Labor under Trump part 4: Time to wake up
The mood and discussions of late have largely been doom and gloom. Our series has tried to shine a light on some hope for workers resistance to counter the demobilize barrage of social and anti-social media. Our final piece in the Labor under Trump series comes from Ideas and Action the online publication of the Workers Solidarity Alliance. David Fernández-Barrial argues that there is an untapped potential within workplaces to defeat the threats looming, and take us closer to a just and equitable society. Read More
Labor under Trump part 2: This is not a drill
In our second installment in our Labor under Trump mini-series, Mark Brenner from Labor Notes explores what union members can do in the face of anticipated threats. At this point most of the debate is speculation, but the labor notes piece is worth discussing because they explore concrete experiences in areas where anti-labor policies have been implemented such as organizing in right-to-work states and solidarity with coworkers independent of their immigration status. Brenner paints a picture of a labor movement at a crossroads, a theme we will return to next week. Read More
Happy New Years from Recomposition
We’re starting the new year off with three series coming. The first is about what we can expect for workers movements under Trump, and what we should do about it. Look forward to seeing a series about health care in the United States, and the international debate over the direction of the revolutionary union movements. Think about keeping us on your resolutions to contribute artwork, recordings or writings, help us share our content, and discuss with your coworkers and comrades. To a better year for the working class! Read More
Labor under Trump: general strike again?
This week we bring you a piece discussing how labor can respond to working under Trump. The context for the piece comes on the heels of national calls for a general strike on January 20th when Trump will be inaugurated. The author himself was a participant in the Wisconsin General Strike attempt and wrote about it prior. Having been around for the 2006 Immigration general strike attempt, the events in Wisconsin, 2012 Occupy General Strike, and explored general strikes here on Recomposition. We haven’t collectively taken a position on this most general strike proposal, but we hope that some continuity and discussion can inform whatever happens on January 20th and after. What is crucial is that we attempt to understand the changes happening, and the potentials and challenges for a revolutionary union movement. With unionization rates at 100 year lows and the doors seemingly closing on passive legalistic approaches to workplace organizing, the author argues that we will find a new envi… Read More
No Glory in Glorified Babysitting
Image contribution by Monica Kostas Today’s piece comes to us from Daniel Cole who lives and works in Australia as a early childhood educator. His perspective shines light on what it’s like to do strenuous childcare work, and how managers and disconnected executives worsen the load by making ridiculous guidelines and demands, while pinning providers on a scale that doesn’t truly measure their experience and value. He aims to get other educators on board with imagining what it would be like to autonomously run childhood centers, and what can be done to organize in that direction. Read More
Thoughts for International Working Women’s Day
Today marks International Women’s Day, a day which began after a key strike of women textile workers in New York. The lead up to the strike that would build the ILGWU into a fighting force was a tenants strike led by socialist women. Revolutionary unionism likewise has its own history of struggles of women workers, a history which took the emancipation of women deeper in its time and today as well. During the same time period, the Buenos Aires Tenant’s Strike of 1907 was led by some of the women’s Resistance Societies and women leadership within the FORA. Read More
Militancy and the Beautiful Game: An interview with Gabriel Kuhn
Gabriel Kuhn is an anarchist activist living in Sweden and author of an impressive array of histories, translations, and collections published on anarchism, history of the left, and sports. His energy for writing is matched by a passion for soccer as a longtime fan and once professional athlete. We interviewed him about his experiences playing for a living, radical history, and controversies today. Read More
Package Handler’s Report and Analysis
There is a common notion in the United States and other powerful Western nation that the process of deindustrialization is complete and total. According to many, this process has left the workplaces of American merely small hubs of service work, totally unorganizable and not worth our time. However, along many industrial lines there remain a number of mass workplaces, especially along the supply chain. These circuits of capital flow every day and night and create huge logistical challenges – the permeation of warehouses has been one way for companies to cope with the difficulties of logistics. With the creation of these hubs, capital creates a dangerous situation for itself, because if these chokepoints are organized they can severely cripple the flow of goods. The recognition of this fact has spurred many revolutionaries to organize in these sectors. In this essay, IWW organizer Coeur de Bord analyses the first year of organizing at a United Parcel Service hub in Minneapolis outside of the preexisting trade union structure. They show how even a small core of organizers can engage large numbers of workers and mobilize them around concrete demands. Read More
Teaser for our upcoming series
Later this month we launch a new series of pieces called Politics on the Field which will feature narratives of sports in work and daily life, an interview, some history, and a little of everything. Our last series were about How I was Radicalized and how work invades our sleep. In the meantime we present a video about efforts in Rojava to rebuild sports facilities and leagues in the midst of the brutal war raging there. Read More
Free Parking
In this piece Phineas Gage recalls the challenges of organizing under punitive back to work legislation and the effect it had on shop floor organising. As tensions grow over a dispute about the safety of various parking arrangements around renovated facilities the shop again begins to mobilise. Then tragedy strikes and the workers are reminded that sometimes the cost of a partial victory can be as great as any defeat. Read More
What’s Your 5 Year Plan?
What’s Your 5 Year Plan? Today we post “What’s Your 5 Year Plan?” by Lifelong Wobbly which first appeared on his blog on December 3rd, 2014. The piece presents important challenges for the potential growth of the IWW over the next few years, and proposes a model for putting ideas to work. Regardless of whether the suggestions are ambitious or not, they’re specific milestones that can allow us to track progress. We think it’s important to visualize our desires for the union, but even more important to put them down in writing, and start working through measured goals to materialize that vision. We hope that you join the discussion not only with us but also with your branch members and people you know in the union to emphasize how we can direct our efforts toward improving the OBU. Read More
Concrete Examples of Non Labour Relations Board Unions – Part III
Organizing at Jimmy Johns This is the third part of a series of concrete examples (Part I – Part II) and very brief summaries of organizations that have some component of direct action and a form of collective bargaining that operate outside the labour relations framework. The following examples are from the IWWs organising efforts in food service. This includes fast food as well as grocery stores in a lot of the examples the IWW actually engaged in innovative organising that broke ground in more high profile campaigns like the well known “Fight for Fifteen” campaigns around raising the minimum wage in the USA. Read More
Concrete Examples of Non Labour Relations Board Unions – Part II
This is the second part of a series of concrete examples and very brief summaries of organizations that have some component of direct action and a form of collective bargaining that operate outside the labour relations framework. The following are IWW projects that had aspects of Labour Relations Board campaigns to them but were essentially not oriented towards the LRB. You will also notice that these examples are American. One key difference in the American context is the presence of a longer and richer history of what is called “minority unionism” that is unions that seek to build majorities from minorities but are capable of acting as a part of the workforce that doesn’t always represent a majority pro-union group as verified by card check or a board election. Read More
Concrete Examples of Non Labour Relations Board Unions – Part I
Port of Metro Vancouver Workers Protest This is the first part of a series of concrete examples and very brief summaries of organizations that have some component of direct action and a form of collective bargaining that operate outside the labour relations framework. The first series are entirely owner operator associations in Transportation. There is a conventional argument, bolstered by employers, that these folks are not workers but rather small business people. Of course that’s nonsense, being a worker is not determined by the form of wage you take and being paid piece rate is as old as payment itself. Owning your own tools does not make someone a business owner, if that were the case many tradesmen wouldn’t be workers. These workers have responded to a unique situation that opens up positive examples for organisers all over and should be watched. Read More
Necessary Steps in Tough Economic Times
Today we share an article that first appeared in Deric Shannon’s book The End of the World As We Know It? published by AK Press. “Necessary Steps in Tough Economic Times” by Marianne LeNabat, one of our editors at Recomposition, takes us through an overview of how students in recent decades have become saddled with debt, how a student movement rose up in NY during the height of OWS, some of the lessons we can draw from organized resistance, and the ripples that student fights caused spreading solidarity throughout various sectors of society. Read More
News from Houston
USW strikers on picket duty. Today’s post comes to us from fellow IWW’s in Houston giving us a brief overview on their recent work around the USW strikes on the oil refineries. Click here and you can also listen to an interview with two of the Houston wobs talking about the work their branch is doing, and also their perspectives on the IWW’s projects at large. A Houston Wobb’s Reflection on the USW Strike by Adelita Unions’ power is in decay and lately have been resorting to more creative methods in order to remain relevant. We’ve seen the Democrats putting their money behind the Service Employees International Union’s (SEIU) Fight For $15 in Houston at the same time attempting to “turn Texas blue.” But this dependency of unions like SEIU and the United Steel Workers (USW) on the Democratic Party means they are severely limited in what they are willing to do in the realm of tactics. This along with union density being sharply in decline, as well as union power being undermined by Right-to-Work spreading to states like Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin, means the unions are not up for waging anything close to a class struggle. Instead unions like the USW maintain their position as representing only certain interests and timidly bargaining around them. Read More
Beating Back the Bureaucrats
Bloque Sindical de Base We are happy to present Beating Back the Bureaucrats from a comrade writing in South Africa. The piece focuses mostly on a recent initiative called Bloque Sindical de Base in Argentina. Argentina’s labor movement and its many divisions are not well known or understood by english-speakers in the workers movement. Having a history of revolutionary unionism that pre-dates the IWW by some decades and has continued through multiple dictatorships, union labor laws modeled after Mussolini’s Italy, and more recently a severe crisis in 2001 that led to 75% unemployment and a broad uprising, Argentina’s history contains a lot organizers can learn from about building the IWW and more broadly militant workplace organization. How do we deal with government control over the labor movement? With efforts that push organizers into bureaucracies? With reform efforts within unions? Beating Back the Bureaucrats is a welcome addition to bring some of the perspectives and debates to our audience. The author gives a general history of the development of Argentina’s two largest trade union federations today, the CGT and CTA, starting at the birth of the CGT, its unification with the Peronist movement, and the fights and splits that have followed in the past 50 years since. Much of the work focuses on a recent initiative by union militants within the rival federation CTA which split from CGT. These militants formed a current called Bloque Sindical de Base aimed at increasing rank and file participation and combating bureaucracy within the unions it organizes. Bloque Sindical de Base uses union assemblies to mobilize worker participation on the one hand and on the other runs slates in union elections. Drawing from his analysis of Bloque Sindical de Base, the author argues for positions about the development of more combative and libertarian workers movements, and how new unions initiatives could help or hinder that situation. We have some reservations about the strategy presented at least where we live in the US and Canada, but the article raises important questions for anyone that wishes to develop revolutionary unionism, and we hope it can inspire constructive debates over these issues. Read More
