News - All Departments and Unions

This is the news page for all IWW Departments and Unions. This page displays *all* news items from every Department and Union. To see news only from a particular Department, click on the Department title below.

For an overview of the IWW's Union structure, please visit the Unions homepage.

For branch, campaign, or general labor news, click on the appropriate sub-menu bars at the left under the main "news" bar.

Anti-Capitalist Bloc @ the RNC: An I.W.W. Report

Submitted by intexile on sze, 10/01/2008 - 3:17pm.

by Kdog, x359209

During the first week of September 2008, Republican Party delegates gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota for the Republican National Convention (RNC) - the media spectacle and corporate sleaze-fest that completes their nominating process. An army of armor-clad riot police, National Guard, and private security with their humvees, rubber bullets, and tear gas protected them. FBI-assisted sheriff's raids at more than a half-dozen activist homes and organizing centers in Minneapolis-St. Paul sought to hinder opposition. But thousands of protestors still took to the streets to emphatically reject the Republicans' vicious policies of war, discrimination, and attacks on the working-class and poor.

Among the more important mobilizing efforts against the RNC was the Anti-Capitalist Bloc, an initiative of the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) union - Twin Cities General Membership Branch. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc was conceived as an organizing front for the week of the RNC that would unite those anti-capitalist activists with an orientation toward organizing. The Anti-Capitalist Bloc issued a "Call" and adopted a set of "Solidarity Principles" that made clear our opposition to not only the Republican party but the whole system of capitalism. Ten other groups signed on including three other I.W.W branches. Approximately 1800 full-color posters with the Anti-Capitalist Bloc message were distributed over the course of the week.

But as Wobblies, we know that words are not enough, and so a series of events, actions, and contingents were organized by the Anti-Capitalist Bloc.


Request for Aid - Haiti

Submitted by intexile on p, 09/26/2008 - 2:31am.
Dear friends and comrades,

For two weeks in late-April and early-May four members of the Industrial Workers of the World traveled to Haiti to meet with labor leaders and document the plight of the Haitian working class. During our trip we encountered a Haiti still reeling from food riots which had gripped it just weeks prior. We found the workers and organizers that we met with to be extremely competent and passionate, but almost completely immobilized by a severe lackof resources.

Now a new crisis grips the Haitian people in the form of over a thousand dead and one million out of a total population nine million people displaced as a result of the recent hurricanes which have battered the island.


ISC Monthly Bulletin -- July 2008

Submitted by mpesa on szo, 06/28/2008 - 7:34pm.
Greetings from the International Solidarity Commission (ISC) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and welcome to the third digest of our monthly international news letter. The purpose of this newsletter is to keep our allies around the world informed of our activities, solidarity campaigns, and relevant international labor struggles. It is our hope that this newsletter will contribute to building worker-to-worker solidarity through strengthened communications and exchanges of information.

If you would like to contribute story ideas or news for the bulletin, or wish to contact the ISC, you can email solidarity@iww.org.

Saludos de la Comisión de Solidaridad Internacional (ISC) de los Trabajadores Industriales del Mundo (IWW) y bienvenidos a nuestro boletín internacional mensual.

El propósito de este boletín es mantener a nuestros aliados alrededor del mundo informados de nuestras actividades, campañas de solidaridad, y luchas obreras relevantes. Esperamos que este boletín contribuya a construir solidaridad entre trabajadores reforzando las comunicaciones e intercambios de información.


ISC Monthly Updates Bulletin - June 2008

Submitted by mpesa on v, 06/01/2008 - 7:26pm.

Greetings from the International Solidarity Commission (ISC) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and welcome to the second digest of our monthly international news letter.

The purpose of this newsletter is to keep our allies around the world informed of our activities, solidarity campaigns, and relevant international labor struggles. It is our hope that this newsletter will contribute to building worker-to-worker solidarity through strengthened communications and exchanges of information.

If you would like to contribute story ideas or news for the bulletin, or wish to contact the ISC, you can email solidarity@iww.org.

In this digest:

  • 1. ISC News and Activities
  • 2. IWW News
  • 3. Solidarity Statements and Appeals

The IWW Haiti Mission

Submitted by intexile on k, 04/29/2008 - 2:40pm.

