Labor Organizing

We need good, strong, democratic unions, and we need them now.

As anarchists, we have a very rich history of labor organizing to draw from. We all know who Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket Martyrs, and Emma Goldman are. But who are our modern-day labor heros?

We don't really have any, and that's a sad thing.

In this day and age, the labor movement as we know it in America is mostly dead, and it sucks to admit. The AFL-CIO has done more damage to modern American labor than any boss or capital could dream of. For one better known example, google "P-9" and "Hormel". The AFL-CIO and most of its unions suck.

Many folks active in the labor movement call AFL-type unions "business unions." Yeah, I know, there's Industrial Unions under the AFL, but they still use the business union model of organizing.

What is a business union? It's a union that will act militant when it's in an organizing drive, win the drive, and then do absolutely nothing to protect anyone or anything except the salaries and posistions of the union officials. Also, most business unions divide workers in shops up into different union and locals depending on the type of job the worker does.

And that's part of the problem: if we all work in the same store, for the same boss, why should we be in different unions? If we allow ourselves to be divided up into different unions, based on our jobs, we allow ourselves to be divided for the bosses benefit.

Imagine you work on a construction site; there's painters, carpenters, laborers, electricians, plumbers and more. Now, think of how many different trade/business unions would be represented on that work site. 5, 10, maybe more. Different locals of the same union, even.

Now noodle this one for a second: the laborers go on strike, because of a safety issue. Chances are, the other workers on the site face the same safety issue. Chances are also good that either the boss will bring in scabs, or that the other workers on the site will fill in for the striking laborers - thereby undermining the struck laborers.

Why? Why in the hell do we allow this shit to happen to us? Why do we allow ourselves to get screwed like that?

Now imagine that all those workers were in a general construction union. They all have the same probelms to face on the worksite, they all are working for the same boss, so it makes sense. If one group of workers has a problem, chances are that the other groups of workers have the same or a similar problem. If the workers vote to strike, then EVERYONE walks out. No one left to scab on the others. If no one is working, the boss has no choice but to listen to the workers.

And that's what we need to be doing, and that's why I'm an IWW member. I don't see the IWW as infallible and all-knowing, but it's the best, most democratic union we've got going right now. Sure, there's things that need to be improved, but we're working to improve it.

If you take a look at the IWW's Industrial Union Classification System, you'll get an idea of what I've been talking about. The idea behind it, is that all workers on a job site or in a shop should be in the same union for strength and solidarity.

I'm not trying to write a sales pitch for the Wobblies, instead I'm trying to make a point. The point is that we need good democratic unions. Even more than that, we need to understand one key thing about unions: the union is not a third party, which magically looks over its membership. The union is US. The union is the workers that comprise it. Even the best union in the world is a failure if the membership is apathetic.