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Title: Think It Over Author: Tim Acott Date: 2010 Language: en Topics: IWW, Industrial Workers of the World Source: http://libcom.org
Working people have only one real option in today’s economy. We have to
resist, with all our might, the big business program of further and
deeper poverty for working people.
For the first time in modern history profits are going up while wages
and benefits are going down. In the past the two have always been tied,
however unequally. Now the game has changed. Worse impoverishment and
more of it is the wave of the future if we don’t stand against the tide.
The working conditions we see today in Asia and Central America are a
good indication of the future of our own working lives in the “Western
Democracies.”
We have only one hope of fending off this tidal wave of misery. That
hope, that tool, is solidarity. Every working stiff must stand up for
every other working stiff, no matter where you live or where you come
from, no matter if you are male or female, young or old, we must stand
together. Every loss to any worker is a loss to us all, and every gain
by any part of the working class is a victory for us all.
We must stand together. We must refuse to handle scab goods, to buy scab
products, to cross the picket line. We must extend our hands across the
borders and across the seas. We must support each worker’s struggle as
if it were our very own because that is exactly what it is.
Together we can win. Together we can make this world a better place to
live, to raise our children, to spend our old age.
Direct action can be defined as the use of any tool, tactic or strategy
that you can control yourself. It means using tactics, which directly
address your problem. It’s straightforward and simple and you can trust
it. It succeeds or fails according to how good your idea is, how
forcefully it is applied, how appropriate it is to the situation.
Voting for candidates who promise to fix your problems for you is not
direct action. To strike, to slow down, to sit down on the job are
direct actions. To symbolically protest for the purpose of getting press
coverage, in hopes that it will build support or sympathy for your cause
is not direct action, no matter what the tactics of your protest may be.
To walk the picket line with a fellow worker from a different trade,
from a different shop, from a different nation is direct action.
It takes only the briefest glance at history to see that what is given
to us can be taken away. The only gains we can hope to hold are those
that we take and defend with our own hands and hearts. Those crumbs that
are thrown to us from time to time by the rich and their government are
always taken back.
The government serves the interest of the ruling class, and will always
do so. We can expect the same from them in the future as we have gotten
so far, a sop once in awhile perhaps, to confuse us and weaken our
resolve, but mostly the boot, the club, and the clanging of cell doors.
Direct action plus solidarity equals success.
The only tactics of struggle and defense that we can trust are those
that we, the working people, control. Direct action gets the goods. To
defend ourselves we need to stand together and stand up for ourselves.
In recent years union membership has steadily dropped. It’s no real
wonder, given the bureaucratic nature of the union movement and the
frequency of sellouts, that most working people today don’t have much
faith in the union. How could we?
Nonetheless, the need still exists for a working class organization to
defend and further the interest of the working people at their jobs.
That’s union. We need it. Nobody is going to stand up for us. The
political parties will court our votes and our donations, but real money
talks, and for now the bosses have the real money. They call the tunes
in politics. Our only option is union.
We need to build these unions right. We need to build them so that we
can control them, so that we can trust, them, so that they will serve
our needs only, not the needs of bosses and bureaucrats and political
hacks. That means union democracy. It means recallable elected officials
who report directly to the rank and file. It means that all-important
decisions are made directly by the membership. It means any job or
action or strike is controlled by and settled by the workers on the shop
floor. It means full disclosure on financial matters and rank and file
control over the union funds.
It means doing things very differently than they are done in the
business unions. It means doing things the way we do them in the IWW.
The unions that most working people belong to today, if they belong to
any union at all, are among the most undemocratic organizations on
earth. Officials are appointed, not elected. Settlements are arrived at
behind closed doors and presented to the rank and file for approval.
Maverick locals are put into receivership by the internationals. Union
bosses are entrenched for life, never facing the possibility of
returning to the shop floor, if indeed they’ve ever been there in the
first place.
Is it any wonder that union membership is down and workers’ confidence
in their leaders is almost nonexistent? Is it a miracle that we are
losing the gains we fought for in years past? Is it a surprise that the
sellout and sweetheart contract, the union thug and the wealthy union
bureaucrat are clichés that all associate with the modern labor
movement, while the fighting union militant rank and file organizer is
seen as a quaint concept from a bygone era?
