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
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
A Portrait of IWW Athletes
MMA Fighter Jeff Monson In the third installment of our series “Politics on the Field” we bring the story of three IWW athletes. This piece of history is written by IWW Neil Parthun, a sports show host, who offers a glimpse into the lives and trajectories of the IWW members who played sports as a career, and ends with his reflections on labor in professional sports. Read More
Primero Chaca
A Goal / Image by Monica Kostas Last week we began our series Politics on the Field featuring pieces about where sports, life, and politics intersect. The second contribution comes to us from Monica Kostas, who also has done the artwork for our series as well many Recomposition works. She describes soccer in the life of her hometown while giving background on the sport’s history and radical roots, and reflections on playing in a militant life. In an era of unprecedented money driving the clubs and leagues, soccer gets lost in the ruckus of what capitalism does to it. With her piece, Monica reminds us of the beauty and joy that’s at stake to fight for a match worth playing. 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
Collapsing the levels, Consolidating Our efforts
Approximately 5 years ago work began on something called the intermediate analysis. A few members of the Recomposition editorial group contributed pieces, worked in groups, and tried to shape their work around the issues raised in the analysis. Between 2010 and today stand a lot of changes and a different landscape for radical action. The maturing of the world financial crisis, series of popular protest movements, and conservative responses have shifted the field from where we stood just a short time ago. Today we present a piece by Scott Nicholas Nappalos exploring what was useful and harmful in the intermediate analysis, and what lessons can be drawn for revolutionary unionists in North America specifically and for the libertarian left more generally. Read More
Clarissa, Who Explained It All
Seamstresses at work The fourth installment in our ‘How I was radicalized’ series comes from Romina Akemi. She describes working at a garment factory in the American South, where she was mentored by an older co-worker. Romina recently moved back to Chile from Los Angeles, where she was a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the Black Rose Anarchist Federation. For the previous posts on this series: Part I / Part II / Part III 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
Garage Collective Reviews Lines of Work
Lines of Work Today we share a review of Lines of Work, a collection of stories on organizing and life on the job, put together by fellow Recomposition editor Scott Nappalos, and which you can find here. This review is by Garage Collective and it first appeared on their blog. An introduction to Lines of Work by Scott Nappalos is also provided below. Lines of Work: Stories of Jobs and Resistance By Scott Nikolas Nappalos, ed. (Alberta, Canada: Black Cat Press, 2013) Review by Jared Davidson, first published in LHP Bulletin 64. Lines of Work is a fascinating, at times bleak and emotive volume of stories about work and its effect on our lives. How fitting then, that my review copy was waiting for me after my usual 20-minute trip home from work had stretched to four hours, thanks to the flooding in Wellington of 14 May 2015. Work (with a little help from the weather) had kept me away from my loved ones even more than it already does on a day-to-day basis. That period after clocking out was clearly not my own time, but that of capital. Read More
Against the IWW Series Part 5: Means of Struggle
Emilio Lopez Arango What is the role of unions in a future free society? How does the structure of capitalism and unions today reflect that? The difficulty of the end of the 1920s (fascism and repression, changes in demographics and industries) gave an opportunity for reflection on strategy and vision of the revolutionary movement. This happened mainly within the International Workers Association (IWA-AIT) which at the time likely involved millions of workers across the world, but also within the IWW. The subject is poorly studied with minimal resources in English, most of what is publicly available about the IWA can be reduced to a few articles. The debate was wide ranging covering union structure, future society, revolutionary methods, amongst other subjects. Part of the discussion focused on whether revolutionary unions should adopt craft or industrial unions as their primary structure. What follows is a translation of Medios de Lucha, Means of Struggle, by Emilio Lopez Arango, a working class autodidact and baker; the main thinker of Argentina’s powerful Federacion Obrera Regional Argentina (FORA). The FORA dominated the Argentine labor movement for decades in the turn of the century and its model spread across Latin America, in some cases like Chile and Mexico displacing the IWW affiliates. In the piece Arango grapples with the question of industrial organization and industrial unionism and critiques the IWW’s idea that unions within capitalism should form the basis for a future society especially centered on using capitalist industries as the model. He was not alone in this as some IWWs also critiqued it. We also recommend reading the recent piece by S Nicholas Nappalos that looks at the debate more in depth. The piece today is also part 5 of our Against the IWW series, which, to be clear we’re not anti-IWW, we’re very pro-IWW and we’re running this series 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. 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 Against the IWW Series Part 4: The Legacy of the IWW 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
