2013 has been an eventful year so far for the Wobblies – and a year rich in lessons. The front page of the May 2013 Industrial Worker featured three different articles chronicling active, Wobbly-led struggles – a notable spike in activity for our nascent union (http://www.iww.org/en/content/industrial-worker-issue-1755-may-2013). Watching from afar, the flurry of public action surrounding these three individual campaigns has been exciting. We are certainly astounded to see Midwest comrades take a courageous leap and make public their identity as revolutionary organizers. Many of our fellow workers have accepted the risk of losing their livelihood in order to demand a higher pittance and fight for their class. The Wobblies who have led these struggles, and all of the workers who have made the formation of these campaigns possible, deserve to be commended for the hard work and dedication they have demonstrated thus far.
However, it is important that we do not read passively about our fellow union members’ struggles. We must strive constantly to improve upon previous fights, identify methods that require more fine tuning, and develop concrete ways to overcome the hurdles we consistently face. We need candid discussion regarding where our union is succeeding, where it is failing, and what steps we will need to take to overcome recurrent failures in the future.
In that spirit, we offer some clarifying questions – both for the specific members involved in these struggles, and, just as importantly, for fellow Wobblies throughout the union to ask of their own campaigns.
Will legal recognition force an employer to collectively bargain? Why fight for legal recognition, when what you really want is for your employer to concede to your demands?
In one article from the May issue, Evelyn Stone and Deirdre Cunningham discuss the retaliation faced by members of the Star Tickets Workers Union in Grand Rapids with a sense of shock and dismay that their employers would dare break US labor laws. We need to recognize that our employers will disrupt organization and solidarity amongst workers by any means necessary. Any penalties employers might face for breaking the law are just part of the cost of doing business. Legal bodies are impotent and ultimately counter-revolutionary within the context of class struggle. While we should use the law as a shield from rancorous bosses whenever possible, legal proceedings cannot be depended on to protect us from the boss. Understanding this basic class power dynamic is fundamental to successful Wobbly organizing.
Does direct action always “get the goods”? When we make demands, do we have a credible threat to back them up?
In a second article, the Twin Cities IWW highlights the struggles occurring at Chicago Lake Liquors, where five workers were fired for demanding higher wages. What we find most surprising about the situation at Chi-Lake is that these experienced workers claimed to be shocked by their wholesale firings. If these workers were acting like a union and making the ultimate demand – a wage increase – then why were they so taken aback when their boss acted like a boss: with swift retaliation? What did he have to lose by taking this action? In the future, workers who plan to make such serious economic demands on their employer should certainly back up the demand with some sort of credible economic threat. Even if the Twin Cities IWW feels they now possess an economic threat in the form of heavy pickets and community boycotts, why did they fail to demonstrate this threat to the owner of Chi-Lake before asking for a raise? Wobblies are quick to remind their fellow workers that “direct action gets the goods.” Too often we see that phrase encourage worker-organizers to replace serious, well-planned strategy with quick, eye-catching marches on the boss. If we are to build long-term power, we must phase out that trend.
What is the point of “Going Public”?
A theme that many failed campaigns seem to have in common is a focus on “going public” in itself, and a feeling that a campaign’s success or failure is judged on whether or not it goes public. We need to understand that going public is not a goal in itself, but a component of an overall strategy. If making the capitalists aware of our union for some particular reason advances our class’ historic mission, then it is obviously necessary and desirable. But if the ultimate goal of our organizing campaigns is the act of telling the boss they exist, making how this act is carried out a matter of secondary importance, it’s not surprising that we find ourselves appearing as a dog that’s all bark and no bite.
Winning isn’t Everything, It’s the Only Thing
Perhaps the greatest failure of these campaigns – and the IWW over the past several decades – is an inability to articulate what winning really is, and a respect for how central “winning” must be to our organizing. We cannot forget that our ultimate task is the seizure of the means of production and abolition of capitalism. All actions we take, all campaigns we start, and all donations we make must be evaluated on the basis of whether or not they advance us towards that fundamental goal. Confronting the capitalists without posing a real threat to their profits is a waste of time, and can only hurt our image in the class. If our organizing doesn’t have a clear, reasonable path to victory, wobblies need to have the courage to admit that and re-assess.
Winning is relative of course, and we don’t propose a narrow definition of winning that we expect all Wobblies to fulfill. But we need to discuss what winning means and be able to communicate that convincingly to our fellow workers and to the larger public.