Against the IWW Series Part 4: The Legacy of the IWW
This week we present part 4 of our Against the IWW series which we started back in late 2013. The Legacy of the IWW: To Break Their Haughty Power by Joe Richard can be found in the International Socialist Review site. You can find our previous posts in the series here: Against the IWW Series Part I: The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement Against the IWW Series Part 2: The IWW (1955) by James P Cannon Against the IWW Series Part 3: An Infantile Disorder Just to be clear, we’ve run anti IWW stuff before though last time around we accidentally confused people. People thought we had become anti-IWW. We’re not, we’re pro-IWW. Very much so. We ran those pieces and are running this piece because we think IWW members should read criticisms of the IWW, discuss them with each other, and be able to respond to those criticisms. In our organizing we inoculate our co-workers to the criticisms employers make of the IWW. Similarly IWW members should be inoculated against political criticisms of the IWW. We invite people to write full rebuttals to this and all of the other criticisms of the IWW and submit them to us and to other web sites and publications. IWW Charter The Legacy of the IWW: To Break Their Haughty Power by Joe Richard You men and women should be imbued with the spirit that is now displayed in far-off Russia and far-off Siberia where we thought the spark of manhood and womanhood had been crushed…. Let us take example from them. We see the capitalist class fortifying themselves today behind their Citizens’ Associations and Employers’ Associations in order that they may crush the American labor movement. Let us cast our eyes over to far-off Russia and take heart and courage from those who are fighting the battle there. —Lucy Parsons, at the founding convention of the IWW, 1905 Read More
Snake March
Workers gather over one thousand strong to protest back to work legislation. Concluding Phineas Gage’s three-part series on struggles at the Canada Post during 2011, we present ‘Snake march’. In this final installment, he describes the moral as the lockout drags on. Parliamentary filibusters and symbolic occupations fail to turn the tide on contract negotiations. The postal workers return to work, determined to not let management bulldoze them in the shopfloor. Check out here Part 1 of the series and also Part 2. Snake March A truck pulled up to the parking lot in front of the main downtown Post Office. Christine and I jumped up and started unloading signs from the back. Camera people were setting up all around the truck and The Local President was going over the notes her people helped her prep for the interviews. Slowly the crowd swelled as people walked in from the bus stops, then a big bus from the Nurses union pulled up and people filed out. Half an hour later the crowd was huge spilling out of the parking lot. Around 1,000 people showed up. Gil McGowan, the President of the Provincial Labour Federation, took the microphone from a local executive member who was managing the speakers list. The shopfloor committees huddled on the other side of the crowd, largely ignoring the people who had their faces in the television cameras. Sheila was chairing the committee meeting. “Okay so what’s the plan?” Read More
Buffalo Jump
Last week we brought you the first in a series of articles by Phineas Gage about a strike at Canada Post. This week as the strike rolled on the workers faced a common challenge of workplace battles. The government, employers, and national union began making moves to diffuse the situation and try to control the actions of the workers. Viewed from inside the strike at one local we see the decisions workers were wrestling with to try and combat the cut backs, austerity, and attacks being leveled against them on the job, and at the same time responding to the real possibilities of further losses, repression, and possible sabotage from above. Buffalo Jump I had only slept a few hours when I returned to the Mail Processing Plant the morning after they locked us out. As I parked my car I watched a crowd of Postal Workers gathered around a Lexus with the doors open, the trunk open and a bunch of chanting. I saw Sheila hauling a tire out of the trunk of the Lexus and bounce it a few times on the ground. I guess a few workers had this done to their vehicles when they took road trips across the border to the USA, the guards were seeing if there were drugs inside it, and thought that was how a proper search was done. The man in the suit got into his car and Sheila slammed the door hard behind him. He pulled out of the crowd safely but when at the edge of the mob he squealed his tires. The mob covered their ears and a few plastic bottles were thrown at the car as he sped away. Read More
Turning up the Heat
Postal Workers rally around the plant after being locked out. This week we proudly present you the first of a three part series that detail a set of organizing actions by postal workers in Canada during 2011. It is written by fellow Recomposition editor Phineas Gage who expounds on the actions that led up to the CUPW strike, the predicaments that workers faced challenging management, and the indelible memory of seeing management flee an angry mob of strikers. Enjoy, and check back next week for Part 2! Turning up the Heat by Phineas Gage Craig stood inside the Mail Processing Plant doors, just about to punch in. His phone rang – the number for National. The voice on his cell phone spoke excitedly. Craig nodded slowly. “Almost ready, we have a couple depots that are slacking but this will light a fire under their ass,” he said. The voice from the National Office spoke again. “Okay, I’ll pass that on. So the strike could start tomorrow, it could be in a few weeks, you will keep us posted but we probably won’t hear much until you tell us to go”. Craig talked into the phone loudly enough that the other people standing near him could hear. Grand standing while no one is supposed to be paying attention is the oldest trick in the book. “For all their talk about ‘direct action’ Depot 2 sure seems to not be interested in the big job action we have planned for a few weeks from now. You remember that one, right? The strike? That’s a pretty big job action, right?” Read More
As We See It / As We Don’t See It
The twentieth century went back and forth between two extremes. On one side, individualism would reign supreme in the ambitions of ‘great men’, in the excesses of Wall Street and in the quest for meaning in art and literature. On the other hand, the glorification of a caricature of the human community in the phony communism of nationalized industry under a party dictatorship. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, a battle raged between the need for social action on the parts of large groups of people and the debasement of humanity that happened in the name of this action. A simultaneous perversion of humanity and the individual occurred. As We See It/As We Don’t See it stand out as one of the best attempts at expressing a politics that both reflects the battle between these poles and cuts to the nature of this tension. No doubt like anything that old, parts of it are now a bit dated, but the basic sentiment and approach are as relevant now as they ever were. These texts were taken from the on-line Solidarity and Subversion archive at af-north.org As we see it / Don’t see it by Solidarity I. As We See It Read More
On Bluffing
Rage – contribution by M. Kostas This week’s piece comes to us by fellow editor at Recomposition, Phineas Gage. In it, he analyzes three instances in different organizing scenarios where bluffing, whether premeditated or spontaneous, helped leverage reactions that would not have otherwise happened. A running theme through these experiences is the desire to struggle, but to struggle together, paired with the glaring fear that people won’t have each other’s backs when push comes to shove. His insight not only lets us in on the small details that can make or break actions, but also shines a light on how every step we take in our organizing, as in our life, is a gamble. Read More
The Truth About The Million Dollar Coffee Company
This week we bring you a second piece from a Starbucks worker about a firing, following Work to Rule. Part of struggle is not only the lessons and strategies, but also the experiences and the real life costs that occur when we start to take action. This submission succinctly takes us though one woman’s experience that ended too soon. By: Lyssa I think back to the last I worked at Starbucks on 80th and York, and recall what a beautiful day it was outside, that day was a nice break from the harsh winter we had this past year. As I walked into the store that day, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was not right. However I still clocked in for my shift at 2:15 pm to close the store with one of new supervisors, put on the “happy barista persona” required of me, and went on the floor to work. About 15 minutes after I had clocked in I watched my supervisor Margret waltz in (15 minutes late and out of dress code) with her sister (another Starbucks partner) in tow, she had the most confused look on her face at the site of me. She said to me “Lyssa are you closing?” I looked at her with an even more confused face and responded to her. “Yeah I am. Why?” To which she replied, “So why did Jennifer have me bring my sister in to close?” Read More
Work to Rule
This week’s piece comes to us from a Starbucks worker and member of the IWW. She describes what happened when an incompetent bosses crossed the line, and the workers came together to assert themselves. The author describes the tactic of working-to-rule, or following all of managements often incoherent rules that inevitably slows work to a crawl without disobeying any directives. Key to this experience was not only the grievances or tactics which are worth discussing in their own right, but also the perception of power and inspiration that the workers expressed. This is a common theme in worker organizing and often passed over when it remains at the center of the hearts and minds of people standing up against perceived injustices. Read More
Beyond “F*ck You”: An organizer’s approach to confronting hateful language at work
The people we work with usually reflect what the dominant culture of our society is like. This includes some of its worst aspects, such as racism, sexism, homophobia, and heterosexism. For worker-organizer’s, these present their own difficulties. They impede our short term goals such as being able to withstand the drudgery of a job, as well as exist as obstacles to uniting our coworkers against management. In addition to these problems, they stand in stark contrast with our long-term goals of creating a new world free of oppression and exploitation. But how do we deal with this? Here is an account from Coeur de Bord about their response to hateful language at their workplace. Read More
Being a Woman Organizer Isn’t Easy
A mural image showing (left) A member of the IWW or “Wobblies” trying to organize the Maine woodsmen and The Textile Workers and a mural image depicting (right) Young women were often sent to the mills by their families, who could not, or would not support them. REUTERS/Judy Taylor/Handout March was International Women’s Day and the IWW celebrated it with a special issue of the Industrial Worker. It’s worth reading the whole thing via the Industrial Worker here and you can get a subscription via this link if you want to support it and see more writings like that. Much of the time discussions around organizing center on what keeps us from winning or building the union up to those fights. There’s less discussion around things that prevent workers from becoming their own radical agents, particularly in gendered terms. The article we’re running today comes from Miami, Florida and was published in the Industrial Worker. It’s a personal account of one organizer’s journey to becoming a committed IWW, and how she has seen race and gender play a role in her life. Though only one snapshot of these big issues, contributions like this give us a window into deep forces at play in our work and neighborhood lives, and are things we hope IWWs can continue thinking around and fighting for an alternative. from Luz Sierra This past year I became politically active. I went from being completely unaware of the existence of radical politics to doing organizing work in Miami with an anarchist perspective. It has been both a rewarding and difficult journey, yet gender seems to haunt me wherever I go. I am probably not the first woman to experience this, but I believe that I should demonstrate how this is a real issue and provide my personal insight for other women to have a reference point for their own struggles. Read More