The Making Of A Politicized Prisoner
The third installment in our ‘How I was radicalized’ series comes from Okwute Ekwensu. His powerful account describes the experience of leading a criminal life that led to incarceration, followed by his radicalization in prison. Okwute lives in the Twin Cities and is involved in the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC). Part 1|Part 2|Part 3 Read More
Growing up during the ‘War on Terror’
The second part of our ‘How were you radicalized?’ series brings us to the 2000s. Starting with his family roots in the South African anti-apartheid and American civil rights movements, the author takes us through the post-9/11 and Iraq War era, a time when many of us found the radical left. This piece was written by our friend, Dee, who is in First of May Anarchist Alliance as well as the IWW. Although a lifelong Midwesterner, he is currently living in South Africa. Read More
A new society must be built
Equilibrium & Disequilibrium The 2008 financial crisis in the US led to a flurry of ink and predictions of world collapse of capitalism. None of that has come to be as of yet, but the significance of the crisis is still unsettled. This week’s piece comes to us from Scott Nicholas Nappalos, and argues that more than crisis we need to create the pre-conditions for collective struggles and to actively construct a new society beyond waiting for conditions to do it for us. Read More
Podcast Interview with Luigi Rinaldi
Symptomatic Redness Podcast with L. Rinaldi This week we present an interview by Symptomatic Redness with one of our fellow editors Luigi Rinaldi who discusses the Recomposition blog, the IWW, unions, among other subjects. Symptomatic Redness is a show on political economy and historical analysis and you can check them out here. Check out the podcast with Luigi here. 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
The Bell Tolls for Thee, Motherfucker
Sketch contribution by Monica Kostas Get ready to never see bus drivers the same way again. This week we feature a story by John O’Reilly who takes us through the route of his daily tribulations as a city bus driver in Minneapolis. Ding. You’re just driving along, keeping your eyes open, checking side streets and blind alleys, and it happens. No warning. It jolts you, and you instinctively look down the road for the next blue reflective bus stop sign. If you know the route well, you can visualize exactly where the sign is. If it’s a route you don’t drive often, you push your eyes as far as you can see to find the next one in the thicket of poles on the side of the road. It’s not until you’re a bus driver that you realize exactly how many signs crowd the boulevards of our cities. Only one among them is the one that your passenger has signaled for you to stop at, and you have the short time between registering the sound in your brain and where the sign sits to apply the full weight of your brakes, hundreds and hundreds of pounds of air pressure, to slow a half a million dollar vehicle to a stop without taking out a side mirror, hitting a biker or crushing a car, and maneuver it smoothly to the side of the road at exactly the spot where the passenger intends to alight. Every time, hundreds of times a day, it takes all your concentration to accomplish this simple, single task. 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 Intermediate Moment
This week we bring you a piece from our friends at Unity and Struggle. They’ve written a longer assessment of trying to navigate a revolutionary path in our time. Engaging ideas of some of us in Recomp and others around the country, this strikes us as important conversations to have as things are still up in the air from the events of 2008, 2012, and continuing. The intermediate moment is the first part of a two part series, the second of which is likely to be about their experiences organizing a solidarity network that has worked on housing issues in largely immigrant neighborhoods in Houston. We’re looking forward to it. – by Adelita Kahlo and Tyler Zee *The perspectives advanced below are those of the authors and do not represent an official “line” of U&S. U&S, as will be seen below, does not have formal positions. While many of the ideas will be common starting points for U&S, there will be nuanced differences and perhaps some disagreements according to individuals and locales. 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
May 1st 630pm EST Lines of Work Book Launch Live in Miami!
