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Title: Weakening the Dam Author: Twin Cities IWW Date: 2011 Language: en Topics: workplace struggles, labor organizing, union organizing Source: Retrieved on 10th December 2021 from https://libcom.org/library/weakening-dam-twin-cities-iww
The IWWâs number one priority right now should be to build up the
confidence, competency, and commitment of IWW organizers, and to
organize to turn more workers into IWW organizers. This pamphlet is
meant to offer some more resources for this approach. There are some
more resources in the IWWâs organizer training and in the higher level
organizer training that the IWW is currently testing out. There are a
lot more resources among IWW organizers, resources that are not written
down but are in peopleâs heads.
The particular material collected in this pamphlet includes selections
from the Workers Power column that regularly runs in the Industrial
Worker newspaper. All of the Workers Power columns are online at
/ After the selections from Workers Power are two check lists, one for
developing people as active IWW members and another for developing
people as workplace militants. After the checklist is a sample timeline
for an IWW noncontractual organizing campaign.
Historical Note
Here is a page or so of IWW history, to explain some of the perspective
behind this pamphletâs goal of organizer development. The IWW was
founded at a convention that started on June 27^(th), 1905. The IWW
founding convention resulted from a prior conference in January, 1905.
The January conference resulted from an informal meeting and exchanges
of letters between radical unionists in November of 1904. The January
conference produced a document called the Industrial Union Manifesto,
which called for the June convention at which the IWW was founded.
In 1913 Paul Brissenden noted that âthe Industrial Workers of the World
is not the first organization of workers built upon the industrial form.
Even its revolutionary character can be traced back through other
organizationsâ such as the Knights of Labor, the Western Federation of
Miners, the American Labor Union, the United Metal Workers International
Union, the Brewery Workers, and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance.
The point is that the IWW did not drop from the sky. It was the result
of a process based on earlier experiences and ideas. The Western
Federation of Miners (WFM), one of the most important radical working
class organizations of its day, played a very important role in the
founding and early history of the IWW. The WFM itself grew out of a
process. A number of minersâ unions merged in the early 1890s. Before
they merged, they had to be organized in the first place.
Thereâs a point to all this history. Today is not June 27^(th), 1905.
The world has moved forward, of course, but for many people in the
working class we have moved backward.Our class is less organized. If
anything, the present is as much or more like the 1880s than 1905.
Itâs not 1905. Our present tasks are not much like the tasks of the
people who founded the IWW. Our present tasks are more like the people
who worked to form the initial unions who later merged to form the WFM.
June 27^(th), 1905 is a long term goal. We need to begin a long-term
process which will end with something like June 27^(th), 1905, and which
will begin a new process like the one that was started with the IWW
founding convention. As a first step toward that process, we need more
confident, capable committed IWW organizers, recruited from the ranks of
the working class through our organizing. Hopefully this pamphlet helps
with that. There is much else that has to happen. We have so much to do.
âTo build the new society you need new people and people can be
transformed only in activity.â â Martin Glaberman, Work and Working
Class Consciousness.
March 20^(th), 2004. Over the course of a year a group of UPS loaders
had developed a lot of comradery with one another. They had the power,
and they openly expressed it by refusing to work at the speed demanded
by the bosses. A new worker was brought in and management tried its best
to isolate him from the activist group. When this fellow worker defied
management and lined up with the rest of the workers, working at their
pace, calling management âblue shirtsâ and spending his breaks with
other militant workers, management brought even more pressure on him,
pushing him to change and work faster or he would be fired. His
coworkers responded after a break one morning by refusing to go back to
work until a certain blue shirt, the one mostly responsible for the
pressure brought on the new worker,was taken off of the line. It was a
stand-off, and the tension was high, none of them having been involved
in anything like this before. They won their demand, the supervisor was
taken off the line, and they were threatened with firings if they tried
anything like that again. Over the course of the next year they all
began to leave the job, moving to other work, other shifts at UPS, or to
other departments.
Roughly a year and a half after the action had taken place, two friends
from the UPS job visit for the first time in awhile. Chatting over a
beer, one had quit UPS but the other still worked there. He relayed how
he would bring the story up whenever he saw their old despised manager,
how that blue shirtâs face would turn red and he would storm off.