Actions and Objectives of the Workers Movement
What is the relationship between the objectives of the revolutionary union movement and its actions? Ever since unions were first integrated into the State and its legal framework for collaborative industrial relations, the revolutionary union movement has had hard questioned pressed upon it. At crucial moments revolutionary unions defected to back policies destructive to the working class such as the CGT in France supporting WWI, the leadership of the CNT joining the government during the war, and Mexico’s Casa del Obrera Mundial taking up arms for the state against the rural Zapatista movement in its revolution. The post-war labor movement has been defined by trying to navigate the integration of unions within the State and often management, and the subsequent dismantling of those relationships. Today we still grapple with these issues as we try to find ways to fight around daily issues while building a powerful movement of working class people towards a new revolutionary horizon. This piece comes to us from our brothers and sisters in the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists CRAS-AIT in Russia. Vadim Damier, historian of the seminal work Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century (published and translated by Black Cat Press) writes about the experiences of the spanish anarchosyndicalist union the CNT from a critical perspective, and gives an alternative followed by CRAS-AIT today inspired by experiences in anarchosyndicalists in Argentina. Whichever position you take, this discussion is crucial now as the basis for unions is being transformed, and uncertain possibilities and challenges are unfolding. Read More
Scabs! Part II: The St. Albert Wildcat
This entry is the second part in a two-part story from contributor Phineas Gage about a wildcat strike by contractors at the Canadian postal service, and continues our coverage of struggles within Canada Post. The phone rang irritatingly early, early enough I ignored it the first time. Apparently Lise-Anne called several other executive members after she left a message for me. I later found out the message she left me said: “they’re cutting our pay by 30%, we had a coffee break meeting and we vote unanimously to walk out in response, what do we do now?” The phone rang again, this time I picked up. “We just walked out, we’re sitting across the street in the Tim Horton’s”. Eight months prior I had talked to the workers at this depot about racial discrimination and harassment one co-worker was facing. They marched on the boss with eight people that sent a strong enough message it put an end to that issue. Even if the racist supervisor was still around he was a lot quieter. The workers became more assertive, and very strong on the floor. A series of small actions built the solidarity among the rural workers to the point where they felt strong enough to fight a change to the work measurement system that was going to cut their pay by almost a third. “Did you make any demands?” I asked groggily, sometimes folks are so angry they forget to say what they want. “Yeah, we wanted a repeal of the policy and he told us that the union was going to be upset we did this”. “What did you say to that?” “I said we didn’t need their permission to do this, but the local President and Sharon are coming down to talk to us and see what they can do to help”. Read More
Scabs: Part I
This entry is a two-part story from contributor Phineas Gage about a wildcat strike by contractors at the Canadian postal service, and continues our coverage of struggles within Canada Post. In the course of the strike, union workers had to figure out how to relate to contractors and where scabbing starts and solidarity ends. The experience of life under capitalism can reveal both the potential divisions that destroy struggles and the commonalities that can overcome them. These next two pieces can help us understand and try to go beyond the barriers class throws at us. Abraham looked down the row at everyone else sorting mail. Their heads were bowed, occasionally rubbing their eyes they worked slowly but steadily- the only way you can when you work fourteen hours every day. He reached over to the letter that was left on his desk for him by a Canada Post Supervisor, he was in late because his daughter was up all night with a cough. The letterhead was from Reynolds Diaz, the private contractor that hired him on behalf of Canada Post. Read More
How I Got Fired And Won My Job Back
This submission comes to us from an IWW organizer about his organizing that led to his being fired and returned to work. Given that firings are the greatest fear we often encounter in organizing, a detailed account like this is valuable for workers learning to organize. Emmett was organizing in a typical environment we find ourselves in; without a union, organizing only semi-publicly, and trying to move forward without reproducing the errors of business unions. Working without contracts, elections, or the typical management union relation, Emmett’s piece helps show the tensions that come out of our work, and how they were able to turn things around. By Emmett J. Nolan Originally Published in the Industrial Worker Issue 1761 December 2013. The Termination Arriving to work, I entered through the break room as usual. There, awaiting me was my manager who immediately said that we needed to talk. He told me not to put away my bag; I couldn’t get ready for my shift like I usually did. I asked him if this was a disciplinary meeting but he did not respond directly to the question. He just said, “We need to talk. This will just take a minute.” While walking through the production floor I greeted co-workers as I usually do and I followed my manager into his office. Seeing that no one else was in the office, I asked, “Is someone from HR [Human Resources] going to be here?” He barked back at me, “This is coming straight from HR.” I then asked him if I could have a co-worker in the meeting with me. He denied this request, responding, “Hmmm, no.” Read More
Lessons from small shop organizing
A significant amount of organizing experience in the IWW comes from working in relatively small workplaces such as stand-alone single shops or franchises of multiple smaller shops. These places present their own set of difficulties and opportunities. Lou Rinaldi talks about what happened at a former job of his in this piece. Lessons from small shop organizing by Lou Rinaldi From May 2012 to August of 2013 I was involved with organizing my workplace, a local small business in Providence, Rhode Island. My experience with that organizing, which lasted about a year before the campaign ended, has given me a lot of perspective that I plan on taking with me for the next time I’m organizing. I wanted to take the time to write down my thoughts and turn them into coherent lessons for my fellow workers, to aid in the creation of better organizers and better organizing campaigns. Read More
Fast Food Unionism: The Unionization of McDonald’s and/or the McDonaldization of Unions
This week’s piece comes to us Erik Forman, a contributor to Recomposition. Forman cut his teeth organizing as an IWW in different fast food establishments before the recent push by SEIU and other unions. The text is a repost from from Counterpunch’s Monthly Digital Exclusive. In Fast Food Unionism, he gives a broad background of the industry, business union tactics, and draws out some directions that an autonomous movement of fast food workers could take to remedy the issues he identifies. Drawing from his experience both as a worker and a direct organizer in the field, the piece brings a closeness that is often missing in many discussions. Read More
Against the IWW Series Part 3: An Infantile Disorder
The root for many critiques of the IWW came from the thinkers of the Bolsheviks, and the positions of the bureaucracies of the Soviet State via the Comintern. The positions laid out in Lenin’s text Left-Wing Communism: An infantile disorder, remain the references point for many such arguments. At the time, Lenin was engaged in purges and assaults on political opposition both within the Bolshevik party and across the territories of the former Russian Empire. The IWW is clearly in view here and Lenin specifically critiques IWW tactics, though he saves his ire primarily for his more immediate opponents: the opposition of left communists, syndicalists, and anarchists within Russia and in Europe. The chapter we’ve selected presents his position, that revolutionaries should abandon groups like the IWW and enter into the largest unions. These words were not merely idle debates. In line with Lenin’s opinions, the Comintern attempted to sway the IWW to join the communist party and disband into the unions of the AFL. A protracted struggle within the IWW and outside of it unfolded in the 1920s-30s as the Communist Party and the IWW clashed in their projects organizing the North American working class.As the dust has settled and the crimes and tragedies of that era have come to light, while Lenin may have been displaced from his position within labor thought, his arguments live on. This posting is an attempt to evaluate and dissect them. Read More
What Happened in Edmonton this Week
What Happened in Edmonton this Week An Appeal for Solidarity from a Letter Carrier in Edmonton This week we have seen hundreds of letter carriers in Edmonton take a stand. They took a stand for health and safety, they took a stand for their ability to provide for those who depend on their income, and they took a stand in defense of a public institution that is under attack. Background: For over three years now Canada Post Corporation has embarked on a project that they call “Postal Transformation”, or the “The Modern Post”. This experiment has taken a public institution that made hundreds of millions in profits for the Canadian public and driven to the point of ruin. There were countless minor confrontations over this issue, with some stewards taking a courageous stand and refusing, countless carriers sneaking the mail into their cases and many, many management staff choosing to turn a blind eye to the sortation methods. Read More
Against the IWW Series Part 2: The IWW (1955) by James P Cannon
In this series, we want to present some of the arguments against the IWW (present and historical). The debates around the strategy of the IWW have a way of repeating themselves both in practice and in the labor movement. How should dissident unions relate to existing unions? What role do ideas play in labor organizations? What is the best use of our energy at work? The second offering is from James P Cannon. Cannon was a socialist early in his life, and joined the IWW in 1911. Later, he became of the founding Trotskyists in the US and went on to help create the trotskyist political party the Socialist Workers Party. In this piece, Cannon reflects on the legacy of the IWW and advances an argument against the union that the Russian revolution made the IWW’s approach irrelevant and ineffective. Note that even in the early days of the IWW, its positions were understood not only as neutral to elections and political power, but overtly against electoral activity and anti-political. These topics continue to be live with workers in unions like the IWW. What is the role of politics, political organizations, and existing political institutions? How does workplace organizing and networks of workplace militants like the IWW relate to changing political climates of action? Below is Cannon’s critiques. Read More
Against the IWW Series Part I: The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement
In this series, we want to present some of the arguments against the IWW (present and historical). The debates around the strategy of the IWW have a way of repeating themselves both in practice and in the labor movement. How should dissident unions relate to existing unions? What role do ideas play in labor organizations? What is the best use of our energy at work? The first offering is from William Z. Foster. Foster was an IWW early in his political career before turning to one of it’s harshest critics. His trajectory took him from anarchosyndicalism to hardline Stalinism, and was one of the few Americans to be buried in the Kremlin (ironically next to Big Bill Haywood of the IWW). Foster’s arguments against the IWW are used by many unionists today against the creation of new competing organizations. Despite his Stalinism, his ideas around “dual unionism” (creating secondary left unions to compete with existing unions) have currency in a wider pool, even occasionally with some anarchists. Included is an excerpt from a larger work. The chapters we’ve chosen deal most closely with the IWW and dual unionism, but reading the complete text will give a better sense of Foster’s Trade Union Education League and their perspective. Read More
On being shit-canned
