Current Campaigns

Archie Green, 91, union activist, folklorist, and editor of “The Big Red Songbook dies.

From the  March 28, 2009; New York Times story

In 2007, Mr. Green completed a project nearly 50 years in the making, The Big Red Songbook, which he helped to edit. It included the lyrics to more than 250 songs in the various editions of the Little Red Songbooks published from 1909 to 1973 by the Industrial Workers of the World, best known as the Wobblies. They were gathered by John Neuhaus, an I.W.W. machinist, who left his collection to Mr. Green when he died in 1958.

Thanks to LaborStart for the heads-up.

 

Industrial Worker - Issue #1712, January 2009

Headlines:

  • Chicago factory occupation wins demands
  • N. Carolina IWW truckers picket Weyerhauser
  • Good Jobs For All stands up for temps in Toronto

Features:

  • Can we rebuild the labor movement with the Employee Free Choice Act?
  • Let's not get organized by Barack Obama
  • Review: Staughton Lynd tackles Wobblies and Zapatistas 
Download a free PDF copy of this issue.

Liberation of the Offices of the General Confederation of Greek Workers

Posted in Solidarity:

On the morning of Wed. (17 December 2008), the offices of the G.S.E.E. (at the intersection of Patision St. and Alexandras St.) were occupied by insurgent workers and the building was declared a liberated workers' zone. Their declaration speaks of their wish "[t]o disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes, and that the rage of these days was an affair of some 500 "mask-bearers," "hooligans" or some other such fairy tale, while on the T.V. screens the workers were presented as victims of the clash, while the capitalist crisis in Greece and worldwide continues to lead to countless layoffs that the media and their managers portray as a "natural phenomenon"."

Communique #1 (17 December 2008):

We will either determine our history ourselves or let it be determined without us.

We, manual workers, employees, jobless, temporary workers, local or migrants, are not passive T.V. viewers. Since the murder of Alexandros Grigoropoulos on Saturday night, we participate in the demonstrations, the clashes with the police, the occupations of the centre or the neighborhoods. Time and time again we had to leave our jobs and our daily obligations to take the streets with the students, the university students and the other proletarians in the struggle.

WE DECIDED TO OCCUPY THE BUILDING OF G.S.E.E.

-- To turn it into a space of free expression and a meeting point of workers.

-- To disperse the media-touted myth that the workers were and are absent from the clashes, and that the rage of these days was an affair of some 500 "mask-bearers," "hooligans" or some other fairy tale, while on the T.V. screens the workers were presented as victims of the clash, while the capitalist crisis in Greece and worldwide continues to lead to countless layoffs that the media and their managers deal as a "natural phenomenon".

Industrial Worker - Issue #1711, December 2008

Headlines:

  • Ontario Farm Workers Win Right to Organize
  • G20 Defends Capitalism
  • Coors' Colorado Right-to-work Plan Defeated
  • Minneapolis Starbucks baristas join IWW

Features:

  • Economic Meltdown Global
  • Online Picket Line: The Internet Didn't Make Obama Win
  • Proposition K fails, sex workers continue to organize in San Fran
  • Review: A Union Man Won't Quit

Download a free PDF copy of this issue. 

Industrial Worker - Issue #1710, November 2008

Headlines:
  • Wal-Mart closes second union store in Québec
  • Aboriginal workers organize in Canada
  • Zimbabwe unions condemn deal with Mugabe
  • Crisis a product of capitalism
Features:
  • Pakistani women need rights respected every day
  • Metrolink rail crash makes safety reform a must
  • Mentally ill workers an 'indicator species' for fairness on the job
  • The IWW: Literature Review 2008

Download a free PDF copy of this issue.