The South Florida IWW and Recomposition present a live online launch of the new book Lines of Work on 630pm EST May 1st. Two authors will present the book at a Miami bookstore, Books & Books, with readings from the text and discussion. For those outside South Florida, you can tune in by checking the Live stream address the day of the event. The text brings together stories of work and workers from the US, Canada, and the Uk reflecting on their experiences grappling with what they do to earn a living, and struggling for something better. “Half our waking hours are spent on the job, consuming the lion’s share of our time. Our years are woven with stories of work told around the dinner table, breakroom, and bars. Yet these stories are rarely put into print, investigated, or seen as they should be; as part of workers’ activity to understand and change their lot under capitalism. LINES OF WORK offers a rare look at life and social relationships viewed from the cubicle, cash register, hospital, factory, and job site. Drawn from the writings of Recomposition, an online project of worker radicals, the text brings together organizers from a handful of countries sharing their experiences with the trouble of working and fighting back. Rather than professional writers or activists, the authors are workers reflecting on their experiences, aspirations, and how to improve our situation. Through storytelling, they draw out the lessons of workplace woes, offering new paths and perspectives for social change and a new world.” 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
Industrial Unity: A Response to “Locality & Shop”
We received a number of replies and great discussion from the piece by S Nappalos on the IWW’s locality versus industrial structures. E.A. Martinez has sent a lengthy response raising points of criticism and agreement that is worth engaging. While the discussion centers around structures of the IWW, bigger issues are at hand. In reality the debate centers around the role of the workplace organizer, how they relate to their job and neighborhood, and where we situate their struggles. We’re glad to see this thoughtful reply, and hope it generates some reflection and responses. E.A. Martinez The division between local organization and industrial organization – and which should prevail over the other – has been a hot topic of debate within revolutionary unions for decades, and the IWW is no exception. Locality and Shop Inside Revolutionary Unions provides one perspective on whether the local form (the General Membership Branch, or GMB) or the industrial form (the Industrial Union Branch, or IUB) is superior. After examining attempts by the Portland IWW to build a patchwork of IUBs in the early 2000s, the author concludes that industrial organization is not suited for the present socio-economic conditions in which we find ourselves, or for the present state of the IWW. Rather, we should look to build the IWW as local groups of militants and political radicals who “take [their militancy] with them through their jobs.” The author points to many Wobblies’ opposition to activism as one of the chief causes for the preference of industrial units over local units, which is not untrue. Many Wobblies have argued that locality-based IWW branches are often mistaken for merely another acronym in a city’s alphabet soup of revolutionary groups, book clubs, NGOs, and non-profits. To combat the perception of the IWW as anything but an industrial union, Wobblies have pushed for more workplace- and industry-based organization, as this will demonstrate to activists that we are in fact a union, and not one of many political clubs. Read More
Joe Burn’s Review of Lines of Work
Joe Burns, author of the influential book Reviving the Strike put up a review of our new book Lines of Work on his blog. We want to direct to the discussion to the Reviving the Strike blog where he posted it. His comments are flattering and we aspire towards and contribute to the sort of revival he advocates. “Although written in terms of stories and experiences, the book’s approach offers a different approach to union revival, one deeply rooted in the workplace and rooted in the daily experience of workers.” This Saturday we remind our readers near Miami, Florida that there will be a Lines of Work worker story workshop. Read More
Locality and Shop Inside Revolutionary Unions
There’s been a long debate within the revolutionary union movement about structure and specifically about the relationship between locality-based units and workplace/trade/industrial based units. Though not well known, the IWW also had battles with these concepts with different factions trying to abolish the General Recruiting Unions, the predecessor of the General Membership branch uniting all workers based on a local who lacked a Industrial Union Branch, and other trying to support it. The recruiting unions were banned at some periods of IWW history and had to be brought back though not without controversy. Other revolutionary unions such as the CNT of Spain and FORA of Argentina maintained both locality based grouping and workplace based ones. This piece explores the debate around these issues within the IWW and experiences both with locality-units and workplace-units from recent activities, and attempts to get at the issues of our tasks and objectives beyond only looking at structures. Area, Shop, and Revolution: a case for both locality and