Workers often say that the fear of firings is one of the main reasons it’s so hard to get people to fight back. The power that bosses hold over workers through firings can put them on the curb for standing up. This fear is often unspoken, but present everyday in our workplaces. This piece we share explores how truly arbitrary that power is and its effects. When bosses can hurt us and sometimes ruin lives without any reason at all, it also reminds us why we need to organize. Read More
A View from the Plains: on organizing in smaller areas of the Midwest
A couple of us in Recomposition are from the Midwestern United States. Unfortunately besides some of the more major metro areas such as Chicago, Minneapolis or Detroit, you don’t hear about the efforts of radicals in the numerous small and medium sized towns and cities in the region. That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything happening there. R. Spourgitis of Wild Rose Collective wrote the following article about the differences and challenges of organizing in smaller areas, focusing on his experience in Iowa City, a college town with a population of 70,000 or so in Eastern Iowa. Read More
What kind of leadership? A view from the contemporary CNT of Spain
Today we are reposting an article from Beltran Roca Martinez about the Spanish anarchosyndicalist union the CNT. In the article he explores recent experiences in the CNT and tries to extract some of the difficulties, successes, and potential advances that the CNT have and can make. Drawing from organizing in Seville at the turn of the Millennium, the author shows a rare look at Spanish anarchosyndicalist organizing before the crisis. Zeroing in on debates in the CNT, he picks out something that resonates beyond Spain; the way conflicts unfold within workplace organizing and how our approach can shape that. Without committing to his interpretation of the conflicts, the idea that different approaches to organizing and organizations produces different leadership and conflicts is extremely useful. The author sees this as dividing into an activist political tendency (anarchist) and an organizing tendency (syndicalist), each with different excesses. The political tendency he sees grouping people around personalities, charisma, and ideology which can devolve into sectarianism, cliques, and fundamentalism. On the otherside the action tendency tends to create bureaucratic leadership, process orientation, and a technical approach which can lead to reformism. What is the definition of success in organizing workers when we want more than a bump in pay? How should our values and ideas relate to our direct action and grievances? In what sense are we held back by the situation or by our own ideas and methods? These conflicts and their responses can be seen to reflect the challenges of building a revolutionary workplace alternative today. Read More
Going Green at the Cost of Workers’ Safety
by Emmett J. Nolan The issue I’m writing about may seem rather trivial to some readers. To be honest, I too was shocked that my co-workers and I had to fight so hard to be heard on such a small and seemingly obvious issue. The issue which management picked to draw a line in the sand over was providing a trash can in the dining area of the café I work at. Yes, a trash can. Something most customers and workers take for granted. Rightfully so, because who could imagine a counter service café with a bus your own table practice operating without a trash can? In an effort to make the company more green, a composting service was hired and new compostable packaging materials were chosen. Now, compostable items were separated from recycling and garbage. A part of this change included removing all four of the trash cans within the dining and patio area of the café. The cans weren’t replaced with a sorting station like many other businesses had done. Instead the company replaced them with a sign that read: Read More
No Need to Wait till Tomorrow, When Safety Concerns Can Be Fixed Today
by Emmett J. Nolan When we encounter challenges and worsening conditions at work, if we don’t respond immediately to those negative changes we risk having those degraded conditions becoming standard procedure. Whether it’s a reduction of staffing, an increased speed of work or anything else that makes our day-to-day lives on the job more complicated or less valuable, we must act quickly or run the risk of these lower standards becoming firmly established into precedent. The longer we wait to respond to these issues, the more challenging it becomes for us and our co-workers to change them. One such example my co-workers and I encountered involved a safety concern. If we did not respond to it immediately, the result would have been a permanent risk to our well-being. One day I arrived to work and nothing seemed to be different; a day that was starting off just like the rest. Fifteen minutes into my shift, I needed to slice a loaf of bread for a customer. Our slicer is automatic, just push a button and a weight pushes the bread against a dozen or so jostling blades, neatly slicing a full-size loaf of bread. For years we’ve used this machine with no issue. I trained and seen countless co-workers trained on this machine. Each time, the optical sensor –if triggered– will stop the blades. This feature is pointed out and demonstrated often by one passing their hand by the sensor. The safety feature came in handy in the past when errand objects fell into the slicer and we needed to fetch them out by hand. Read More
We’re Not Horses, We Can’t Rest on Our Feet
by Emmett J. Nolan On my first day of work, my manager explained to me the three options regarding breaks: clock out for 30 minutes, take two 10-minute breaks on the clock, or take a 20-minute break on the clock. Additionally, an hour and a half “black-out” period existed for breaks during the busy middle of the day. The actual state law is a 30-minute meal break and two 10-minute rest breaks for a work period over six hours. Not only was this buffet option of breaks illegal, but it was also a strain on the body during a 7 to 9 hour shift. This situation continued on for two years and I discovered that this system was not just limited to my department or workplace, but existed within other departments and at other locations in the company. Read More
Pushing Back on Discipline
by Emmett J. Nolan Chances are we all will inevitably have a run-in with the disciplinary procedure at work. In these moments, it’s natural to feel targeted personally. Often times the warnings are sprung on you by surprise, there may be multiple managers in the meeting with you, and the process doesn’t resemble how you thought the progressive disciplinary procedure worked. Mistakes are inevitable; we’re not robots. Since our livelihood is at risk in these moments, when we have to encounter discipline it’s important that it’s carried out in a manner that is transparent and equitable. Additionally, we should all have the ability to state our defense to the accusations that are brought forward in a disciplinary action. Too often management plays the role of judge, jury, prosecution, and jailor without our side of the story ever considered. In fact, while my company’s manager’s handbook states that during any disciplinary meeting with a worker, a manager is required to have a supervisor or another manager present; alternatively when workers request a witness or an advocate within our disciplinary meetings, our requests are routinely denied. Read More
Rethinking class: from recomposition to counterpower
by Paul Bowman We’re reposting this article from the Workers Solidarity Movement of Ireland: http://www.wsm.ie/c/class-recomposition-counterpower. In Paul Bowman’s article ‘Rethinking Class: From Recomposition to Counter-Power’, he poses the question “Is class still a useful idea?” or “should we instead just dispense with it and go with the raw econometrics of inequality?” He draws a line between revolutionary class analysis and universalist utopianism and goes on to explore the history of different ideas of class and the elusive revolutionary subject. After exploring the intersecting lines of class and identity, he poses the challenge that we as libertarians face as we strive to create “cultural and organisational forms of class power [that] do not unconsciously recreate the… hierarchies of identity and exclusion” that are the hallmark of the present society. If we were to strip the anarchist programme of the early 21st century down to its irreducible components, they would have to include at least these four – direct democracy, direct action, recomposition and full communism. Most readers will have at least have heard of the first two and the last one – even if the latter passes nowadays, albeit undeservedly, more as a humorous internet meme, than a viable goal. However this article is about the less familiar third term, recomposition, and particularly around the category that gives it life – class. Against universalism, against utopianism The term class divides people into two camps. One which seems to uphold its validity with an almost cult-like intensity, and a much larger camp that is at best undecided, but mostly turned off entirely by it – and especially so by the apparently religious fervour of the small minority in the first camp. Read More
The Chicago Teachers’ Strike and Beyond: deepening struggles in the schools
Here we’re re-posting an article originally published on the Black Orchid Collective’s website, blackorchidcollective.wordpress.com/2012/09/14/the-chicago-teachers-strike-and-beyond-deepening-struggles-in-the-schools “This aint about money! That’s far from the truth, they want better work conditions to teach the youth. Politicians, I don’t trust em, its all in the name the president, the mayor all want political gain. Theyd rather put the kids in jail, shackle em wit chains, then provide an education that challenges the brain.”- Rebel Diaz, “Chicago Teacher” music video Intro: I am a teacher in Seattle, and I’ve been following the Chicago teachers’ strike closely. I’m inspired to see any group of workers and oppressed people fighting back. If I were in Chicago, I’d be on the picket lines. At the same time, I’d like to pose some challenges about how struggles around the school system can go further, to more directly confront the rampant race and gender oppression reproduced daily in our schools. The quote above by Rebel Diaz speaks to what’s really going on. I think the teachers’ strike begins to address some of the problems in public education, but I don’t think we can defeat this oppression simply by supporting or relying on the teacher’s union. Read More
Building Power and Advancing: For Reforms, Not Reformism
Here we’re sharing an article from Miami Autonomy and Solidarity, http://miamiautonomyandsolidarity.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/building-power-and-advancing-for-reforms-not-reformism/. Building Power and Advancing: For Reforms, Not Reformism By Thomas (Miami Autonomy & Solidarity) “We shall carry out all possible reforms in the spirit in which an army advances ever forwards by snatching the enemy-occupied territory in its path.” – Errico Malatesta[i] As anarchist communists, we are against reformism. However, we are for reforms. We believe that fundamentally the entire system of capitalism, the state and all systems of hierarchy, domination, oppression and exploitation of humans over humans must be abolished and replaced with a direct democracy, egalitarian social relations and a classless economy that bases contribution according to ability and distribution according to need. However, such a social revolution can only occur through the power of the popular classes themselves from the bottom-up. In advancing towards such a social revolution and a free and equal society, we must build our power in preparation for this fundamental transformation of the world, building on struggles along the way. Ultimately our demands will be too threatening to the elite classes for them to bear; and their resistance to our drive for freedom will be too much for us to tolerate any longer. Against Reformism We are against reformism. Reformism is the belief that the system as it currently exists can remain, but just needs to be slightly improved. For reformists, reform is the end goal. They are not against the system; they are against what they see as the “excesses” of the system. We don’t see the harm that the system does asexcesses of the system, but expressions of the fundamental nature of the system. We see the reformists trying to hold down the lid of a boiling pot of water, or letting steam go from that boiling pot now and then; but they do not address the fundamental problem. Read More
Beyond the Martyr Complex: Confessions of a “Pink Collar” Militant
By: Dave Stannton This article is an account of my experiences as a “pink collar” militant working at an immigrant-serving non-profit organization (NPO)[1] organized by a large public-sector union in Northern Alberta. We successfully resisted attacks on wages, pensions, and benefits in our most recent round of collective bargaining in large part because we employed the A-E-I-O-U (Agitate-Educate-Inoculate-Organize-Unionize) model of organizing pioneered by the IWW. Read More
Credit, Wages and Occupy: What System Are We Fighting?