Nostalgic for the old crew and their bold action at work, the worker who
had since moved on called another former coworker. He too expressed
pride in their defiance of the boss and added that he looked forward to
the next time he could stick it to management to show âem who was really
in charge. Though the gains were long gone, the memory and experience
still lingered, with the workers holding onto a desire to take action
next time they have the strength.
May 17^(th), 2006. Messengers from Arrow Messenger Service in Chicago
gather for a special anniversary party at a fellow workerâs home.
Exactly one year ago, on a busy Thursday afternoon, they all had turned
off their two-way radios messengers use to communicate to their
dispatcher. Having been through three fruitless negotiating sessions
with the company, this was their way of showing Arrow that if the bosses
wouldnât meet their terms, the company wouldnât run. After a pitched
battle during the ensuing month, the company agreed to the workersâ
demands.
As they gather at the anniversary party, make little drunken speeches
and reminisce over last years drawn-out struggle, only three or four of
them â out of twenty â still work at the company. Several were fired
during the campaign, others quit in frustration, and others just decided
to move on. There is virtually no organization left at the company and
no existing struggle against the boss to speak of. In another year the
union will be completely gone from Arrow and what will become of the
gains made in Winter 2005 is anyoneâs guess.
But one thing is clear, no one there would have changed a thing. For
some it was the greatest experience at work they had ever been a part
of. There is consensus that the whole thing was nothing less than
life-changing. Crappy work is no longer something that must only be
endured. It can be collectively resisted.
At first glance one can look at these shopfloor skirmishes and see
defeat. Gains were eroded, and no lasting organization was ever built.
But through struggle we produce more than better or worse working
conditions, resolved or unresolved grievances, and union or no union. We
produce new kinds of people. A major part of our organizing has to be a
change in consciousness. This is why our tactics are so important. This
type of change in outlook isnât facilitated as clearly through an NLRB
election campaign. Direct action, where workers themselves are making
the change, gives the feeling of power to us workers. Most members of
our class have not felt this power, but once it has been summoned up it
is much harder to push down.
When we workers act as a group we are making a statement to each fellow
worker involved. This statement is clear, I am willing to stand here
with your if you are here to stand with me. We may win this fight, or we
may lose, but that statement always stays with us. It resonates with us
as we go through our lives. When we organize and when we take action
that effectively challenges our boss, we have the power to demand the
changes we want to see. This is the key to understanding why these types
of actions change our lives. In the UPS story, workers stood up, put
themselves on the line for another worker. In the Arrow story, workers
took action to strengthen their position and to make a clear point: we
are united and without US you do not have a company. When we put
ourselves on the line for one another, no one forgets what is possible
afterward.
The concept of producing organizers at one company who scatter out to
others companies has become a maxim for some IWW organizers in
industry-wide efforts, and the concept is a good one, but thereâs
something more to it. Not everyone is going to become an organizer but
everyone is going to have do assess the fight theyâve just been through
and draw conclusions for their own lives. When the dust settles from our
action, as it inevitably does, we are left to consider what happened. We
have seen the power we have as workers, a power unknown before. It may
not occur to us immediately, but with any major change in our lives,
there is a resonance â a white noise that does not go away. It could be
a month later and we could be at the same job, or a year later and we
could be two jobs down the road, but we will remember. And when we have
the chance, we line up with, or maybe even lead, an effort to organize
and take a stand against the boss. This time we do it with less
hesitation than before, maybe with more foresight and with more vigor,
because now we know exactly what it means.
The bottom line is this: our organizing needs to have as its byproduct a
new increase in workersâ willingness to resist â an increase in our
propensity to act on our urges to resist the bosses â even if the
resistance is individual. This is the revolutionary outcome. This will
lay the groundwork for future organizing, in this industry or others. To
âorganize the worker not the jobâ as we say in this union, is to
gradually create new kinds of people, people who are most likely to
never again roll over and take the shit the boss throws at them.
