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Industrial Worker - Issue #1692, February 2007

Submitted by x348328 on Thu, 03/22/2007 - 2:26pm

Headlines:

  • Mass Firings in New York City
  • New IWW Organizing Department Reaches Out To Organizers
  • Workers Call for Hornblower Boycott

Featured Articles:

  • Fifth Firing Sparks Creative Response - IWWs and supporters in Boston, Pittsburgh and Leicester, UK, protest Starbucks' intimidation tactics
  • Ben Fletcher of Local 8 Docks - Review of the first book about Ben Fletcher, an African-American IWW organizer
  • Industry Issue: Privatization - Workers in the UK's healthcare and postal sectors fight the New Labour agenda, while Iraqi oil and petroleum workers struggle against the privatization of this vital sector

 Download a free PDF copy of this issue.

First issue of Solidaridad: new international spanish IWW newsletter!

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 03/22/2007 - 2:16pm

Download a copy today - (PDF File).

Build a Stewards Council from the Bottom Up

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 07/21/2006 - 3:45am

By Paul Krehbiel - Labor Notes, July 2006

Want a stronger union at work? Consider building a stewards council.

I was a rank-and-file worker at a company with a good steward structure years ago, so I knew something about how it worked. After I began working as a union representative for Service Employees (SEIU) Local 660, I was assigned to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. I saw immediately that the union there was weak.

With only five stewards for 1,700 workers, demoralization was high. Many members complained that the union did nothing, and they wanted out. The only solution was to build the union at the facility. . .

. . .Soon, word was out that the union was alive and growing.Workers in other areas asked to become stewards. We asked them to help on a project and then brought them aboard.

Within a year and a half, we had 35 stewards and the union was winning some victories. Things were far from perfect, but management knew that the union was there. 

“We’ve Been Robbed Long Enough. It’s Time to Strike” : Remember the 1916 Strike on Minnesota’s Iron Range

Submitted by x356985 on Tue, 05/30/2006 - 11:10am

IWW Mesabi SolidarityBy Jeff Pilacinski, Twin Cities GMB

On Saturday, June 3 we remember the valiant struggle of over 15,000 fellow workers and through our continued agitating in 2006, carry their fighting spirit forward. This date marks the 90th anniversary of the great mine workers strike on Minnesota’s Mesabi, Cuyuna, and Vermillion Iron Ranges – a strike that threatened the economic grip of the U.S. Steel war profiteers and strained relations between several prominent Wobbly organizers and the union’s general headquarters.

After a large uprising was crushed with the help of immigrant strike breakers in 1907, Minnesota mine workers were poised to confront the steel trust once again. In a report to the Minneapolis headquarters of the IWW’s Agricultural Workers Organization dated May 2, 1916, one organizer had “never before found the time so ripe for organization and action as just now.” The appeal from one Minnesota miner in the May 13, 1916 issue of the Industrial Worker summarized the workers’ discontent best as “the spirit of revolt is growing among the workers on the Iron Range,” and that there was a need for “workers who have an understanding of the tactics and methods of the IWW and who would go on the job, and agitate and organize on the job.” Less than a month later, an Italian worker at the St. James underground mine in Aurora opened his pay envelope and raged over his meager earnings under the corrupt contract system, whereby wages were based upon the load of ore dug and supplies used, not hours worked. By the time other miners arrived at the St. James for the night shift, production at the mine was halted. All pits in Aurora were soon shut down as the strikers proclaimed, “We’ve been robbed long enough. It’s time to strike.”

IWW Organizing Summit 2006

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 02/15/2006 - 5:12am

"By building organizations based on solidarity, rather than on bureaucratic chain-of-command, we build organizations that by their very existence help to bring a new kind of society into being." --Staughton Lynd, Solidarity Unionism

For the first time in recent memory wobblies from all over will be meeting with the primary objective of discussing organizing. The Organizing Summit is what many wobs have been wanting for years. It is a chance to focus on organizing in the union and what it means to say, "Every member is an organizer."

The weekend will be hosted by the Austin GMB and was proposed at General Assembly 2005 in the hopes of supporting the work of the Organizing Department Formation Committee (ODFC). The assembly endorsed the Summit and the ODFC has also endorsed the meeting.