In order to defend ourselves and our families we need to join together
in unions. We need our combined strength to face the rich and their
government. We need the union, but the union we need is a democratic
union. How else will it defend our needs and not those of our bosses?
How else can we control our own struggles, choose our own goals and our
own issues. We need democratic unions, rank and file control, shop floor
direct democracy to fight our fights. No union bureaucrat ever stood up
for the workers, and none ever will. We have to stand up for ourselves,
together, in democratic union. If we can’t control our union and its
leadership, then we can’t trust them. It’s just that simple
The essential value of union lies in what it can do. What it can do for
you and yours and for your class as a whole. What you can do with it.
How you can use it to do what you need to do. To do is a verb. Action is
what we’re talking about.
When we come together on the job to address our common problems with the
shared strength or our common action, we are doing something. We’re not
talking about it, though that’s important, and we’re not seeking
publicity and making a big show of it, though those things can be
valuable in their place. We are acting on it. Doing. We are the
subjects, to put it in grammatical terms, and the problem is our object,
upon which we, in common activity, act to change. That’s action, Verb.
In the construction trades the verb “to wobble” is commonly used to
describe a group action that seeks to address a problem on the job, a
problem with the boss, as on the job problems tend to be. To wobble the
job is to walk out, slow down, or all go to the boss for a "chat" on
work time. Straight up, to come together to address the problems by
direct means. That’s what it’s all about.
It’s happening all the time, all over the place. It’s a necessary part
of daily life on the job. You can do it too. You and your fellow
workers, on your job, can wobble the situation to make it better. That’s
job control, and that’s the thing we need to establish and protect, for
our own safety and health, to ensure good compensation for our precious
time, for fun and profit and relief from the boredom and loneliness that
pervades our lives in this modern workaday world.
The key to good wobbling is union. That’s small union, meaning
cooperation and concerted effort amongst fellows, people with the same
needs and circumstance, i.e.: the people you work next to day after day.
Alone we are weak and ineffectual. Together we are awesome in our power.
We have only to organize this power and to wield it, for our common
good, to make this world a better place. Together we can win. We just
have to do (verb) it. Let’s act now.
“The working class and the employing class have nothing in common” Says
the preamble of the constitution of the IWW. That’s the basis of our
approach to labor relations and unionism. Let’s look at this statement
for a second.
It doesn’t mean that workers and bosses are a different species, that
they don’t breathe the same polluted air and drink the same water,
though the air and water in a working class neighbor hood are a damn
shit filthier than they are up on the hill. It means that the two
classes, which first of all do exist, are in opposition, by their very
nature.
What’s good for the bosses – cheap labor maximally controlled and
passive, is bad for the workers. What’s good for the workers – maximum
control over the job, job conditions, objectives and methods, and
maximum compensation for our precious time is death to the bosses, and
they will fight it tooth and nail. It’s nothing personal, no more than a
lion hates a gazelle, it’s just a natural, impersonal, economic enmity
that can’t be gotten around nor safely ignored. It’s the principle that
runs our lives, capitalist and drove alike.
If a boss gets too chummy with the workers and tries to be their pal,
his/her business will suffer. If the worker gets too palsy with the
boss, s/he’ll be even more easily exploited and betrayed. Natural
enemies on the impersonal plane of economics. You can belong to the same
church and even drink at the same bar, but you can’t look out for each
other’s interests for long without endangering your own. This is pretty
simple and obvious to any working stiff that pays attention to daily
life. Smart bosses never forget it. It’s not esoteric at all; it’s
pragmatic and common good sense.
What it implies in terms of unionism is very radical, i.e.: oriented
toward the root cause and cures. It implies class solidarity. All
workers have the same interests as well as the same class enemy. It
implies union democracy. We’re in it together and only real rank and
file control can guide the union steadily and reliably. The only ones we
can trust are ourselves, and a union we don’t control directly is a very
real danger to our interests.
It implies militancy, because it illuminates a situation of ongoing
class war (not really too strong a term if you look at the destruction
that results) that must be won to come to an end. We have to fight tooth
and nail to defend our interests and our safety. It’s war, fellow
workers, and ugly as it is, we’re stuck with it and can only go forward
by organizing right and fighting the good fight.