The Missoula Floods were enormous landscape-changing events during the
last ice age, some of which discharged 2.6 billion gallons of water
every second, but they were only possible due to sudden small ruptures
of the ice dam on the Clark Ford River. Small ruptures led to larger
ruptures, they built off each other weakening the dam. In the IWW, our
workplace committees, our campaigns, and our fights with the boss have
ruptured production, only to have seen companies rebound and get back to
business. But the true ruptures are the changed individuals that come
out the other end of these fights. One day our years of struggles will
turn these ruptures into a revolutionary flood that will forever change
the landscape of the worldâs economy.
We want to do two things on the job at the same time: build organization
and improve conditions. We could do these separately. For instance, we
could build organization with no plan to improve conditions, like
setting up a poker night or a knitting circle. Or we could try to
improve conditions without building organization, by bribing or kissing
up to the supervisor. Neither of those has much to do with being a
union. Being a union means union builds organization by improving
conditions, or improves conditions by building organization.
To build organization and improve conditions we have to take actions on
the job. Action is the oxygen of a union. We start off by taking the
existing informal organization on the job â the current relationships
and communication and level of agitation â and directing this against
the boss in the form of an action.
In planning an action, pick an issue that people care about. Ask, âwho
has the power to change this issue?â For instance, the nightshift
supervisor in the receiving department at a factory probably canât
control the health insurance plan or introduce a new health plan. But
they can control how they enforce policy on bathroom breaks and how
respectfully they treat employees.
List the issues people want improved and who has control over each
issue. List the lowest level boss with decision-making power on each
issue. Generally speaking, the lower they are on the food-chain, the
less it will take to make them do what you want. This is important early
on when you only have a small group. Five people in one department
probably wonât win much for all 100 people in the plant.
But they could win improvements in that department that can be used to
recruit more people in order to take on bigger issues and do more
outreach. Thatâs building organization.
Early in a campaign itâs useful to focus on what could be called
emotional actions or emotional pressure. Hereâs what I mean. Work is a
headache for us, and to a lesser degree itâs headache for our bosses.
Generally itâs more of a headache for the boss the lower they are on the
food-chain at work. Emotional action is when we offer our boss a choice:
make work less of a headache for us or we will make work more of a
headache for the boss. This is easier the lower the level of the boss.
If the boss is a supervisor we see everyday, then they will care more
about our opinions and how we treat them.
When we collectively confront the boss about conditions make our lives
unpleasant, we give the boss an unpleasant experience. Think of this as
sharing the wealth of misery that our jobs give us. By giving the boss a
taste of their own medicine, making the boss take a helping of what our
jobs force on us, we can start to force the boss to make small
improvements on the job. That in turn helps us explain to our coworkers
that we can improve our jobs by organizing together, and that if even
more people get involved we can win even bigger improvements.
We have nothing in common with them as a class but sometimes we need to
talk to our bosses. When we confront our bosses, for instance, we need
to talk to them. A lot of bosses seem to have an instinct for turning
the tables on us, and a lot of us workers have a habit of letting them
do so. We spend so much time following their orders and they spend so
much time giving orders that when we speak up it can be almost as
disorienting for us as it is for them. That can make it easy for the
boss to take back control in conversation.
For us to keep control in conversation with the boss we need to know
what we want to have happen. We canât get our way if we donât know what
our way is. If we donât have a plan then things canât go according to
plan.
Letâs say weâre going to confront a boss about making someone stay late.
Here are some ways the boss might respond: justify the decision (âwe had
more work, someone had to do itâ), bring up some other issue (âwell, you
all are out of uniformâ), try to guilt you in some way (âyou do this
after I got you that nice coffee maker for the break room?â), bring up
the way you raised the issue (âyou shouldnât bring this up in a groupâ),
point you to someone else or somewhere else (âyou should bring this up
at our team meeting,â âyou really should go through Human Resourcesâ),
or question your right to bring it up at all (âthis is a private matter
between me and that person, itâs none of the rest of your business.â)
There are other possible responses. The point is, you should think about
the different ways your boss will respond, and know how you will reply
in each case.
