Headlines:

• Transport workers take action
• Zimbabwe arrests unionists, opposition
• E-Z Supply ordered to pay IWWs $1 million

Featured Articles:

• Haiti IWW delegation travel diary
• Militant, independent, all-Cambodian union
• Staughton Lynd: Another world is possible

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Headlines:

• Harvest Co-op fires 2 in Massachusetts
• Diesel price rally hits New Jersey turnpike
• Union rivalry leads to clash at Labor Notes conference

Featured Articles:

• No-Match letters a wedge between workers
• China coal profits cost blood and bone
• Argentina: Zanón workers took union, before factory

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Headlines:

• Puerto Rican teachers defy government
• Scottish college sacks Unison steward, cuts jobs
• Maquila workers denounce NAFTA

Featured Articles:

• Metro Lighting a scab business
• Green unionism
• Review: End of America offers no alternatives, ignores unions

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Announcing the 2008 IWW Organizing Summit - Toronto, Ontario - April 18, 19, & 20

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

Featuring:

• Taming Wild Edibles
• Report on IWW Delegation to the Maquiladoras
• Peru: The Construction Industry -Tragedy and Vengance
• Report of the International Solidarity Commission

This week will mean a return to campus for thousands of University of New Mexico students beginning their spring semester. Meanwhile, two former UNM employees will come back to UNM not to resume the jobs they loved, but to protest their recent terminations. They will gather with community allies, coworkers, and members of the IWW at the new George Pearl Hall located on the corner of Cornell and Central. There they will speak out about the lack of respect that UNM management has for university employees and what happens when workers speak up about health and safety issues.<p>

Headlines:

• Australia: Individual contracts undercut equal pay
• NYC campaigns winning, but facing stiff resistance
• Burma protests: Is India looking the other way?
  

Featured Articles:

• Armed men break strikes in Philippines 
• Rebuilding the IWW at Streetlight Shelter
• Reviews: Ben Fletcher, Atom Spies, Horizontalism, IWW history books in 2007

 Download a free PDF copy of this issue.

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: John S. Adams - Missolua Independent, November 8, 2007
 
It wasn’t as dramatic as the “Continental Congress of the Working Class” that formed the union in 1905, but for the handful of people who turned up at the monthly meeting of the Industrial Workers of World (IWW) at Missoula’s Union Club on Monday night, it was a momentous occasion.

For the first time in as long as anyone can remember, the Missoula-based branch of the “One Big Union” reached the minimum 10 members, thus earning their official charter. Sure, it’s only 10 members, but for Jay Bostrom, the local IWW’s most active and outspoken member, it’s a big deal.

“Folks, now we can start keeping some membership dues and start doing some real organizing,” Bostrom told the small group gathered in the Union Club’s basement.

The IWW rose to prominence in Montana in the early part of the 20th century with efforts to organize miners in Butte, and lumberjacks across the state. Their “Free Speech Fights” in Missoula and Spokane made national headlines as Wobblies (as IWW members are known) spoke out against capitalist repression until they were arrested by the hundreds, clogging the jails and courts and eventually forcing those cities to overturn their free speech ordinances. Today the IWW boasts about 1,000 members worldwide.

The Wobblies’ core philosophy, according to the preamble to the IWW constitution, declares that “the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.” Rather than organizing workers by trade, the IWW seeks to unite all workers as a class in order to rise up and take over means of industrial production and eventually overthrowing capitalism and creating a more peaceful society.

A lofty goal to be sure, but for the few energized members who showed up Monday night to plan a free speech fight of their own against international free trade agreements, you’ve got to start somewhere.

“I see our role as more broadening the discourse to the left,” says Dave Jones, the group’s spokesman. “There really hasn’t been an anti-capitalist movement around here for a long time.”