By John O’Reilly “Those who make revolution halfway only dig their own graves” – Jacobin leader in the French Revolution, eventually put to death by Robespierre After the political darkness of the Bush years and the unmet promises of the first Obama administration, Occupy Wall Street and its local spinoffs felt, for those of us who were a part of it, like a breath of fresh air. Here were people, everywhere, talking about a better world beyond Hope and Change rhetoric, beyond bumper sticker platitudes. And beyond talking, they acted! Marches around the business districts of all major U.S. cities, fights over access to public space, intense discussions over democracy, practice, politics, and vision. The cobwebs were dusted out and a thousand flowers did indeed bloom. Hardened, experienced activists and organizers found themselves facing an army of fresh idealistic faces, intent on remaking the country and the world and fundamentally shaking up the political Left in most places where Occupy took root. It was, in short, a beautiful and powerful moment. Read More
Requiem for a Campaign
by Grace Parker Oftentimes as workplace organizers, we have a difficult time admitting our mistakes. We are driven and strong-willed, and though these attributes often aid us in the struggle, they can also hold us back from self-reflection and acknowledgment of our flaws. As Wobblies, how do we cope with the realization that our entire campaign was perhaps a mistake from the start? For one, we view the situation as a learning opportunity. There is no such thing as a failed campaign, for although we may pull ourselves out of a workplace without making clear, concrete gains on the shop floor, we also take away many valuable lessons regarding ourselves, our branches, and the IWW as a whole. These lessons must be passed on to fellow organizers in the union in order to facilitate a culture of skill sharing, and hopefully, if done correctly, the union will not make the same mistakes twice. Secondly, ending a campaign is not just a union issue; it is a matter of great personal importance for the organizers involved. We put our blood, sweat and tears into an organizing drive, and if we fail to sort out our feelings as we disengage from a campaign, we are setting ourselves up for failure in our proceeding endeavors. In order to succeed in the struggle long-term, it is just as important for us to face our personal issues as it is to reflect on our organizing. In this piece, I will attempt to address both of these aspects in relation to the recently halted grocery store campaign in the Twin Cities branch. Read More
Towards A Wobbly Methodology: Establishing Yourself as an Organizer in a New Workplace
By X370559 This essay is the second in a series articulating a methodological framework for developing Wobbly organizers and identifying key features of workplace committee building at the micro level. Much of the content of the Industrial Worker, as well as the Organizer Training 101, discuss the nuts and bolts of workplace struggle including how to conduct a successful 1-on-1 and form a workplace committee. What is often left unspoken is the path by which Wobblies go from the unemployment line to worker-organizers fully engaged in the social fabric of their job site. As Wobblies, like the rest of the working-class, we must sell our labor-power in order to survive. Depending on the period and place, and the nature of the work and culture of the firm, obtaining certain jobs will require more research, training, skills, and overall effort. Taking the time to reflect on these challenges is important, and as Wobblies we should think strategically when considering where to seek employment. In the meantime, we can identify some basic components that will place us in a better position to establish ourselves as organizers in a new workplace. Read More
“We will fuck your shit up if we don’t get what we want.”
In this post a friend of ours writes about a disruptive picket at a university in Spain and reflects on some of the larger issues involved. Read More
Pissing Blood
Pissing Blood: Work Sucks by Abbey Volcano This is a story about anger, “non-profits,” and pissing blood. I was in my fifth year working at an independent health food store run by religious fanatics in a suburb outside of the city and I needed more money. I started off part-time at a cultural center, working the events. I would mainly be there at night, during performances and exhibits—taking people’s tickets, helping the artists set up, serving hors d’oeuvres, cleaning the toilets, etc. I was paid $12/hr to do this work and it was the most I had ever made in my life and it was the only job that wasn’t in the service industry, so I was pretty excited. Pretty soon after I started they asked me if I could take over the secretarial position. This was a full-time desk job. I really needed the money, especially because the health food store was closing down since a Whole Foods had moved into town. I took the job since I couldn’t have really done much better as far as pay went. Read More
A moving story
A friend sent us this story about organizing at a small hip business in New York earlier this year. Earlier we ran another story about organizing in places with a leftist or counterculture veneer. If you’ve got similar experiences, please post them as a comment here, or send us an email. As this piece notes, the organizing at this company in New York continues. We hope to hear more about it and wish them good luck. Read More
Another Review of Fighting for Ourselves
Review of Fighting for Ourselves By Nate Hawthorne In October you should get a copy of a new pamphlet called Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle by the UK revolutionary organization Solidarity Federation or SolFed for short. SolFed gave us permission to post some excerpts of the pamphlet and reviews. All radicals should read it, particularly IWW members and people in anarchist political organizations. Read More
Building Relationships and Community in an IWW Workplace Committee
A fellow IWW members sent us this article about the importance of relationship building in our organizing, and the importance of not limiting our relationships to being narrowly about work. Read More
Who’s In Charge Here?
In this post, John O’Reilly discusses the ways that organizing campaigns make themselves and others see them as legitimate. Who’s In Charge Here? Seizing the Means of Legitimacy Production in IWW Campaigns by John O’Reilly I’m terrible with high pressure situations. My hands were shaking and my stomach was twisted up, ready to get punched. Standing around in an abandoned Hooter’s restaurant in a mall in downtown Minneapolis, several dozen sandwich shop workers dressed in their black work t-shirts, IWW members crossing their fingers, and management types wearing ball caps and pursed lips crowded together expectantly as representatives from the National Labor Relations Board counted out the votes from the election that had just been conducted. I was in the back of the room and could just see pieces of paper being passed from one suit to another, considered, and a note taken. Read More
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. Read More
Fighting for ourselves – Preview
In this post we are excited to present some excerpts from Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle, by the Solidarity Federation (‘SolFed’). The pamphlet will be officially released in full in October and SolFed will distribute paper copies at the London Anarchist Bookfair on October 27th. SolFed is a revolutionary union initiative based in the UK. They’re affiliated with the International Workers Association, an anarcho-syndicalist federation of unions and organizations of which the CNT in Spain and the FAU in Germany are members. Some of us in Recomposition know members of SolFed through posting on libcom.org or visits to the UK and we take what they have to say seriously. This feeling is also mutual for SolFed when it comes to the IWW, as they have adopted the Organizer Training we use here in North America and tailored it to their needs. In February of 2009, Brighton SolFed wrote a pamphlet called Strategy & Struggle: anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century. It provoked quite a bit of discussion within SolFed, as well as the wider English speaking anarchist/communist movement. Taking internal criticisms on, the pamphlet was withdrawn and work began on an improved and more extensive piece. Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle is that document. Fairly extensive for a pamphlet, Fighting for ourselves includes a broad history of the workers movement, from the first proto-union groups started to the German councilists, to the CNT and FORA, to the historical IWW and ‘workers parties’. It identifies these groups and currents in relation to what they’ve learned from and how this is incorporated into their world view and action. We think the new pamphlet is very good. We’re eventually going to write up and post a review of the entire pamphlet, but before we do that, we’ve gotten permission to post some excerpts from it that we think readers of our blog will find interesting. We post these here because we think these excerpts are interesting in themselves, and even more so because we want to encourage people to read the whole pamphlet once it comes out. The first excerpt is about the historical IWW. To be clear, we don’t think this section is worth reproducing merely because we’re members and love the ‘old timey’ stuff, but because it mentions things of some significance today. Also the way the old IWW is portrayed has ramifications on what happens in the IWW of 2012, similarly probably to how the way the CNT of the 1930s is portrayed has effects on the CNT of today. One of these things is, instead of parroting the line that the union was ‘apolitical’, it sees that the ‘direct actionist’ members seeing politics expressed better through economic or direct action. Another aspect that’s briefly acknowledged is the One Big Union concept and that there has been nuance and variations on how this was interpreted and viewed. Finally, unlike many other historical accounts, it confirms, yes, the IWW still exists, and it is still organizing. Along with the One Big Union concept (which referenced recent articles in the Industrial Worker) and the direct unionism debate, it’s a reminder that what the IWW does and says has importance, and that people many thousands of miles away pay attention. We in the IWW, should, in turn, pay attention to them. One reason we should pay attention to SolFed is that their vision of a union is directly relevant to current discussions that IWW members are having about organizing, as the second excerpt demonstrates. Many people in the IWW have advocated against the IWW signing contracts with no strike clauses and have tried to develop noncontractual approaches to organization. In the second excerpt, SolFed lay out two categories for understanding unions, “the associational function” of unions and “the representative function” of unions. Elsewhere in the pamphlet, they describe most unions today as demonstrating the “domination of the representative function over the associational one.” We think contractual organizing creates or encourages this domination of representation over association, which is part of why we’re against contractualism in the IWW. Rejecting a representative approach to organizing, SolFed call for building unions that embody “the associational function of a union, stripped of any representative functions.” This is what we think IWW unionism should aspire to be. Read More
At War With Calendula
Small businesses are widely believed to be better places to work or better for the planet or both. They’re not. Small businesses are just smaller, less successful versions of large businesses, and they’re often as bad or worse to work for, as this story illustrates. Read More
Winning the War of Position
This article makes a number of arguments about the direction the IWW should take in its organizing, including taking a longer-term perspective than the next few years. Read More
Dear Comrades: A Call for Solidarity with the Student Struggles in Quebec
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. Read More
Developing Workers Autonomy: An Anarchist Look At Flying Squads
This post reprints an article that first appeared in issue 8 of The Northeastern Anarchist, which featured several articles on the theme “Anarchists in the Workplace. The Northeastern Anarchist is a publication of Common Struggle, formerly known as the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC). This article describes organizations of mutual support and struggle built by Canadian workers. Read More
Direct Action Begins at Home
Our friend Amédée Garneau sends along this story about tenant organizing in New York. Read More
C.L.C. sells out students!
