next shift. How many coworkers have two or three jobs? How many are one payday away from eviction? We have a duty to our co-workers and those who will follow in our footsteps to make things better, not only in terms of immediate gains but also as part of a bigger plan to build a radically new worker-run economy for the benefit of all. The only way to do this is to organise together. When we band together around our common experiences and interests, we can improve our jobs and industries. Our labour, not our bosses', is what makes our workplaces tick; our knowledge and experience is what keeps their business afloat; and we can use that power to improve our working lives. Britain and Ireland Regional Administration of the IWW " What is not to like about that? You can visit their website and find out more at http://t.co/W9Y7z1S3