workplace unitary organization Scott Nikolas Nappalos In the early 2000s a series of experiments were carried out in the IWW that led to the formation of Industrial Union Branches (IUBs). Alongside the handful of IUBs emerged ideas around why IUBs should be prioritized and their superiority to other structures. The IUBs primarily were initiated in the Portland IWW after a series of struggles that produced the largest and most dynamic area for IWW workplace organizing in the union for decades. The Portland IWW ballooned to its peak with membership in the hundreds in the early 2000s after a decade of organizing attempts in the 1990s, and some high profile contract campaigns, strikes, and actions at the turn of the century. As membership grew, Portland moved from a General Membership Branch (GMB) towards IUBs in areas where there were a concentration of members: social service, construction, education, restaurants, grocery/retail, and transportation. Read More
Lines of Work Event: 5pm April 5th Miami, Florida
Events around the release of our new book,Lines of Work by Black Cat Press, are coming together. 5pm April 5th the South Florida General Membership Branch of the IWW will be hosting a Lines of Work event at Sweat Records, 5505 NE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL 33137. In coordination with Lines of Work launches, this event will be exploring workers stories and their lessons with readings of pieces worker narratives and collective discussions. The official Miami book launch will happen on May 1st, with details to follow. Contacts us if you’re interested in hosting a book launch or event with workers stories in your town. “Half our waking hours are spent on the job, consuming the lion’s share of our time. Our years are woven with stories of work told around the dinner table, breakroom, and bars. Yet these stories are rarely put into print, investigated, or seen as they should be; as part of workers’ activity to understand and change their lot under capitalism. LINES OF WORK offers a rare look at lif… 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
State and Capital
Capitalism touches every moment of our lives, and always for the worse. That’s why capitalism must be replaced with a new and better society. The state is everywhere too. But how do the two relate? What is the role of the state in maintaining capitalism? And what is the role of the state in creating a new society? Like many people, those of us who edit Recomposition want capitalism to end. We want a society where all people get what they want and need: everything for everyone. We believe that the state will not help us create this new society, and that the new society won’t have a state. Criticism of the state has been a thread in the Industrial Workers of the World for a long time. Since the beginning of the organization in 1905, IWW members have debated over how to understand the state and how to relate to the state practically, including the rejection of the political use of elections and the state system of mediating class conflict. The organization today is culturally anti-state and most members hold these kinds of views. In my view as an IWW member, we should discuss these views more explicitly in the organization today. We should add to our Preamble that we do not see the state as a means for working class revolution nor do we see the state as having a role in the good society created by revolution. With that in mind, this post is about the relationship between the state and capitalism, excerpted from Michael Heinrich’s excellent recent book, An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital with the permission of the publishers. The core points of this excerpt are that the state is central to the life of capitalism, and that the state is not simply a tool which can be picked up and used politically. The state is not an object; it is a social relationship. These points are particularly relevant today. Today there is debate about what the state should do and how we should relate to the state among the labor movement and the left as well as both the capitalists and their governments. Among those of us seeking a better society, these debates should be informed by analysis of the relationship between the state and capitalism. – Nate Hawthorne Read More
Solidarity Networks: Innovations, recomposition, and questions
-editorial by SN Nappalos. The development of Solidarity Networks, based largely to our knowledge on the example of Seattle Solidarity Network, has led to experiments and debate not only in the US, but internationally as well. At its simplest, a solidarity network is a grouping that uses direct action to sway fights of individuals and groups typically of workers and tenants. Different from traditional union organizing, Seattle Solidarity Network (also known as Seasol) began by bringing together a milieu willing to mobilize to support issues working class people have independent of where they work or live. This includes fighting in situations where a union is already there (as was the case with an SEIU shop), where it is a lone individual, or more recently amongst groups of tenants and workers. A thorough discussion of these experiences would be long indeed. Here we provide some of the main points of discussion and pieces looking at solidarity networks to keep those in circulation, and for us to learn as we carry forward. 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
