Union Perspectives

The U.S. Labor Movement … “Workers of the world awaken. Break your chains. Demand your rights. All the wealth you make is taken, by exploiting parasites. Shall you kneel in deep submission from your cradle to your grave? Is the height of your ambition to be a good and willing slave?” Joe Hill Workers of the world, 1910 “When silence isn’t golden. It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where They trade, dug the mines and built the work shops; endless miles of railroad land. Now we stand outcast and starving, midst the wonders we have made; but the union makes us strong.” Ralph Chaplin Solidarity Forever, 1915 “The Revolution will not be televised. when you get too old to produce anymore, they hand you your hat and they show you the door. Too old to work, too old to work, when you’re too old to work and you’re too young to die. Who will take care of you, how will you get by when you’re too old to work and you’re too young to die?” Joe Glazer Too Old To Work, 1956 These a...

Our old labor leaders, who worked with the International Workers of the World (IWW) Wobblies, had names that represented the world. Names like Vincent St. John, Big Bill Haywood, Joe Hill aka Joseph Hillstrom, Ralph Chaplin, the Magon brothers, Frank Little, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Joe Ettor, and Arturo Giovannitti. These people were the shock troops of labor. The IWW’s weakness was that they really liked to fight better than they, the Wobblies, liked planning, negotiating or politicking. The IWW ideas were the anarcho-syndicalist ideas that had stirred France a little earlier with its methods and shibboleths (sabotage)—even the wooden shoe is a symbol of sabotage. The IWW membership was an American mixture with a large percentage of foreign-born, who were the most politically awakened. It was a conflict of the bloodiest kind that kept the IWW together. It existed for the sole purpose of making the first breaches in the resistance of entrenched industry. The IWW’s greatest single con...