The goal in replying to a bossâs response is to come back to your issue
and your goal. Donât get side-tracked. Donât argue. At most, acknowledge
what they said, (âwe appreciate the new coffee makerâ, âwe tried to
bring this up with HRâ), but donât let them turn the conversation to be
about that. State your issue again, and what you want. âYou make us work
late and it causes problems for us. Will you stop that?â If they keep
bringing up other things, and they probably will, say âThis isnât about
that, weâre here to talk about you making us work late.â Then re-state
your issue and what you want.
The over all point is that our issue and our demand is not up for
discussion. We are not going to be talked out of feeling like a problem
at work is a pain in the neck and we are not going to be talked into
having our demand disregarded. We are making clear that the issue is a
problem and we are presenting our demand to fix it. If you have to, just
say âweâre not here to debate with you or to discuss other things. We
want to know if you will stop extending peopleâs hours or not. Thatâs
all we want to talk about. Will you stop?â
Stick to the script and you can turn the tables on the boss.
On a 100 degree summer day I was in Stockton, at the Sikh temple meeting
room. A middle aged trucker with a long, flowy beard asked me âHow do we
show the other drivers who werenât at our meeting today what the union
is and why they should join?â I struggled to give him a good, clear
answer on this one. I improvised an analogy on the spot. I think it
paints a picture of our Solidarity Unionism organizing model in
practice: âKnow the Union, Hear the Union, See the Union.â Let me break
it down.
First you give the whole saying: âHereâs how our organizing works. Some
workers will know the union, some will hear the union, but others have
to see the union.â If you have a marker and paper, draw three circles
around each other (like a bulls eye target). In the middle one write
âknow,â the next âhear,â and the outer most circle âsee.â
Youâll get a raised eye brow or maybe a âhuh?â look on the faces of
folks, which usually translates to âWhat the hell is this crazy IWW
organizer trying to tell me now?â Donât worry, this is actually good. If
you get this reaction it means people will be interested to hear the
explanation. Point to everyone in the room. Tell them that they are the
workers who know the union. Point out that they are the workers that
have attended meetings, are initiating the organizing and maybe have
already taken out a red card. From experience or being fed up, they
already know collective action is needed to fight for change on the job
and that this is the definition of a union. Usually this group is small,
but itâs the starting point for every campaign.
The people who know the union talk to other folks. Some of the people
they talk to will be quickly convinced. Theyâre the ones who hear the
union. Maybe they wonât come to the first meeting or they might want to
know that itâs a legit effort and not the malcontents of the month, but
once they are asked they will participate. This is usually the first
layer of workplace leaders that are brought into an organizing
committee.
Most workers are in the third camp, ones who need to see the union. They
wonât be meaningfully won over to the organizing effort simply by
telling them something. These folks are skeptical that collective action
by workers can win. Theyâre probably scared of losing their jobs or
maybe had a bad experience with another union.
Hereâs how we move the workers who need to see the union in action. The
workers who know the union organize and build relationships and
leadership among the folks who hear about the union. Together both
groups take action to change small issues. This demonstrates in practice
what a union is. Other workers see the union in action and start to
understand that change is really possible.
For myself this is one of the most useful concepts when beginning to
organize. Organizing starts with those who âknowâ the union, they bring
in the folks who âhearâ about the union and together they take action to
move the workers who need to âseeâ the union. How this plays out in the
long run is that workers move from âseeingâ to âknowingâ the union
through becoming involved in the organizing and action. This process
builds the IWW and builds a conscious and militant working class.
Some time ago Workers Power ran a column in which a Fellow Worker
promoted the idea of âKnow the Union, Hear the Union, See the Unionâ as
way of explaining how a healthy campaign sustains itself and grows.
Having participated in some organizing, I found myself often re-reading
that piece as a source of inspiration and advice. I hope to expand the
âKnow the Union...â organizing approach by offering my thoughts on how
to put it into practice.
In any workplace there are going to be some workers who will quickly be
attracted to an organizing drive. Perhaps theyâve been involved in
organizing before; perhaps they have some level of ideological
agreement; or perhaps they simply have a high level of grievances. In
any case, these workers âknow the unionâ and typically come together to
form the initial organizing committee.
For other co-workers, theyâll have to be persuaded to join the campaign
through a series of one-on-one conversations. They need to âHear the
Unionâ to get agitated about workplace issues and realize they donât
have to face them alone.