Voting for Socialism: A Debate
The campaigns of Kshama Sawant and Ty Moore have generated a lot of debate around the role of elections in overcoming capitalism. Both candidates came from Socialist Alternative, a party with roots in the broader social democratic and trotskyist traditions that moved to electoral activity relatively recently. Sawant won her election to Seattle’s city council, and Moore lost by a hair. A changing social and political landscape is shifting the boundaries of electoral action and the relationships of radicals both to candidates and their own activity. Narrowing in on one aspect of the debate, today we will look at the contributions of three short pieces coming from Minneapolis, where Ty Moore ran his unsuccessful campaign. The authors were responding to the discussion and activity locally as people active in struggles opposed to State power all together, including efforts to capture and reform the existing capitalist State. Though we lack the space, we strongly encourage going through a fourth piece by the Black Orchid Collective in Seattle that explores similar themes in response to their own situation with the candidacy of Sawant. Also the commentary to the pieces that follow and Black Orchid contain replies both from the authors and other people active in the relevant cities, and is worth reading. The articles are listed in chronological order as they reply to one and another. There are a few themes to focus in on. The authors debate whether or not it matters to oppose attempts to move towards socialism through elections. Within this there is a deeper debate about how close and how likely attempts to make reforms are to impede more radical alternatives. Given that a presidential election season is approaching rapidly, and militant reformism is increasingly becoming a mobile social force, these questions are likely to face us again. 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
Communication is a Revolutionary Act: Thoughts on communication and media for liberation
This week we’re including a piece by Scott Nikolas Nappalos on media and communication where he argues that we need to view them as part of our political process rather than just tools. The IWW has a unique history when it comes to culture, media, and communication in the history of North America. In particular, the IWW experimented with different forms of communication and media as part of its organizing including the famous cartoons, songs, the Industrial Worker newspaper, and the One Big Union Monthly. IWWs used forms of communication as political acts in ways that were innovative for their time such as silent agitators (mass visual propaganda), song and soapboxing tactics, and publications that sustained a working class culture of writers, artists, poets, and working intellectuals. Though good history of this is absent (and indeed of the IWW in general), Salvatore Salerno’s book Red November, Black November explores how culture and community formed a backbone of the IWW. The union went so far as to create a workers university run by IWWs, the Work Peoples College, that addressed a broad range of life under capitalism including basic skills, jobs and home life, as well as training for participating in the IWW, and of course political, artistic, and scientific education. This tradition was picked up by IWWs who started an annual educational and cultural retreat in Minnesota for IWWs by the same name. While focusing on the North American context and the IWW specifically, his points also apply more generally. Nappalos ideas open up a different take on communication that moves away from all the hype and technofetishism of our age, and tries to shift the focus towards understanding our role in sustaining and nurturing political relationships in struggle. — SN Nappalos Traditionally many radicals have looked at communication and media as tools for implementing their ideas, programs, and lines on populations. Adopting the same model from capitalist marketing theory and propaganda models, communication is thought of as transmitting information from sender to receiver, with most of the thinking centered around how we can best transmit the information to our receivers, how to achieve the greatest numbers, etc. Different media are debated, and today fascination with the emergence of social media and internet culture has captivated political actors of all stripes. After the development of mass industrialized media around a century ago, the model of media and communication as a megaphone still is dominant in the actions and thinking of our time. 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
Building the One Big Union: The Organizing Campaign
An article by Alex Erickson on IWW organizing campaigns on how they are what will build the IWW. Building the One Big Union: The Organizing Campaign by Alex Erikson In “Building the One Big Union: A Strategy for a Strategy,” I laid out a roadmap for building a union of 10,000 Wobblies- 100 branches of 100 members. We have several branches of 100 members currently, so it should be possible to reverse-engineer and replicate these successes in all of our local groups. Sounds great, right? With thousands of members, we would theoretically be able to take on more ambitious campaigns, deploy more powerful tactics, and add more strength to the workers’ movement. But of course, quality is more important and quantity when it comes to building workers power. 10,000 paper members who don’t show up to meetings aren’t a threat to the bosses. The promise of growth of our union is only meaningful if we build the union in a particular kind of way, in a way that organizes workers to engage concretely and directly in the class struggle. In the IWW, we do this primarily in what we call “organizing campaigns.” Organizing campaigns are the focus of our organization. Other unions also run organizing campaigns. IWW organizing campaigns are unique. Our organizing campaigns have specific short-term goals, each tied to a specific long-term goal of our union: Read More
