Union Perspectives

The fight for $15 to $18 an hour and the eradication of wage and lifestyle inequality will need education, ideology and tactics. The duty of the militant minority is to promote class-consciousness and solidarity among the wage slaves fostering in them a revolutionary spirit to fight for what is their civil rights. This can be accomplished in two ways: education in theory and education in class warfare. In this way, the wage slaves will become conscious of their power as one, and will learn the class nature of the capitalist state, which will gain them greater insight into the nature of the class struggle. The old International Workers of the World (IWW) believed such an education as essential before the class war could be won. The IWW organized propaganda leagues and industrial education clubs for the purpose of education (think mobile phones today). We could send out brief messages, such as sit down and watch your pay go up, emancipation, educating, and organization. This should be th...

Finding biographical material about IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) writers is a difficult task for most Wobblies, the movement was more important than recording the lives of individual members. There was a cult of anonymity extended to the manner in which many Wobblies signed their own names, such as JBH, The Rambler, Card No. 34528, Denver Dan, Red, or Just Wob. Does this look familiar? Today’s young ‘Internet’ people are using made up names to maintain their anonymity, and this maybe one reason why OWS is still going strong. Its detractors have no one person they can vilify and use as an escape goat. With this in mind, how long will it be before states deploy laws against the Occupiers, as they did during the Wobblies’ heyday? Wobblies were prosecuted under the Syndicalism Laws. Syndicalism, in this case, refers to the practice of organizing workers into unions to protect their rights and interests as workers. Today, we call Syndicalism Laws the Patriot Act. Under the S...