Most workers, however, fall into the third camp: âSee the Unionâ.
Theyâll have to see the power of collective action before they get
involved. As our Fellow Worker summed up in the previous column:
âHereâs how we move the workers who need to see the union in action. The
workers who know the union organize and build relationships and
leadership among the folks who hear about the union. Together both
groups take action to change small issues. This demonstrates in practice
what a union is. Other workers see the union in action and start to
understand that change is really possible.â
For our friend, âKnow the Union...â proved helpful when organizing
slowed and workplace militants got frustrated at the pace of growth.
âKnow the Union...â encouraged workers to get âback to the basicsâ of
successful organizing: one-on-one conversations and group meetings to
plan and undertake winnable direct action grievances. It also
demonstrated the role the existing leadership should play in instituting
a continual process by which co-workers are led up the âhear, see, knowâ
ladder until a culture of solidarity and collective activity is
instituted in a workplace.
Thereâs another important lesson to take away from this: many
self-identified radicals have little real-world organizing experience.
This is okay. Like anything else, organizing takes practice. What we do
have, however, is a wealth of grand arguments supporting class struggle
and a vision for a post-capitalist future. Because of this thereâs a
temptation to âintellectualizeâ the organizing process. Speaking from
personal experience, I know what itâs like to feel unsure about doing
something new, especially when it comes to organizing. Itâs tempting to
fall back on something weâre more comfortable withâlike making the
argument for why we need a revolutionary union.
Reality, however, is much more complicated than a well-phrased argument.
Instead of trying to âwin the organizing argumentâ weâre much better off
building relationships of trust with our co-workers. Through this
relationship, we engage our co-workers in small scale winnable actions.
These actions, in turn, lay the groundwork for larger struggles and
deeper conversations.
To put it another way, workersâconscious of it or notâundertake
individual anti-capitalist acts all the time. Workmates, however, often
need to see collective activity in action before theyâre willing to join
a union. From there, itâs involvement in collective struggle that opens
a space for us, as radicals, to begin having discussion about class,
capitalism, and the labor movement.
As organizers, âKnow the Unionâ not only helps us not only to remember
that organizing is a process, but forces us to recognize that many times
âaction precedes consciousnessâ. The most important thing organizers do
is not winning arguments or making rousing speeches, but actually
building the relationships that form the basis of any successful
campaign.
Anyone who works out regularly knows that results in physical fitness
pretty much come from only two things: persistence and time. The same
thing is true in organizing. Organizing gets results when itâs
persistent over the long haul. Persistent long term organizing must be
systematic. A key to being systematic is putting things in riting.
In recent times the IWW has mostly organized relatively small workplaces
or small units within larger workplaces. With small groups of people
itâs pretty easy to remember everyoneâs name, what they do, what
experiences weâve had with them. As a result, many of us have gotten
into the habit of keeping a lot of information in our heads. This works
in smaller settings. This wonât work once we get much beyond 20 or 30
people, because it all gets to be too much to remember. Whatâs more,
when we make a habit of storing information in our head, itâs harder to
assess whatâs really happening at work, because our feelings shape our
perceptions of whatâs in our heads even more than whatâs in writing.
Depending on whether weâre feeling optimistic or pessimistic, this can
lead us not to see real progress, or to overlook important steps that we
fail to take.
One key activity to systematic organizing is charting regularly. By
âchartingâ I mean when the organizers on a campaign get together and do
a written assessment of our current presence on the job. Start with one
sheet of paper. List all the facilities or departments in our campaign.
Then list all the IWW members in each facility or department, followed
by the names of other people we have contact with, and the total number
of people in each place. Next to every name, write down whether or not
someone has done a good one on one with them, when this was, and how it
went. There will be more to say that doesnât go on the chart, of course,
as people talk about what worked and didnât work in their one on ones.
(This is also a good opportunity to do a roleplay about what the
organizer might have said differently, but thatâs a subject for another
time.)
The process of charting helps us make decisions about who to talk to â
the people we havenât talked to in a long time, the people who are
slipping, the people we havenât talked to at all. That can sound
obvious, but charting tells us exactly who those people are. It also
helps us identify the gaps in our knowledge. (âI just realized, I donât
know how many custodians work third shift. We should find out.â) Getting
that information is a task that someone new to the campaign could take
on with the help of a more experienced organizer.