Developing the IWW’s Direct Unionism Politics
This post by Juan Conatz rekindles a discussion sparked by the discussion paper on Direct Unionism, which you can find here. Cleaning out my numerous Google Doc drafts, I found this, which continues the direct unionism debate by taking on most of the responses to the original discussion paper. So I decided to finish it, as most of the written discussion has dropped off. First off to clear something up, I did not write (not even one word!) the original discussion paper. There seems to sometimes be confusion over that, probably due to the fact I wrote 2 reviews in the Industrial Worker newspaper. Honestly, outside of a few people who later became involved in Recomposition, a former American Wobbly who is now in Solidarity Federation and some folks I associate with the Workers Power column, I don’t know who all wrote the thing. It was a collaborative effort involving a group of Wobblies over a couple year’s time. Looking back on the discussion paper, I think (the authors would probably agree) it should be seen as an unfinished draft. Further along than a rough draft but not quite a final draft. I don’t view it as a complete program conceived in full agreement. Speaking of ‘direct unionists’ or a ‘direct unionist tendency’, which sometimes happens, is sort of misdirected because it talks of differences and perspectives in terms of factions. This is convenient when speaking in generalizations or to identify commonality, but can also be unnecessarily divisive or destructive. Part of how I interpret direct unionism is not as a sexy self-identifier, but as building a culture of seriously talking about IWW organizing in a way that advances our practice. To put it a bit more clearly, it’s not about being part of a formalized tendency that ‘wins’ out, but about pushing debate in a way where it has organizational ramifications that are discussed and decided upon by membership. Also, another problem of the sexy self-identifier is that it can be more about the term and not about the ideas. I’ve come across a few Wobs that identify with the term, but then advocate ideas that are basically the opposite of what the paper advocates. Those ideas the paper advocates, in my opinion are: 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
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
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
“Just and peaceful labor relations”: Why the U.S. government supported collective bargaining
This post gives a brief account of some of the history of the capitalist state’s sponsorship of contracts for unions in the United States, with an emphasis on the reasoning that politicians and judges gave for their support of collective bargaining. The piece argues that what the U.S. government wanted out of introducing state support for collective bargaining was, in the words of the National Labor Relations Act, to ‘Promote the flow of commerce’ through ‘friendly adjustment of industrial disputes.’ Read More
Mottoes and Watchwords
This is a discussion paper about the relationship between organizing around fights for change now and a radical vision of social change. Read More
The Teamsters Raid on the UTU
This article is based on several interviews with workers that IWW members spoke with while supporting a couple strikes at Canada National Rail. The piece deals with the politics of the several unions who were all vying to become the One Big Union on the railways. It’s also worth looking at the rhetoric and practice of current contemporary Industrial Unionism and the revolutionary vision of the early 20th Century. There’s a lot of talk about mergers and consolidation right now in the labour movement. This is something pay attention to over the next few years. 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
Pinchpoint Target
This article argues against the view that the IWW should pick its organizing targets based on a view of the potential power of some part of the working class within the economy. 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
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
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
Fighting and Firings
In this post, Phinneas Gage tells a story about action on the job, management retaliation, and workers’ responses. Read More
Understanding events in Wisconsin
Juan Conatz spent a long time in Madison at the height of the protests there in 2011. In light of events since, in Wisconsin and across North America, these events take on even greater importance. Below are two articles Juan wrote about these events. Read More
The Committee in Action
In this article Phinneas Gage describes how workers at Canada Post have organized themselves, and the ups and downs and risks of organizing. 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