The working class and employing class have nothing in common. It’s the
obvious common sense truth, and we can’t afford to ignore it.
Labor law is a branch of study that a person could go to college and get
a PH.D. in, and base a pretty lucrative career on. You could buy a car
every year, live in a big fine house on the hill, support a wife or
husband who never had to leave the home to earn money, be a member of
the country club, wear really nice clothes, and send your kids to Vassar
and Yale. In fact, the whole shooting match. Of course you wouldn’t have
a hell of a lot in common with the people you spent your day advocating
for, but then, what lawyer does? It’s a specialized profession, and it
pays well.
Don’t get me wrong. We appreciate our lawyers, especially when it’s our
butts on the dock. We want them to be real sharp and to know every
nuance of that complex tangled web of labor law.
But you and me don’t have the time and money to study labor law or go to
a big college. That costs money. We do, however, need to understand the
basic facts of labor law and how it affects our daily work lives on the
job.
Well, here it is in a nutshell. Labor law is set up by the bosses and
their government and courts system to keep you and me, the working
stiffs, from coming together and fighting for our piece of the pie, for
fear that we’ll want, and some day be able to take, the whole thing.
That’s the essential data. The basic idea behind Taft Hartley,
Laundrum-Griffith and all the rest is that you can have a union if you
really want one bad enough but it can only fight for certain things,
address certain issues, and it has to wear leg weights and boxing gloves
and follow an elaborate set of rules that don’t really, in practice,
apply to your boss and his friends at the country club. You have to
wait, but he or she can get snappy service in court. You have to limit
your activities to these certain legal forms, but he or she can do just
about anything and get away with it. Their lawyers are bigger than ours,
every time out, because they cost more. You ought to see the cars they
drive!
Does this come as a surprise to you, here in the Land of the Free and
the Home of the Brave? I certainly hope not. You see, this isn’t really
a democracy, because the economic decisions aren’t made that way, and
they underlie all the other decisions that get made. The flow of money,
products, goods and services, food and housing, medical care and
vacation fun, that stuff falls under the other system of decision
making. You can call it capitalism, or corporate rule, or business, or
whatever you choose, but you can’t really call it democracy. Everybody
will laugh at that. So, the law isn’t the law of the people, by the
people, for the people, no matter what your teacher may have told you.
Sorry, but it’s just not that way.
Labor Law is the product or the influence of big business interests on
government and the court system, and it means you have to watch you head
and the other end, too, and be real careful what you say and do. If you
want to play it their way, just go along with the set-up system. Get
your cards signed, call for an NLRB election, wait it out. There may be
times when this is the smart way to go. But don’t let the boss define
the playing field and call all the shots.
This is a street fight, a mugging, a cold and calculated assault, and
you need to defend yourself as best you can however you can. Watch you
head, and the other end too, and use your creativity and especially the
help of your fellow workers, and every strategy and tactic and clever
idea you can get your hands on. If you let them define the playing field
and make the rules, you simply haven’t a prayer of winning. It’s that
simple. And that, fellow workers, is labor law in a nutshell.
It’s not, however, the only game in town, the only way to proceed, the
only solution to your common problems. Check out the IWW. Think it over,
join the union of your class and fight for the full product of your
labor, the wobbly way. Don’t let them call the shots and make the rules.
This is our game. We do the work. We make the stuff and haul it around.
We control the economy. If we will organize ourselves democratically to
advance our own interest, we can share the wealth that we already
produce, and have enough for all that do a share of the work.
“We Never Forget” So it says on many of the older IWW stickers and
posters, especially those from the 1920’s when the prisons of America
still housed hundreds of our members arrested in the late teems and
early 20’s on charges of criminal syndicalism, sabotage and sedition.
Obviously, one meaning of the slogan was that we would never abandon
these precious fellow workers until they all walked free in the sunlight
again. And to our credit, we never did. We kept on doing everything in
our power to free our brothers and sisters, locked down in the class war
that burned so hot in those long gone days. But, the slogan has another
meaning. One that runs deeper and applies even more poignantly today,
when the class war is just heating up again. It’s about what late Fellow
Worker and sage mentor Bruce “Utah” Phillips called “The Long Memory”
and which he describes as our most dangerous weapon, our greatest tool.