On another sheet of paper, write down the tasks that have come up based
on the chart. Write down who is going to do each task, and who is going
to check in with everyone to make sure they did their task.
Written charts and task lists should be kept after the meeting, and
ideally they should be typed up. The next time the organizers chart, get
out the old ones and compare. Get out the task list too, to make sure
everyone did their tasks, and to discuss how the tasks went. This helps
show progress â âIn the last month weâve talked to 15 more people, this
means we have talked to half the workers by now!â â which can keep our
inspiration going. It also helps show patterns we might not have noticed
â âWeâre talking to a lot more of the white workers, and to day shift
workers, letâs figure out how to break out of those networks and talk to
more peopleâ â which can in turn help us identify new tasks.
Unless organizing is systematic, it will most likely rely too heavily on
the social groups at work that we are most comfortable with. Charting is
not the only part of organizing systematically, but itâs one key piece
of the puzzle.
The primary task of an organizer is to build more organizers. We need
more and more working class leaders and the way to do this is to
constantly replace yourself. Hereâs a few easy ways to help you build up
your successors:
Reveal your sources so others can think with you: âI had a long talk
with MK recently. He really convinced me that we should reorganize as a
shop committee instead of having one or two âstewardsâ. He gave me this
awesome article on how IWW shop committees used to work.â Telling others
where you got an idea from demonstrates that you think of them as
equals. You also provide an opportunity for them question your sources.
Show others how itâs done and take them through the process: âHey Keith,
has anyone showed you how to post an article to iww.org? Iâm going to
post that write-up on the strike right now. Let me show you how to do
it. We need another person who can post.â Pass on the technical know-how
so others can be âexpertsâ just like you.
Encourage people because you believe in them and you know they can do
it: âWe really need this message to get to the people upfront. Can you
have a talk with Shannon? She respects you and youâre the best person to
talk to her.â You run faster for coaches that want to win. Weâve got to
show that what we do matters and that we believe in each other.
Ask people to do things that are difficult. Move them to take on
responsibilities outside their comfort level: âIâm glad youâve been
talking things up so much at your shop. Youâre one of our best guys,
Jerm. The next step is for you to start coming to the Industrial
Organizing Committee meetings. I know its gonna be tight with your
schedule but weâre gonna help you fit it in. You have to be there or
this thing doesnât move.â We need to help others break out and step up.
Itâs a sign of respect to ask people to do difficult things.
Train your replacement for an officer position: âHey, Mei, you got a
second? Has anyone talked to you about becoming the chair of the
Committee? Iâm going to be stepping down at the end of my term and
youâre everyoneâs pick for this position. Put some thought into it.
Meanwhile Iâll start showing you what the job entails.â If we train new
officers properly and regularly, we can avoid crust and dust in our
leadership structures.
Encourage other members to read what youâve read: âFor those that didnât
make it to the Summit, Maxine did a killer presentation on the legal
barriers to organizing in her industry. It totally reminded me of this
thing I read in an old One Big Union Monthly. So I ran off some photo
copies of that article for yâall to check out. I think it will help us
come up with some good strategies we can try.â In making IWW history and
principles accessible, you cut down on the knowledge monopoly and pass
on valuable lessons and experiences.
Introduce people to each other and have them exchange phone numbers:
âTenaya, have you met Steve yet? Steve, this is Tenaya. Yeah, you guys
both work in the same industry and would have some awesome stories to
tell each other. You two ought to collaborate and submit something for
the next newsletter.â By introducing and ensuring info exchange, you
avoid âOl Boys Clubsâ and now information doesnât have to go through
you.
The task that we have as IWWs is to build working class leaders
everywhere we go. We are constantly looking for opportunities to teach
others what we know so that they could do what we do without us.
First we dream up our goals. Big goals and small Goals. Our ââŹËultimate
goalsâ are visionary. They are the grand ones written on the wall and
they stare at us. They are our inspiration. Our ââŹËintermediate goalsâ,
are the stepping stones. These goals create the conditions for the grand
ones. They lead us to the right path. Then we have our ââŹËimmediate
goalsâ--day-to-day demands. These goals are the victories we achieve
once a week or once every five years. Winning these demands makes our
lives better and demonstrates our power, both to our enemies and to
ourselves.