Are we preparing ourselves to win?
Our current organization takes a very passive approach to recruiting and orienting new members and launching new campaigns. We aren’t in a position to be passive, if we want to be effective. We have a very, very limited capacity to develop strong, dedicated organizers, and most branches and geographic areas with any significant Wobbly concentration can not manage multiple campaigns successfully.
Let’s be honest with ourselves–most members of the IWW are not organizing their workplace and most don’t know how to. This is a fundamental problem for any labor union let alone a revolutionary class union. It follows that we need to establish more active and economical ways to recruit and train new members and be especially discerning when choosing a new target and campaign. And we should be choosing not accepting targets. We should choose campaigns based on thoughtful planning, with careful consideration given to local strengths and resources, and serious discussion regarding how a campaign will advance the working class toward its revolutionary aim.
A popular saying goes, “hindsight 20:20”. True enough. But even so, it has been rare that we look back together on what our union has done and draw lessons that inform what we do in the future. The IWW is taking on a higher public profile through publicized actions, as global class struggle is heating up. It is now more critical than ever that we mind these lessons and make careful decisions about what we do next. Our opportunity to be relevant as an organization in this historic period – or better yet, prominent – is not lost. Yet.
In solidarity,
The Wobblyist Working Group
A Letter to our Friends 
While I sure appreciate getting letters from friends, I also like to know
who the fuck they are . . . who/what is the “wobblyist working group”?
what is the purpose of the anonymity?
Solidarity,
Kieran
Twin Cities GMB
Kieran,
The WWG is a really crappy name for a handful of people who share a workplace and enjoy writing together. As once, current and future salts, we think anonymity on the interweb is super important. I’ll send you an email and we chat over the phone about who was involved in writing this particular piece.
Thanks for reading and thanks for commenting!
Yeah, I dunno about that. It is possible to use a pseudonym that allows you to still be identifiable and accountable within the Union, while securing your identity within the workplace. I raise this concern because the tone of this piece, perhaps in an attempt to be “punchy” comes off a bit know-it-all-y, so the interested Wobbly may legitimately ask “Who are these guys and how’d they get so smart?”
But I don’t want to dwell on these secondary issues. I think the idea of strategic discussions of actual work is a good one – one we should all welcome. Here’s my brief attempt to continue the conversation:
“Will legal recognition force an employer to collectively bargain? Why fight for legal recognition, when what you really want is for your employer to concede to your demands?” I agree 100% with this sentiment. “We do not rely on the cops and the courts” as Anti-Racist Action puts it. But we do not have many examples of fighting large struggles outside of the Labor Law system . . . we need to discuss HOW to do so, not just criticize Press Releases that describe outrage at bosses illegal actions.
“Does direct action always “get the goods”? When we make demands, do we have a credible threat to back them up?” Again I agree with this line of thinking, we have to be reliant on our own organizng and the solidarity it generates. “Phasing out” the march on the boss, may or may not be appropriate but it implies another model that has not yet been presented. Historically speaking in the Twin Cities anyways marches on the boss have rarely resulted in terminations. That did not hold at Chi-Lake and so re-evaluation is necessary. Yet, as you all acknowledge the IWW was able to generate a credible threat (” heavy pickets and community boycotts”) in retaliation for the firings. How that might have been demonstrated before presenting demands is not clear to me, but may now be clear to other employers in the wake of the Chi-Lake struggle. It is something to think about.
“What is the point of “Going Public”?” Is a good question but your anwer is one-sided. The Boss is not the only or even main audience when an organizing operation goes public. Often the bosses know well before the campaign “goes public”. But we do need some discussion about the purpose and timing of going public. It should not be fetishized or used as a goal (and neither should staying underground).
“Winning isn’t Everything, It’s the Only Thing” – this is just plain wrong, imo. “Wins” are almost always ephemeral (transitory, existing only briefly). There are plenty of reformist NGO’s, non-profits, and business unions with long lists of such “wins”. Our measurement must be different. I like the revolutionary emphasis on “the seizure of the means of production and abolition of capitalism” (to which I would add the dismantling of the state and the intertwined system of white supremacy and patriairchy) but that this must “have a clear, reasonable path to victory” either undermines your argument or implies that you have other short-term, but unspoken, victories in mind. A continuation of our ” inability to articulate what winning really is”.
