Servants in the Shadows: The Revolution Will Not Be 9-5
Posted on April 4, 2025 by x423752
https://industrialworker.org/servants-in-the-shadows-the-revolution-will-not-be-9-5/
#Capitalism #labormovement #organize
#shiftworkers #solidarity #unions #iww
California's senator Scott Wiener proposed a bill that would've let wildfire victims sue the oil companies for causing the climate crisis.
Guess who teamed up with the Big Oil execs to defeat the bill?
Unions.
Specifically the unions representing oil industry workers. In other words, the workers collaborated with their class enemies: their bosses.
I'm not opposed to unions. I've been a union organizer for decades. But goddamn, these blockheads are acting just like Mr. Block (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Block). They somehow forgot the first rule of labor: the boss is NOT your friend. Be suspicious. Don't trust them. And sure as hell don't collaborate with them to help enrich them even further, especially not on your backs, nor in ways that further destroy the planet.
"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.... Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth."
-- preamble to the constitution of the IWW
That last line, added to the original 1905 preamble to the IWW constitution in the late 1980s, might sound a bit vague and "crunchy." But it was an attempt to acknowledge that some types of work simply shouldn't exist. That's not to say those who currently work in those industries (e.g. Fossil fuel extraction) should be thrown under the bus. Everyone should be allowed to do something productive that they enjoy. And everyone should have all the material necessities to live a safe secure and meaningful existence. But saving the planet from climate collapse will certainly require many changes in the types of work that are available. Coal mining, for example, has been on the decline for years because there is so little left in many regions that it's not profitable for the bosses to continue paying miners to mine ît anymore.
In a sane and compassionate world, we'd provide these workers with free Healthcare housing, UBI, and retraining so they could transition to some other productive endeavor. And union leaders would recognize that the interests of their members are much more closely aligned with, and linked to, those of the rest of the working class. (Continued burning of oil will contribute to more climate disasters, more wild fires, and possible the loss of their own members' lives or homes).
https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/04/california-oil-union-climate-bill/
One more thing about this "conspiracy" belief which you invented, the attack on #IWW prisoner organization consists of actions by the GST and a vote of the GEB (the leadership of the union, for people not familiar with IWW jargon). I'm talking about official acts of the union. I'm criticizing policy, not pushing a conspiracy theory.
With Trump newly sending people to prison, this makes the #IWW not as bad as the Teamsters, but not as good as a generic large mainstream union. It's the same form of respectability politics -- "the IWW is for classic union activities (i.e. organizing a few small shops) and nothing else" that helped the IWW anti-fascist GDC flame out so spectacularly in Trump's first term.
In the annals of "complying in advance", the US-Canada part of the #IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) is doing a paperwork attack on the part of itself that organizes prisoners. The stated reasons are a jumble of concerns about proper receipts, with some part of leadership stating that good recordkeeping will make the union less of a target for fascists. But mostly it's that union leadership doesn't like prisoner organization or really anything that people look to the IWW for.
Today in Labor History April 14, 1917: IWW sailors went on strike in Philadelphia and won a ten dollar per month raise. Ben Fletcher, an African-American IWW organizer, was instrumental in organizing the Philadelphia waterfront. Fletcher was born in Philly in 1890. He joined the Wobblies (IWW) in 1912, became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913.
In 1913, Fletcher led 10,000 IWW Philly dockworkers on a strike. Within two weeks, they won a 10-hr day, overtime pay, & created one of the most successful antiracist, anticapitalist union locals in the U.S. At the time, roughly one-third of the dockers on the Philadelphia waterfront were black. Another 33% were Irish. And about 33% were Polish and Lithuanian. Prior to the IWW organizing drive, the employers routinely pitted black workers against white, and Polish against Irish. The IWW was one of the only unions of the era that organized workers into the same locals, regardless of race or ethnicity. And its main leader in Philadelphia was an African American, Ben Fletcher.
By 1916, thanks in large part to Fletcher’s organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the union maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color.
Fletcher also traveled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. And in 1918, the state arrested him, sentencing him to ten years for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years.
You can read my full biography of Ben Fletcher here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/05/13/ben-fletcher-and-the-iww-dockers/
Today in Labor History April 13, 1894: The Great Northern rail strike began in Helena, Montana. It quickly spread to St. Paul. The strike was led Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union. Workers succeeded in shutting down most of the critical rail links. Consequently, the owners gave in to nearly all of the union’s demands. The successful strike led to thousands of rail workers joining the new union. Debs would go on to lead numerous other strikes, run for president of the U.S. several times, including from his prison cell, and to cofound the revolutionary union IWW, along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Lucy Parsons, and others.
join the Tacoma IWW branch next Thursday April 17th at 12:30pm at Freighthouse Square (in food court), to eat some food, hang out and see what we've been up to. All are welcome.
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#tacomaiww #iww #solidarityforever #industrialworkersoftheworld
#industrialunionism #aninjurytooneisaninjurytoall
#solidarityunionism #industrialworker #wobradio #wobblies #onebigunion
#abolitionofthewagesystem
Today in Labor History April 10, 1997: Exotic dancers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady, ratified their first-ever union contract. Thus they became the first successfully unionized sex business. (Pacers, in San Diego, had unionized a few years earlier. However, they had an open shop, allowing management to recruit new, non-union employees. Consequently, they were able to decertify the union.) Lusty Lady later became a worker-owned cooperative and a member of NoBAWC (the network of Bay Area Workers Collectives), a program initiated by the Bay Area IWW.
For a great book on the struggle to organize Lusty Lady, please see Jenny Worley’s “Neon Girls: A Stripper’s Education in Protest and Power.”
#workingclass #LaborHistory #WorkerCollective #union #NOBAWC #LustyLady #books #author #writer #IWW @bookstadon
Today In Labor History April 9, 1930: The IWW organized the 1700-member crew of the Leviathan, the world’s largest ship. Originally a German passenger ship, the U.S. seized it in 1917, during World War I, when it was docked in New York harbor. The U.S. subsequently used it to transport its troops to Europe. In September, 1918, the Leviathan left New Jersey, filled with men dying from Influenza. Dozens perished from the flu on the passage over.
Today In Labor History April 3, 1913: Pietro Botto, socialist mayor of Haledon, N.J., invited the Paterson silk mill strikers to assemble in front of his house. 20,000 showed up to hear speakers from the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Upton Sinclair, John Reed and others, who urged them to remain strong in their fight. The Patterson strike lasted from Feb. 1 until July 28, 1913. Workers were fighting for the eight-hour workday and better working conditions. Over 1800 workers were arrested during the strike, including IWW leaders Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Five were killed. Overall, the strike was poorly organized and confined to Paterson. The IWW, the main organizer of the strike, eventually gave up.
Today In Labor History April 3, 1917: After the U.S. declared war, sailors, escorted by police, destroyed the IWW building in Kansas City. The action inspired similar attacks in Detroit, Duluth and other towns that had a large IWW presence.