Class War on the Work Floor – Audio Recording
We’re pleased to repost this from our comrades at Common Cause. Between October 22 and October 25, Common Cause organized a speaking tour entitled “Class War On The Workfloor” in four Ontario cities (Hamilton, Toronto, Kitchener & London). The speaker was postal worker, anarchist and rank-and-file trouble maker, Rachael Stafford, from Edmonton. Below is the audio recording from the Hamilton stop of the tour, held on October 22, 2011. The talk outlines a perspective on workplace organizing not dependent on union executives, but rather on empowering workers to fight their own battles. In the audio recording Stafford explains why it’s important to deal with issues as they arise on the floor through direct action, worker education, and participatory decision making in order to build the kind of struggle that can aim for the whole pie — not just a bigger piece. The talk also offers first-hand context to the recent CUPW struggle, which saw postal workers go from being on strike to b… 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
Another response to direct unionism, and a counterpoint
This is a piece that Juan Conatz wrote in response to the “direct unionism” discussion paper that some other members of the Recomp editorial group helped write. This piece appeared in the October 2011 issue of the Industrial Worker newspaper along with a reply from another IWW member, Sean G. That reply is below Juan’s article here. 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
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
Building the One Big Union
In this article Alex Erikson suggests some points for IWW members to emphasize as we continue to build our organization. A version of this piece appeared recently in the Industrial Worker newspaper. 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
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
Do you really want to overthrow capitalism?
Some of us struggle to articulate our core values and our main ideas in a non-specialist vocabulary. There’s a place for specialized vocabulary, but we need to challenge ourselves to be able to make our points in other vocabularies as well. The following two documents attempt this. They were written shortly after the Jimmy John’s Workers Union campaign went public in Minneapolis. The first appeared in the newsletter of the Twin Cities branch of the IWW. 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
What Does the IWW Do?
We present another piece about the IWW, following from the last post by Phinneas Gage about the role of the IWW in revolutionary change. This piece first appeared as a Workers Power column in November 2008. Read More
How the I.W.W. can contribute to Working Class Revolution, by Phinneas Gage
How the I.W.W. can contribute to Working Class Revolution by Phinneas Gage The I.W.W. we used to have. The late 19th century and early 20th century were characterised by tremendous changes to the nature of industry. The rise of coast to coast rail lines, assembly line manufacturing, and the consolidation of Capital into monopolistic trusts came the stagnation of the conventional trade unions of the AFL and the Knights of Labour. Many unions in the late nineteenth century began groping for some kind of national organisation that could span the continent of North America and bring back the ability of workers to wage the class struggle effectively. 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
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
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
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
Workers Power Columns
Readers of Recomposition might like a column called Workers Power in the Industrial Worker newspaper. The columns are archived online here. We’ve reprinted some of the columns on this blog and we plan to reprint some more. 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
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
A New Workers Movement in the US
A New Workers Movement in the US: A proposal for a refoundation through the intermediate level By Scott Nappalos It’s a tired truism that the workers movement in the US is floundering without a real base or path forward. A new generation of experimentation, struggle, and militants emerged from the ashes of the union’s most recent collaborationist strategy of labor-management partnership, contractualism, and labor’s historical parochialism of our-jobs-for-us. 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
Workers Power: Reproductive Health Clinic Workers
In this post we reprint an article which appeared in the Workers Power column of The Industrial Worker newspaper in February 2008 Workers have been organizing at a low income reproductive health clinic for the past few months. It all began when the company, which was on solid footing, had gone on a hiring spree and improved a lot of working conditions. The federal government began requiring any recipient of aid (the majority of our patients) to prove citizenship. Undocumented workers don’t actually need to strangely, all they need is to indicate that they’re permanent residents. The net effect on the industry has been to cut 30% of the funding to all low-income clinics generally. That is the real target of this federal assault, to cut social funding under the guise of racially based nationalist sentiments. Read More