“Are we preparing ourselves to win?”, or my alternative “Are we preparing ourselves to struggle effectively?” are important questions. There are aspects of you alls initial answers that I like. Being strategic, concentrating forces, developing specific skills. But other sides seem, again too one sided – not “accepting” new struggles as they emerge from contacts or the class at large – this implies to me at leats a blkindness to the enmergence of radical currents within the class that we shouold prepare now to interact with NOW even before we know where they will emerge, while ALSO building committees in the workplace in a strategic manner.
Blah Blah Blah. All for now Fellow Workers,
Solidarity,
Kieran
Appreciate the discussion, some thoughts below…
The piece asks:
‘What is the point of “Going Public”?’
The answer is in the previous paragraph about direct action:
‘In the future, workers who plan to make such serious economic demands on their employer should certainly back up the demand with some sort of credible economic threat. Even if the Twin Cities IWW feels they now possess an economic threat in the form of heavy pickets and community boycotts, why did they fail to demonstrate this threat to the owner of Chi-Lake before asking for a raise?’
They “failed to demonstrate them” because they weren’t public. Actually threatening a picket wouldn’t have made any difference at that stage because a.) they probably still would’ve been fired and b.) the problem with the campaign (said from a close-up view) wasn’t bad tactics but bad inoculation and the shop not being organized enough. The workers weren’t planning on being on fired yet and clearly miscalculated the boss’s response to the wage action that got them fired. They probably wouldn’t (or anyway shouldn’t) have done that particular action when they did if they knew they would be fired for it, because the workforce wasn’t ready for the intensity of the public campaign.
The lesson in my opinion is, be more cautious when you’re “underground,” inoculate better, and don’t do actions if you aren’t willing to take a hit for them. I suspect that’s in some ways opposite of what this letter says, because you all seem to be into the sort of guerrilla-like view of shopfloor organizing, which from what I’ve seen is basically a dead-end organizationally unless it’s building to something bigger. You can’t build a mass labor union doing nothing but small-timey “nonpublic” actions over minor demands- when you go “big” you basically “go public” whether you call it that or not, and going “big” is what builds the union and (if successful) wins big gains for the class.
Also I agree wholeheartedly with Kieran’s comment:
‘The Boss is not the only or even main audience when an organizing operation goes public. Often the bosses know well before the campaign “goes public”.’
I don’t care about employer or government recognition. What I want is worker recognition. There’s a really interesting piece on recomp here http://recomposition.info/2012/09/25/whos-in-charge-here/ about what the author calls “legitimacy” (another word for recognition), which delves into that topic. I have some disagreements with it but I highly recommend reading it.
And the finally paragraph makes a good case for going public too:
‘The IWW is taking on a higher public profile through publicized actions, as global class struggle is heating up. It is now more critical than ever that we mind these lessons and make careful decisions about what we do next. Our opportunity to be relevant as an organization in this historic period – or better yet, prominent – is not lost. Yet.’
Agree with this comment:
‘Too often we see that phrase encourage worker-organizers to replace serious, well-planned strategy with quick, eye-catching marches on the boss. If we are to build long-term power, we must phase out that trend.’
I’d repeat a march-on-the-boss (or picket or whatever) should either be when you “go public” or you should have a disaster plan in case someone gets fired or whatever forcing you to go public.
Also fully agree with Kieran about “winning.”
All that said,…
Personally, biggest problem I have with this letter is the assumption seems to be “if you got fired, you did something wrong”/firing automatically = losing. That’s sorta like thinking you can have a war with zero casualties, it just doesn’t happen. The only way to avoid firings is to be unthreatening, which is why you seem to gravitate to strictly underground organizing. There’s a reason that’s unthreatening- because it’s weak. You somehow also think you can threaten pickets or whatever while remaining nonpublic, and someone won’t ever get fired after making those threats. Pure factual reality is that workers will get fired for organizing- and for threatening and doing militant actions. A firing isn’t automatically a loss- it’s what happens afterward that makes or break the campaign, like do you get their job back? do you win your material demands? does the campaign get crushed or move forward? All of which are highly variable. And frankly even if you don’t win someone’s job back, backing them financially while escalating and building more militants and winning demands, isn’t a loss- the firing is loss but the campaign isn’t. A failed campaign is when either nothing happens, or when everyone freaks out thinking firing=losing and the campaign crumbles. That comes from bad inoculation and frankly the “if we do this right you won’t get fired” mindset is where bad inoculation comes from, having seen it many times.
And last I totally agree with Kieran’s last point about “accepting” struggles. Sometimes you pick the fights and sometimes they pick you.