Next we draft a strategy. This strategy takes us to our goals. Our
strategy is practical but anticipates huge possibilities. Our strategy
aims us through the day-to-day goals on our way to the bigger ones. If
our strategy builds workersâ power then we are unleashing the
possibilities to achieve anything. However, if our strategy is aimed
only at the day-to-day goals, without the stepping stones, weâll never
realize our grand vision.
Lastly, we select tactics. These tactics fit our strategy like a glove.
By taking these actions as a group, we prepare for bigger things.
Remember--goals. Then strategy. Then tactics. Thatâs the dope! Now letâs
put them together in a fun example. The big goal is free food for every
human being. No one should starve while there is food. No one should pay
for a basic human right. We already have the ability to feed the worldâs
population yet the captains of industry stand in our way. They withhold
food from the market in an effort to keep up the price--to keep food
ââŹËprofitable.â If workers held the whole operation, from the farms to
the stores, we could decide how to produce food and distribute
it--freely, democratically the world over. We could feed the world for
free and shorten the workweek in the process! The intermediate goal is
workersâ domination of the agriculture and food stuff Industry. If we
run it, start to finish, we can do with it what we please. The immediate
goal--whatâs necessary to feed ourselves today--might happen to be a pay
raise for a specific group of food stuff workers. The immediate goal
doesnât have to be directly connected to the larger goals. Workers need
things to survive and thrive and we demand these things on a daily
basis. We use the immediate goals to prepare for the bigger goals. How
do we do it? Strategy!
The strategy is workersâ power. Workers power on every farm, in every
processing plant, around every terminal and warehouse, at every grocery
store and fruit stand. Workersâ power. We want the fighting spirit on
every ââŹËshop floor.â We want that power coordinated across the entire
industry worldwide. We want the power to change conditions and dominate
an industry so that nothing happens in that industry unless the workers
agree to it. To build power locally and industrially, workers will need
shopfloor and industrial committees to make collective decisions and
coordinate actions.
Getting a pay raise for a group of food stuff workers doesnât mean
capturing the industry. That pay raise only advances our movement if
food stuff workers won it themselves. If someone else won it for the
workers, then their confidence and power has not increased. This
workersâ power extends past the organization itself. It outstrips a
simple âunionâ and moves into a generalized and internalized culture of
resistance where workers realize our power and act using that power
constantly. We want agriculture and food stuff workers to be arrogant,
ungovernable, and explosive. We want them to feel entitled to run the
world. (Someday theyâll have to!)
Given that workersâ power is the strategy, weâll need to develop the
skills and experience of individual worker-organizers in the industry.
Expanding leadership capabilities to more and more workers increases the
power of each sub-body in the industry. Therefore, part of our strategy
has to be actively training workers and building an ever-increasing pool
of experienced and dedicated organizers. Remember our goal was free food
for every human being? Getting to this goal will likely mean having to
develop our organizers into conscious revolutionaries. Even more likely
is that these worker-organizers will, through strikes and struggles,
become more radical than the teachers of revolution. Therefore, that
individual development must be part of the strategy. Our strategy calls
for building workers into organizer and organizers into revolutionaries.
We form shopfloor and industrial committees which help push the struggle
forward. Next month weâll talk about what tactics uppity agriculture and
food stuff workers might employ. What do you suppose are the tactics
that will multiply our power, deepen our resolve, increase our
confidence, expand our consciousness, and set the stage for achieving
our dreams?
Last month we talked about goals, strategy, and tactics. We called forth
our visions--our ultimate goals. As an example, we said: âFree food for
every human being.â Then we came up with intermediate goals: âWorkers
domination of the agriculture and food stuff industry.â But to feed
ourselves this week, our immediate goal was a pay raise. Next, we
planned out a strategy--both to get us that pay raise and to set us on
our way to our dreams. We designed our strategy to unite around
immediate necessities and build our strength to achieve the impossible.
Our strategy groups workers into shop floor and industrial committees.