C.L.C. sells out students! Recent correspondence from Ken Georgetti (President of the Canada Labour Congress) and Michel Arsenault of the FTQ (Provincial Labour Central of Quebec) and various officers in the broader Anglophone Labour Movement sends a clear message: labour jurisdiction trumps labour solidarity. Arsenault, and through his endorsement, Georgetti believe that this is the time to “facilitate a settlement instead of fueling fires”. Read More
What we’re changing
In this post M. Jones talk abouts how organizing on the job changes the job. What We’re Changing By M. Jones In our organizing we are trying to establish power on the job. This power can be seen and felt in different ways depending on the job. But what we want from our organizing is control over our day to day lives on the job, this control will come from the power we can establish through collective action. Read More
An owie to one is an owie to all: A six-step plan for helping your parent-friends remain activists
An owie to one is an owie to all: A six-step plan for helping your parent-friends remain activists by Lily Schapira Eight days after my daughter was born, I sent this message to the organizing committee members of the Seattle Solidarity Network: “I wanted to let you all know that I need to take a few week hiatus from coming to SeaSol meetings…. Baby is doing well, we just need to clear the decks while I recover and while we figure out this whole nursing thing. Thanks for understanding, and we’ll see you in a few weeks! (I’d estimate three.)” Read More
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. Direct Action Makes History: A Response to Andrew Kliman’s “The Make-Believe World of David Graeber” by Marianne Garneau The following is not a commentary on, much less a defense of, David Graeber – with whom I disagree. It is a critique of key facets of the ideology of Andrew Kliman. In a recent article, Andrew Kliman attempted to critique “the ideology” of David Graeber, in particular its emphasis on direct action, without condemning the Occupy Wall Street movement in which Graeber’s ideas and strategy have found so much resonance. All that Kliman accomplished, however, was revealing his profound misunderstanding of the significance of both OWS and of direct action – a misunderstanding that can be traced to his deeply apolitical take on Marxism. Read More
Debate about industrial strategy
This post reprints a short exchange about organizing strategies that originally ran in the pages of the Industrial Worker newspaper. Forget About Industrial Power The old wobbly song “There Is Power In A Union” goes “There is power there is power in a band of working folks, When they stand hand in hand.” This is the basic idea of a union, strength in numbers. We’re lacking in the numbers department in the IWW today. So our power is small, at least in one important sense. We need to recognize this if we’re going to grow quickly and efficiently, without cutting any corners in terms of member education and development. Read More
Informal Workgroups
A brief look at informal work groups, which the author sees “as the seeds, and the tiny cells within a larger muscle of organization.” Informal Workgroups By M. Jones In every workplace throughout all of history, workers have come together and worked together for their common interests. This takes many forms. Sometimes its at the level of two workers next to each other in cubicles who support each other and make work less miserable by being able to laugh with one another; other times it forms into a group that encompasses enough people that they can informally control the speed of production and the work conditions that surround them; and sometimes it grows into a union a group of workers within a shop, ideally across and industry who can directly exercise power in relation to the boss. In whichever form it takes it is significant. In each form it challenges the isolation that exists in other aspects of our lives as workers. In these relationships we begin to see the possibilities of what it means to take collective action and what it means to control the means of production. We are empowered by these relationships, and where we can build on them we can have success and begin to make changes. Read More
Who Dismisses the Teacher
Our series on sleep and dreams continues with a post about stress and lack of sleep in the education industry. Who Dismisses the Teacher: On The Work that Follows You Home and Steals your Sleep by Barbanegra I stare up at the computer’s clock on the right hand side of the screen, the numbers blaring at me, “10:45 pm.” I’ve finished the PowerPoint presentation for one class, but have nothing prepared for my other class. Luckily for me, tomorrow I have a planning period between 2nd period and 6th period (where I teach we have 90 min block classes, 4 blocks a day), so I can use that time to put something together for the class I wasn’t able to plan for the night before. The “even days” afford me such a luxury, the “odd days” don’t. On the “odd days”, my reaction to this nightly routine is much more irate. Immediately the panic and anxiety sets in. I feel a pain in the side of my stomach, sometimes accompanied by nausea. My girlfriend asks me from the couch if I’m calling it a night, to which I respond with an annoyed, “No!” followed by grumbles about how I’m probably only going to get 3 or 4 hours of sleep that night. Read More
Bathrooms
Our series on sleep continues with a piece by Gayge discussing divisions and oppression within the working class. Bathrooms by Gayge Operaista I wake up with a start, and do my usual “where the hell am I?” look around. When you’ve been couch and guest room surfing for months, because you moved back across the country and still haven’t found steady work, it’s a reasonable “why am I awake?” question, especially when there’s no urgency to get up out of bed. Read More
Alarm Clock
Our series on work, sleep, and dreams continues with a story by our friend Invisible Man, about race, stress, and family. Alarm Clock by Invisible Man The belt sander was screeching. The high whine tore through his eardrums. It began to drown out the clatter of the polishing drum and the pulsating whirr of the milling machines. Time to replace the sandpaper. Read More
Even My Dreams These Days Have Work-Related Scenes
More from 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. Even My Dreams These Days Have Work-Related Scenes by Lou Rinaldi I I’m stuck there in a chair in my kitchen. It’s like I can’t move, I guess I really can’t explain it, but I’m looking up at the clock (wait, I don’t have a clock!) and the time changes nearly every minute to something completely different. I’m starting to feel nauseous and disoriented. And then – there it is! The right minute. I’m allowed to go now. I can get up and I leave my apartment and hop onto the bus. It’s strange to me because I don’t remember the bus going right to my apartment before. Oh well, I don’t really have think of how absurd this is because of the overwhelming feeling of dread and nervousness I have looming over me. You see, I’m three hours late for work! Read More
Reflections on Dream Baking and Sleep Deprivation
The series on work, sleep, and dreams continues with this account of working without much sleep and the dreams associated with this. Reflections on Dream Baking and Sleep Deprivation by besherelle et la lutte It is raining out side, but not too hard that I can’t ride my bike. I turn away from the front door and walk towards my room to find my rain gear. Of course this extra 5 minutes of getting all these extra layers on, means I will be 5 minutes late for work. I am tired, I have a sleep headache and the idea of being late for work, makes it worse. This always happens when the middle of the week comes around. Getting more than 4 or 5 hours a night’s sleep isn’t feasible working these early hours. There is a tension that exists when you work early, a fear of sleeping in, or not opening the store on time. It turns into a resentment, an anger that sleeps inside of you. These feelings are present and accessible at all times and they are created out of fear and powerlessness. You are vulnerable and disposable and any day now, this reality will be confirmed. It’s dark outside and I fumble around trying to find the buttons on my bike lights, both are blinking and I carry my bike down the stairs to the street. Read More
Off the Clock
Jen Rogue writes about how our work life infiltrates itself into our dreams and technically amounts to unpaid labor. Off the Clock by Jen Rogue “…. Peaches …. 4401 …. Lemons …. 4033 …. Carrots …. 4560 ….” A blaring alarm clock interupts my restless slumber. Damn it! Time to go to work. And do what I’ve been doing in my sleep for the last few hours, unpaid. In the shower, I wonder about how much space in my brain are taken up by produce codes. Are bananas (4011) edging out my memory of the first time I rode a bicycle? I can’t even remember the last time I ate a clementine but 4450 might as well be tattooed on the insides of my eyelids. I chug coffee and try not to think about how awful it is to wake up feeling like you already put in your eight hours only to realize they haven’t even begun. Read More
And I am still sleepy
As part of our series on sleep, work and dreams, Al Tucker dreams about temporary warehouse work. And I am still sleepy. By Al Tucker I am pulling into the old parking lot. It looks like it should look. Large tumble weeds growing up from decade old cracks in the asphalt. The painted lines faded away to almost nothing in afternoon sun. I should be off by 2:30 AM, unless there is forced overtime and I have to stay until 6:30 AM. Either way I am still sleepy right now. Why did I answer the phone? Why did I agree to come in? Why did they even call me? Read More
Coping with Clopening: Retail Worker’s Most Dreaded Shift
Our friend Liberté Locke writes about what it’s like to work a ‘clopen’ in retail, to close the store late at night and get up early the next morning to open the store. Read More
You say you want to build a solidarity network?