The International Solidarity Commission of the Industrial Workers of the World is sending a delegation of five workers to Haiti to meet with labor groups and observe conditions in the country. We'll be there from April 23 to May 5, 2008. This blog will record the delegation's experiences and impressions.

The link to the blog is iwwinhaiti.blogspot.com. Check it regularly for updates!


Another World Is Possible

Submitted by intexile on h, 04/21/2008 - 3:58pm.

Disclaimer - The opinions of the author do not necessarily match those of the IWW. The image pictured to the right did not appear in the original article, we have added it here to provide a visual perspective. This article is reposted in accordance to Fair Use guidelines.

By Staughton Lynd - WORKING USA, March 2008

What is the problem? What needs to be set right? The mother of all wrong solutions is card-check voting, which would give more access to unorganized workers for the same top-down unions, with the same unaccountability to the membership because of the dues checkoff, with the same ever-readiness to give up the right to strike. Equally misguided in my view is the notion that Taft-Hartley represented a decisive turning point and that its repeal would release the original pristine impulse of the Congress of Industrial Organizations to flower again. All major trade union leaders beginning with John L. Lewis have devised means whereby workers would give up the right to collective self-activity embodied in Section 7 in exchange for a mess of pottage. So we, labor lawyers and labor historians, can only begin to be useful when we forego our endless apologies for the latest hoped-for "progressive" union leader. Our task is to envision an institutional" "embodiment of the class self-activity discovered and imagined by E.P. Thompson and colleagues and partially realized by the IWW in work that desperately needs updating."

The new worldwide movement against "globalization," meaning, U.S. imperialism, and for a better day, has come up with a defining slogan: Another World Is Possible. The words remind us that a social movement is unlikely to bring about what it does not even try to achieve. Current efforts to revive the labor movement in the U.S. define their objectives so narrowly, that even if successful, they would not change anything fundamental.


Statement of solidarity from Japan's General Freeters' Union

Submitted by mpesa on v, 04/06/2008 - 5:09pm.

To the Comrades of IWW

We would like to introduce ourselves to you; we are the Freeters'* Union. We are a Tokyo-based general union, established recently in the face of the out-of-control global situation that the neo-liberal capitalism is running rampant. As precarious workers suffering from working conditions that are becoming more and more fluid and amorphous, we are intensifying our struggles for freedom and survival.

At this moment one of our new campaigns is to organize the "Gas Station Union" to confront Kanto Toyu Co., LTD. – a Japanese member of the Shell Oil Group – that has begun to lay off an increasing number of part-time workers on the pretext of the rise of oil prices and financial instability. It is a necessity to fight gas station chain and the oil driven conglomerate which forcibly lays off its employees in order to make even bigger profits. We will continue to inform you about this campaign, so please keep an eye on our efforts.


Register Now for the 2008 IWW Organizing Summit

Submitted by intexile on k, 03/25/2008 - 4:12pm.
Announcing the 2008 IWW Organizing Summit - Toronto, Ontario - April 18, 19, & 20

Registration is On Now!

The second IWW Organizing Summit has arrived and is set to explode! As the IWW engages in more and more workplace battles, our vision for the future must keep pace with our daily struggles. Our resolve is deeper and our wits keener than ever.

Make sure your branch sends a strong delegation and make sure you're on it! The 2008 Organizing Summit is on the scene and features practical trainings and discussions to build our skills; strategic sessions and industry break-outs to enhance our analysis and plot out the struggle; and visionary all-Summit conversations to prepare us for the future.

Don't miss:
  • Sustaining your Solidarity Union;
  • Militancy in contracted shops;
  • Race, gender, and sexuality in organizing;
  • Success and failure in recent IWW campaigns;
  • Industrial organizing beyond the GMB;
  • Targeting producer market businesses; and
  • The IWW's future in the present.
Break-outs by industry to feature groups of
  • Food Workers (iu460),
  • Retail Workers (iu660),
  • Education Workers (iu620),
  • Health Care and Social Service Workers (iu610),
  • Transportation Workers (dept 500),
  • Construction Workers (dept 300), and more!

Hosted by one of the IWW's most dynamic branches, the Toronto IWW anticipates a blow out 2008 Organzing Summit with IWWs from all overthe continent and farther afield.

Download a registration form

For more details contact - iwwtoronto [at] gmail.com