How can that be? Maybe it’s that old thing about history either
informing or entrapping you. In these times anything old is disrespected
and cast away, to our great misfortune and loss. The old stories are
forgotten, the old people ignored. Not so with us in the IWW, and that’s
one of our strengths. An ace up our sleeve when one is sorely needed.
What can we gain by this long memory, this unfashionable occupation with
the past? These stories contain abiding truths, examples of how the
working class coped with the higher level of struggle, a hotter brand of
trouble, a more naked fist of attack, in times gone by. We can’t copy
these old actions or treat them as blueprints to be followed with
exacting accuracy. That would be foolish. But the core information,
about how the wobblies of yesteryear looked at the problems they faced,
and how they applied the principles and knowledge of their many
struggles and many battles, that’s the gold we must mine and refine.
How these long dead fellow workers went at it, in their daily lives,
their mental processes and attitudes, their shared world view, if you
will, that this is what we need today to guide us through the broken
glass and sharp rusty metal of our ugly-industrial wasteland pathway.
Times have changed and things are different, but the essentials remain
the same. The class war still rages, hotter now, cooler for a bit, then
hotter again. The same madness still drives our class enemies to the
wanton destruction of all that surrounds them. The same danger and evil
still stalks the days and nights of our lives. The same rules apply, in
different wording and with different application perhaps, but more the
same than new and different.
The long memory, the wisdom of experience accumulated over 105 years of
active participation in the class war, bought with the blood and
suffering, the days and years of experience of fellow workers numbering
more than 1 million (the “x” in our card numbers signifies one million,
thus I, #X344468, am the 1344468th working stiff to take out a red card,
to commit myself to the battle between boss and worker, capital and
labor).
It’s mostly lost already, these stories and moments, these long past
lives of simple fighters and brilliant thinkers, fiery talkers and
dogged organizers, yet when we take out the red card and pay the monthly
dues, we carry on the same struggle, lift again the same red banner and
carry it along a little further toward “that commonwealth of toil that
is to be.” We join the unbroken chain of class warriors that stretches
across a century, through the generations. My grandfather wasn’t a
Wobbly, but many were. We seek to carry on their knowledge and their
thoughts, to see how they came to their decisions, in hopes that these
insights will guide us forward into the light of a new day, in a new
world of peace and prosperity, joy and sharing.
William D. Haywood, AKA Big Bill, used to sign his letters and
correspondences “Help the work along, William D. Haywood.” He was a
founding organizer and the General Secretary Treasurer of the IWW for
many years, through our most turbulent times, and a great leader. That
closing formula tells you a lot about his method of leadership, and the
union of the time.
Help the work along. We joined together, then and now, to do a job of
work, to accomplish a task, for ourselves and each other, for our class
and for generations to come. That task, simply stated in the preamble,
is the Abolition of the Wage System. Building a new society within the
shell of the old. Ending, once and for all the tyranny of money, boss
over worker.
It’s a big job. Too big by far to be accomplished by any one hero or
small band of heroes, no matter how mighty. Help the work along. It’s a
big job that takes however long it takes, however many battles and
however many hours of volunteer labor and thought. However many tasks,
small or large, completed. Hours of travel, putting the paper out on
time issue after issue, year after year, however many meetings and
discussions, ballots printed and mailed and counted, dues stamps sold
and licked and stuck in however many little red books, moneys counted
and accounted for.
Not all that sexy, most of it. Business like and often plodding. Hard
work lightened by many hands, shared hours, and little steps. Sometimes
just holding the line against setbacks. Sometimes not even that. Some
leaps and bonds.
“Every member and organizer,” “We are all leaders,” “If each wobbly
would make a new wobbly once a week we’d have the cooperative
Commonwealth in a few short years.” Help the work along.
The work: Education, Organization, Emancipation. Those are the names of
the three stars on the IWW emblem on every dues book and button.
Education, both of self and fellow workers. Organization, both of self
and fellow workers. Emancipation of a class in struggle, at war, and of
the earth that feeds and holds us all.
Won’t you join us in our work? Help the work along? What else is there
to do?