This is a how-to guide to building a successful solidarity network along the lines of the Seattle Solidarity Network, written by two SeaSol organizers. Interested readers should also check out “Why you should start a solidarity network.“ Read More
Interviews with organizers: Canada’s postal struggles & the New School occupation
Beginning with the crisis of 2008, a series of community, labor, and education struggles have unfolded across the world, in the US, and Canada. As experienced organizers face new challenges, and new people are brought into the movement, the challenges and problems posed by building powerful radical movements confronts us. Today we present two interviews with organizers that helped build struggles against problems they faced in the crisis, and reflect on those experiences and lessons for radicals in these movements. First, we share an interview with Phinneas a Canadian postal worker. Last year, a series of direct actions exploded across Canada in response to attempts to rationalize and mechanize production, and around the labor contract in negotiation. Phinneas’ article Waves of Struggle, is his account of the actions and problems they faced. Next, we share an interview with Marianne a student organizer active in Occupy and the New School occupation that happened during the most active… Read More
Response to Direct Unionism
This post is by our friend and fellow IWW member John O’Reilly. John writes in reply to the Direct Unionism discussion paper which has been the subject of some discussion in IWW circles. For people who haven’t already read the discussion paper, John’s reply is a good starting point for entering the conversation. Read More
Longview, Occupy, and Beyond: Rank and File and the 89% Unite!
Comrades in the Seattle-based Black Orchid Collective sent us this piece which we’re reposting here. Black Orchid describe the piece this way: This piece is written by the Black Orchid Collective in Seattle, with contributions from members of Advance the Struggle in the Bay area, members of Hella 503 in Portland, as well as friends in various cities. We have all been deeply involved in Decolonize/ Occupy Seattle, Occupy Portland, Occupy Oakland, and Occupy Wall St., including the Dec. 12th West Coast Port Shutdown. We have worked to build solidarity between the Occupy movement and the rank and file workers of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). This piece presents our critical reflections on these struggles so far. We welcome criticism and discussion. Read More
Some basics of capitalism
We in Recomposition are part of a larger anti-capitalist milieu. What people mean by “capitalism” isn’t always clear. This post is made up of excerpts from Value, Price and Profit, a pamphlet by Karl Marx. These excerpts help in thinking about how capitalism operates in general. Read More
Direct Unionism in Practice: Undermining Service Industry Barriers to Worker Solidarity
This essay by fellow workers in Vancouver is part of an ongoing conversation on ‘direct unionism’ within the IWW. There have been several pieces written as part of this conversation but people can read this essay without reading the other pieces it is in dialog with. The authors describe the essay this way: “Our intentions for posting this response to the conversations on Direct Unionism vary greatly in terms of purpose. In crafting this reflection and response, we have also considered where we could put it to the most relevant use, and so have prepared it for many different readers. This response is primarily written with the intention of facilitating an introduction to Direct Unionism for service workers who are very new to labour. Many sections of our essay may seem redundant to many labour activists and we apologize, but hope to encourage other locally contextualized struggles through Direct Unionism. We hope to participate in the DU discussion, and share with those interested how we have been affected by these conversations and also how we are practicing and implementing these ideas. We would like to thank all participants in the Direct Unionism conversation and, also, offer our analysis based on our work in Vancouver, BC.” Read More
Annotated IWW Preamble
All of us in the Recomposition editorial group are IWW members. The IWW’s constitution begins with a preamble, which reads The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. 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.” It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. We sometimes struggle to express the concepts in the IWW Preamble in our own words. The article below, by IWW member Tim Acott, can help people to do so. Read More
Credit crunched – working in financial services during the 2008-2009 crash
This article comes from a comrade who is a member of the Solidarity Federation in the UK. He describes the article as “An account of working for a credit company during the financial crisis, as well as workers’ attempts to resist speed-ups and workload increases.” Read More
Stories from the CUPW Lock Out: or how to create a story that can reshape who we are and how we act
This story by our friend Bruce is reprinted from Linchpin, the publication of our comrades at Common Cause, about the CUPW lock out. Read More
Reasonable Accommodation
Our friend and comrade Invisible Man has contributed stories before about life on the job. In this piece he provides an analysis of race and policy and movements in Quebec. In a time of crisis and with a potential for rising right-wing movements, his points are relevant to people around the world. Read More
Diary of an anarchist hospitality worker
This story about life on the job comes from a comrade in New Zealand, a member of the Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement. Read More
On Contracts and Agreements
In this post we print an article by Phinneas Gage and an article first printed in 1920 in a newspaper called The Forge. Both articles deal with collective bargaining agreements. Read More
The Shoe Nazi
This is a story about race, class, and poverty, from a friend who writes a blog anonymously as Invisible Man. We’ve run his writing before and are excited to do so again. Read More
General Strikes, by William Trautmann
In this post we reprint an article from William Trautmann, one of the founders of the Industrial Workers of the World. Trautmann’s discussion of general strikes is relevant to the current conversations happening about occupations and calls for general strikes. For Trautmann, a successful general strike will be a lockout of the capitalist class, which is to say, occupations of workplaces which prevent capitalist economic activity from happening. Read More
The General Strike: The Strike of the Future, by Lucy Parsons
This is a speech given by the famous anarchist Lucy Parsons. This excerpt in particular is particularly relevant to recent discussions of a general strike: “Nature has (…) placed in this earth all the material of wealth that is necessary to make men and women happy. (…) We simply lack the intelligence to take possession of that which we have produced. (…) My conception of the future method of taking possession of this is that of the general strike: that is my conception of it. The trouble with all the strikes in the past has been this: the workingmen like the teamsters in our cities, these hard-working teamsters, strike and go out and starve. Their children starve. Their wives get discouraged. (…) That is the way with the strikes in the past. My conception of the strike of the future is not to strike and go out and starve, but to strike and remain in and take possession of the necessary property of production.” For Parsons, a general strike and an occupation are synonyms. The rest of the speech is below. Other elements resonate greatly with the present moment. Parsons discusses her experiences with the police and state murder of her husband, sadly relevant to recent police violence. Parsons talks about how U.S. residents drew inspiration from struggles around the world, another parallel to the present where protests around the world look to each other for ideas and motivation. Parsons also discusses gender divisions within movements of her day, issues which we still need to address today. Read More
We Are the 99% – A Flyer
Below is a flyer one of us wrote and a friend laid out. Read More
Direct Unionism: A Discussion Paper
This is a discussion paper advocating a vision of workplace organizing that the paper calls “direct unionism.” Several of us in the Recomposition editorial group had a hand in this document, along with some friends of ours who, like us, are members of the Industrial Workers of the World. The paper was never fully finished. The early parts are finished but as the paper goes on it gets rougher and toward the end is more like notes. We’re pleased that there has been some discussion of this paper recently in the Industrial Worker newspaper. Read More
Caring: A Labor of Stolen Time
Our friend Jennifer Ng wrote this about her job and her organizing at a nursing home. It deals with a lot of issues about the commodification of life and of death under capitalism as well as issues of race on the job, and the specifics of caring work. Read More
Think It Over
All of us in the Recomposition editorial group are members of the Industrial Workers of the World. This is a good introduction to the IWW, written by Tim Acott, a long-time IWW member from Portland. Think It Over: An introduction to the Industrial Workers of the World by Tim Acott Solidarity Working people have only one real option in today’s economy. We have to resist, with all our might, the big business program of further and deeper poverty for working people. For the first time in modern history profits are going up while wages and benefits are going down. In the past the two have always been tied, however unequally. Now the game has changed. Worse impoverishment and more of it is the wave of the future if we don’t stand against the tide. The working conditions we see today in Asia and Central America are a good indication of the future of our own working lives in the “Western Democracies.” We have only one hope of fending off this tidal wave of misery. That hope, that tool, is solidarity. Every working stiff must stand up for every other working stiff, no matter where you live or where you come from, no matter if you are male or female, young or old, we must stand together. Every loss to any worker is a loss to us all, and every gain by any part of the working class is a victory for us all. Read More
Swept Under The Rug and Left for Dead
Our friend Lou send us this article. All of us in the Recomp editorial group are strongly feminist, though you wouldn’t always know that because we don’t talk much about it here. One of the things we sometimes struggle to articulate is that our focus on the waged workplace is part of our feminism. A lot of workplace struggles are feminist struggles. Lou’s account of an incident in the food service industry shows this. Swept Under The Rug and Left for Dead; How, According to the Boss, Swearing is Worse than Harassment by Lou Rinaldi At the beginning of the summer some trouble came to my little restaurant. Our store has a history of going through assistant managers like water, they’re in and they’re out. Read More
The Work and the Job
This essay by a comrade in the Wild Rose Collective speaks to something we talk about a lot here at Recomposition – the ways our jobs limit our lives. As the piece says, different people’s lives are limited in different ways and some people really do have it worse than others. Work still sucks, though, even if some people have it worse. The Work and the Job “I don’t think I’m cut out to be an employee.” It was a bitter joke. My friend had just finished venting about one of her two jobs. She was typing to me just after getting bossed around on the smallest details of her job at a small nonprofit. After that, she had an evening as a temp to look forward to, grading middle-school standardized tests. She had said that working so much was starting to mess with her head. She hadn’t played music in too long. Too much of her life went to satisfying somebody else. Read More
Proletarian management: Informal workplace organization
We recently posted Stan Weir’s classic article on informal work groups. This recent piece by the Swedish group Kämpa tillsammans (Struggle Together) talks about similar workplace dynamics. The article talks about how management sometimes tries to make use of informal organization in the workplace, and how radicals can do so as well. Proletarian management: Informal workplace organization by Kämpa Tillsammans The emancipation of the working class can not only be conquered by the working class themselves but the emancipating practices of the working class are its own making too. So the question about workers autonomy isn’t primarily a political question but a question about organization and this article deals with concrete and actual workers autonomy and how it exist in Sweden today in the 21st century. Read More
The Informal Work Group, by Stan Weir
Stan Weir is a big influence on some of us in the Recomposition editorial group. This piece talks about some workplace dynamics that we think radicals on the job ought to think about. The article begins with an introduction by Staughton Lynd, which appeared in a book he edited called Rank and File: Personal Histories of Working-Class Organizers. During more than twenty years as an industrial worker, unionist, and organizer among seamen, auto workers, teamsters and construction workers, Stan Weir became impressed by the importance of informal work groups. The informal or primary work group is: “that team which works together daily in face-to-face communication with one another, placed by technology and pushed into socialization by the needs of production. It is literally a family at work torn by hate and love, conflict and common interest. It disciplines its members most commonly by social isolation and ridicule, it has a naturally selected leadership, makes decisions in the immediate work area, and can affect the flow of production.” Read More
C’est pas un pays, c’est un hiver
A friend of ours who blogs anonymously as Invisible Man sent us this three part story about his experiences at work and beyond. It’s powerful stuff about work, class, race, and the struggle to keep on keeping on. C’est pas un pays, c’est un hiver The Suit Shop It was late in the afternoon and the sweaty, noisy, humid factory day was almost finished. It was bitterly cold outside, but you wouldn’t know it from the inside of the suit factory. And you could easily forget that it was winter, because at Men’s Clothiers International where I worked, there were no windows to the outside. But 2003, my first winter in Montreal, was one of the coldest winters on record. Read More
“What do you do for a living?”
