All Campaigns

NYC Workers Fight Bosses, Rain on May Day

Submitted by Diane on Fri, 05/08/2009 - 2:15pm.

By Diane Krauthamer

Despite the torrential late spring rain, thousands of workers spent their May Day marching and rallying through the streets of Manhattan, displaying solidarity with workers at home and abroad. New Yorkers celebrated this international workers’ holiday with actions, events, marches and rallies, coordinated by a number of labor unions, community associations, political parties and non-profit organizations. In the spirit of celebration, the New York City IWW marched on Starbucks to demand that the coffee giant treat its workers with respect.

Beginning with a 2:00 pm a rally in the heart of Chinatown, the IWW joined hundreds of individuals from community and labor organizations to demand “Equal Rights for All Workers.” IWW members Stephanie Basile and Vance Hinton delivered powerful speeches on top of the soapbox.

“May 1st is the real Labor Day. They want us to forget that, but we’ll never forget. It was through collective action that those before us made the gains we currently enjoy today,” Basile said.


Immigrant Detainees on Hunger Strike in South Texas ICE Facility

Submitted by Diane on Thu, 04/30/2009 - 4:55pm.

By Greg Rodriguez, grodrigueziww@yahoo.com

Rio Grande Valley, South Texas --It is known that nearly one-hundred of the immigrants being detained at the Department of Homeland Security(DHS)/Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s(ICE) Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC) have been on a hunger strike since April 22, 2009. PIDC is a prison used to detain immigrants arrested by the United States government. It is located in an extremely isolated area of the remote South Texas town called Los Fresnos.

The detainees have resorted to this form of non-violent direct action after months of demanding adequate medical attention and an end to abuses by guards; to no avail.


Industrial Worker - Issue #1714, April 2009

Submitted by Diane on Thu, 04/02/2009 - 10:25am.

Headlines:

  • General Strike in the French Antilles
  • For Labor Solidarity with the NYU Student Occupiers
  • Australians Rally in Support of 7-Eleven Workers in Geelong

Features:

  • Colibri Workers Fight for Pay and Dignity
  • Western Australian Miners Struggle
  • Russian Union Defies Threats at Ford Plant
Download a free PDF copy of this issue.

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

Submitted by REB on Mon, 03/30/2009 - 2:02pm.

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

Submitted by Peter Moore on Tue, 12/30/2008 - 5:10pm.

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

Submitted by intexile on Mon, 12/22/2008 - 3:52pm.

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

Submitted by Peter Moore on Fri, 12/05/2008 - 1:42am.

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

Submitted by Peter Moore on Fri, 11/21/2008 - 2:00am.
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.