Union International - The IWW and the Other Campaign (Part II)
Submitted on Tue, 08/08/2006 - 3:52am
Disclaimer - The following is an editorial by members of the Bay Area; it is not currently the official position of the IWW.
By Dean Dempsey - Bay Area General Membership Branch, IWW
The Industrial Workers of the World was the first American union to truly welcome all workers, as equals, regardless if they were immigrants, women, or African Americans, with our organizational structure free of bias and segregation. We have always organized industrially, as a class, emphasizing the importance and potential of cross-cultural, ethnic, and national relationships. Some of the most influential members of the IWW have been immigrants, women, and people of color, such as Ricardo Flores Magón, Mother Jones, Carlo Tresca, Lucy Parsons, Ben Fletcher and even the token Joe Hill. The tradition of this commitment to include all workers carries on to contemporary union organizers of all branches of our union, from all parts of the globe.
When we formed, the IWW wasn’t “sympathetic” for foreign-born workers, many of whom were unskilled. To be sympathetic for immigrants would imply them as a secular set of workers. Rather, many of our founding members were immigrants themselves, and some of our main resources were geared entirely to immigrant members and communities. For example, the Industrialisti, the Finnish-language IWW newspaper, printed daily at 10,000 copies per issue, and even Tie Vapauteen, another IWW publication in the Finnish language, was printed monthly. These efforts by the ethnically-diverse members of the IWW to include minorities in the union was a practice not taken by other labor unions at its time.
Within a year of our union’s inception, a branch formed in the UK, and shortly after that, in Australia. They are still active today, and IWW branches and contacts also exist in Canada, Japan, Finland, Greece, Luxemburg and Germany. The IWW has always had, and still has, international standing.
As the new movement for social justice unfolds in the United States, there is fresh impetus for the expansion of IWW and immigrant worker relationships. As globalization escalates, migration and displacement is reaching all time highs, working conditions are dropping and under-class families are provided less economic options. Consequently, the working people of the world are made more vulnerable to under pay, little or no workplace benefits, insufficient job security and exploitation of our labor. As global capital expands, the need for international solidarity unionism becomes evident.
The heart of the Industrial Workers of the World has been trans-national solidarity and the belief that “An Injury to One is an Injury to All.” An example of such camaraderie was made earlier this year when the International Solidarity Committee released the IWW Resolution Of Solidarity With Striking Miners In Mexico to demand that “all levels of the Mexican government end their repression of protesting miners and steelworkers and withdraw their police and military forces from the SICARTSA steel mill and that the union autonomy of the SNTMMRM is respected.”
The recent American immigrant rights movement is occurring concurrently, among many movements, with the Other Campaign, the current tour and campaign launched by southern Mexico’s Zapatistas. The Other Campaign encourages all, especially Mexico’s indigenous and working peoples, to abandon the corrupt electoral system and to alleviate their problems by taking matters into their own hands. Similar to the IWW, the Other Campaign advocates for worker’s empowerment rather than abdicating our collective strength to the political ruling classes. Although organized by Chiapian Indians, the Other Campaign extends past the compañeros and compañeras of Mexico, into the work fields of Central and South America, on north into the United States, and across all oceans on all parts of the earth.
It has become a popular idea in the Bay Area, and perhaps elsewhere, for the Industrial Workers of the World to become adherents to the Other Campaign, which has the theme, “from below and to the left,” providing us the ability to mutually share resources and organizational skills while reviving the wobbly spirit of multi-national partnership. This will also expand our international contacts and relationships, introducing us to like-minded individuals and organizations. It is clear the historical diversity the IWW was made of (as we have always been a worker-based union, not a national or racially-based union) all types of world people. Such alliances with native, foreign or foreign-born individuals, is still essential in building an international union of industrial workers.
As Staughton Lynd mentioned during the Chicago IWW Centenary, business unions such as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, endeavor to keep Mexican truck drivers from crossing the Rio Grande, when perhaps a conference should be held with workers from both north and south of the Rio Grande to work together in developing unified demands. These ideas of collective dialogue are not new to the IWW, and we need to organize to be on the forefront of trans-national comradeship, bringing workers together in a common cause of organizing as a class to ultimately create a better world for ourselves.
Corporate outsourcing and anglocentrism has agitated anti-foreign sentiment in recent years, but as jobs get pushed past American borders to places around the world, such as in Mexico where labor is often unorganized and exploitable, the battle ground of class war is not moved, but rather expanded. Taking steps to promote not only American job security, but a culture of internationalism, must be made.
By becoming adherents the Other Campaign, we align ourselves with all the workers who, as Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas said, “[are] of those who don't build ladders to climb above others, but who look beside them to find another and make him or her their compañero or compañera…or whatever word is used to describe that long, treacherous, collective path that is the struggle of: everything for everyone.”
We must offer union support and membership to workers who are a part of the Other Campaign, just as the Other Campaign would provide to us the heart of international struggle and resistance of movements from around the world, putting us in contact with people and groups with whom we can very well organize. Simply put, the Other Campaign is a step in the direction of furthering our collaboration with immigrants from here and across the world, while expanding the IWW army of production. Too many people who would agree with our Preamble do not know who we are or how to organize. Through this friendship, many workers of many different languages can be introduced to the IWW, harbingering the realization of the absolute power each worker has.