In this article our friend Frank walks us through his job in a way that gets at the bigger picture. “What do you do for a living?” by Frank Edgewick At a party, someone asks, “What do you do for a living?” I answer, “Get yelled at by wealthy people.” The answer is rehearsed and so automatic that I usually forget that it makes people laugh in surprise. It is a perfectly accurate response. Read More
Simply Genius action in Ottawa!
With this exciting report we continue to post material about struggles at Canada Post. It was originally posted at The Worker Struggle with the Modern Post. Read More
On Strike at Canada Post
This is the second of two pieces our comrade Mordechai just sent us on the current Canadian Union of Postal Workers strike, a topic dear to our hearts (and for some of us, our livelihoods) here at Recomposition. Read More
My Day: Others too.
This is the first of two pieces our comrade Mordechai just sent us on the current Canadian Union of Postal Workers strike, a topic dear to our hearts (and for some of us, our livelihoods) here at Recomposition. Read More
Sam Dolgoff, “The American Labor Movement: A New Beginning”
This post reprints excerpts from a section of Sam Dolgoff’s The American Labor Movement: A New Beginning. Read More
This is how we become the heroes of our own stories.
On the heels of Rachel Stafford’s story of postal workers fighting mandatory overtime we bring you another piece from Edmonton. This is a speech by our friend and comrade Frank Edgewick. We’re reposting it because it speaks to our shared values, and because we like what it sounds like. Read More
Postal Worker Solidarity Defeats Compulsory Overtime
Recomposition is happy to post this article by Rachel Stafford about a recent victory in an ongoing struggle postal workers are having with management about compulsory overtime. Appropriately enough, our May Day post is about conflict over how long workers have to work. Read More
Ralph Chaplin on the General Strike
This post is an excerpt from a pamphlet written by Ralph Chaplin, the author of the famous anthem “Solidarity Forever” and an organizer with the Industrial Workers of the World. Read More
Why You Should Start a Solidarity Network
We are reposting this article arguing for people to form groups roughly modeled on the activities of SeaSol. SeaSol has inspired several similar attempts, such as efforts in Iowa, Rhode Island, and around the world. Read More
Madison report
Readers of Recomposition will probably know about recent events in Madison, Wisconsin. The post below reposts a recently written account of a trip a friend of ours from the Wild Rose Collective took to Madison. Read More
“Workers have to deal with their own reality and that transforms them” by Martin Glaberman
“Workers have to deal with their own reality and that transforms them” by Martin Glaberman Read More
Excerpt from the IWW’s Founding Convention
This post reproduces a short speech from the convention floor at the founding convention of the IWW. The IWW was formed in the middle of a several decade long cycle of struggle and organization. The revolutionaries involved with the creation and operation of the IWW are often underemphasized in accounts of the history of the left. The proceedings of the IWW founding convention as well as other early IWW publications contain a wealth of material which is not just relevant for understanding the past but for engaging with the problems of our day. Read More
Stan Weir — Unions with Leaders Who Stay on the Job
In his article “Replace Yourself,” J. Pierce recommends “reveal your sources so others can think with you” and “encourage other members to read what you’ve read.” This latest post — Stan Weir’s “Unions with Leaders Who Stay on the Job” — does both at once. Weir’s piece inspired some of the ideas in all of the recent posts on leadership. Read More
Replace Yourself
Replace Yourself by J. Pierce The primary task of an organizer is to build more organizers. We need more and more working class leaders and the way to do this is to constantly replace yourself. Here’s a few easy ways to help you build up your successors: Read More
Questions about Leadership
Questions About Leadership By Nate Hawthorne What is leadership? What makes someone a leader? Why should we care who is a leader? Who should be a leader? What should leaders do? What is good leadership? Read More
A Golden Bridge
A Golden Bridge: a new look at William Z. Foster, the Great Steel Strike, and the “Boring-From-Within” Controversy by Noel Ignatin Read More
The Workplace Papers
The Workplace Papers, from the Sojourner Truth Organization The Workplace Papers are a collection of articles and reflection pieces assembled by members of the Sojourner Truth Organization involved in workplace struggles during the 1970′s and early 1980′s. Although coming out of the new communist milieu of the early 1970′s, the organization took up a number of unorthodox and critical positions around race, workplace organizing and revolutionary organization that have today become influential discussion points among those those on the left influenced by anarchism and by some members of the radical IWW union. Read More
The Battle of the Sandwiches: What Does the Bosses’ Offensive Look Like?
The Battle of the Sandwiches: What Does the Bosses’ Offensive Look Like? by Alex Erikson If you read stuff about the labor movement of the 1970s and 80s, there is a lot of talkabout the “bosses’ offensive,” an aggressive attack on workers movements by capital. A friend of mine from Italy told me that in 1977, the bosses and pro-boss workers (we call these people ’scissorbills,’ because their words cut you) staged a march of several thousand people in opposition to the continued wildcat strikes, sabotage, and occasional kneecapping, kidnapping, or assassination of bosses in the plants of northern Italy. This action was sufficient to change the climate and turn the cultural tide against the workers’ insurgency. In my own workplace, we have seen an ebb and flow of class struggle on a micro-level. Initially, when the union went public, the boss was so afraid of us that he would sneak in and out the back door of the store without us knowing. We actually had a hard time planning actions because we could never find the boss to make demands. Read More
Strategy and struggle – anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century
A pamphlet produced in January 2009 by Brighton Solidarity Federation as a clarification of the meaning of anarcho-syndicalism in the 21st century, and as a contribution to the debate over strategy and organisation. Read More
My Introduction…
My Introduction… By P. Gage The first permanent job I got at Canada Post was in the early weeks of the spring of 2007. It was an ‘inside job’ processing and splitting up flyers between one hundred or so letter carriers. I had been working for Canada Post as a Term (read temp) for a year before getting a permanent position. Because of the labour shortages in Alberta I moved up in seniority quickly. Being the flyer guy in the depot made me far from the most popular person. Letter carriers like delivering flyers even less than their customers like getting them, they see them as a waste of time and not worth the $0.15 piece rate they get paid to deliver them. It did mean that I got to talk to almost everyone in the depot and hear their opinions on everything. Sometimes those opinions were not just about how much they hated seeing me every morning. Read More
Wobble the job! The Building Trades Wildcat in Alberta
The Building Trades Wildcat in Alberta Alberta labour laws are not only some of the most repressive in Canada, they may be some of the most repressive in North America. For decades the labour movement tried to change the laws in Alberta, demanding the right for all workers to strike between contracts, to collectively bargain, and anti-scab legislation. Their main weapon was lobbying a government that was hostile to their very existence, and making alliances with marginalized left-wing politicians who were shut out of the corridors of power. For a long time more and more workers were robbed of the right to strike either directly, like farm workers, university teaching assistants, and nurses, or indirectly by tying them up in so much red tape that a strike was almost impossible. Read More
Solidarity Federation’s Industrial Strategy
Solidarity Federation’s Industrial Strategy The Solidarity Federation seeks to create a militant opposition to the bosses and the state, controlled by the workers themselves. Its strategy can apply equally to those in the official trade unions who wish to organise independently of the union bureaucracy and those who wish to set up other types of self-organisation. Read More
It Takes Two to Tango
It Takes Two to Tango by P. Gage As I pulled the gearshift into drive my cell phone was flashing telling me that I had a voicemail. When I got to my next stop I saw I had three messages on my phone now and my voicemail was full. I rubbed my hands together over the vent trying to forget about December in Edmonton. I got curious so I opened my voicemail box as I listened to each message my heart sank further. “Hello, this message is for Phinneas, my name is Steve and I’m a driver in the same department as you. I understand management has cancelled all of the Christmas overtime for the rest of the month because of the fight you had with them this morning over paying the correct overtime hours. Read More