Workers group together in many ways, however, so weâll work with what
the situation calls for. To implement this strategy, weâre going to
select tactics.
Tactics are the concrete actions taken to further a strategy. Our
tactics must demonstrate our resolve to transform the food stuff
industry. The effort to get a group of food stuff workers a pay raise
relies on workersâ collective mass action. The shop floor and industrial
committees choose tactics that build confidence and successfully
demonstrate to food stuff workers their power ââŹËat the point of
production.â
A scenario might play out like this: Workers sign a letter and present
it to the boss in a group. Everyone wears a special t-shirt. If the boss
refuses, then they all participate in a âcold-shoulder dayâ to let the
boss know nobodyâs happy. Workers leafleting customers, vendors,
transportation workers, workers at neighboring businesses, and investors
might be necessary. The point is to demonstrate to the boss your unity
and resolve. If management remains stubborn, then a âsick outâ or a slow
down might be next.
The point is to have the workers on the shop floor decide on a tactic
and take action together. If our actions rely too heavily on a âthird
partyâ-- the media, lawyers, negotiators, or even the so-called
âcommunity,â we might still achieve the pay raise. But whose skills,
confidence, and power are we building and demonstrating? If weâre doing
our job right, every small victory we achieve is a boost to workersâ
confidence in themselves.
When workers are accustomed to demanding concessions through the use of
our power at the workplace, we see that we have strength. When workers
feel this power, we shift from ââŹËbread and butterâ demands to broad
political demands that represent our aspirations. If workers in the
agriculture and food stuff industry world wide get good at demanding
control over their jobs, pretty soon theyâll demand control of food
itself.
This was just one example. Can you see how it all fits together? This
way of looking at the work we do can be applied to almost anything. From
planning a strike to printing branch t-shirts, the âgoals, strategy,
tacticsâ method helps us look more closely at our activity.
Ever wanted to do a tactic that conflicts with your--or has
no--strategy? Often this is a problem of unstated goals. For instance,
you might want to walk out immediately but the â5 Year Planâ calls for
organizing quietly. In this case, responding to a particular offense,
and the temporary freedom that comes from action, might be the real goal
and the far-off revenge of industry-wide standards doesnât seem worth
the wait. The unstated goals of many tactics are some form of
satisfaction. It is important to recognize this and balance a patient
strategy with our irrepressible desires.
When we use this method, we call into question certain assumptions about
âtacticsâ that might seem self-evident. Do we come up with a
tactic--âLetâs put out a press release!â âLetâs picket!â--then dream up
our goals from what we think we can win? Or might we plan out a strategy
and selectively choose tactics that will build workersâ power
effectively? This method also puts to the test certain so-called
âprinciplesâ and makes them prove their usefulness as âtacticsâ rather
than sacred truths. âWe donât have paid staff!â âWe have extremely low
dues!â âWe donât sign contracts!â âWe allow anyone to join on the spot!â
âWe donât affiliate with political groups!â âWe donât have mandatory
anything!â... Whether we do these things or not should be because they
are effective tactics in a plan to get to our goals, not because we read
it in some bible somewhere.
First goals--to determine what we really want tomorrow and what we think
we can get today. Then strategy--to plan out the campaign to achieve our
goals and build the power and confidence of workers. Then tactics--to
take concrete steps that demonstrate our resolve and alter the balance
of power.
Below are two checklists we can use to help us be systematic and
deliberate about developing our fellow workers into good wobbly
organizers.
1. Checklist for people weâre working with in an organizing campaign
Goals: Make this person committed to the campaign, make this person join
the IWW, make this person into an organizer, make this person become a
good wobbly
â Have an organizer do a one on one with them
â Attend an organizing meeting (meeting to plan an action, meeting to
discuss goals, etc)
â Attend a short Organizer Training (OT)
â Attend a two day OT
â Go with an organizer on a one on one and take the co-pilot role,
debrief afterward
â Go with an organizer on a one on one and take the lead role, debrief
afterward
â Set up a one on one with a co-worker on their own
â Hold a one on one with a co-worker on their own
â Participate in a job action
â Join the IWW (and do the stuff on the first checklist, the member
checklist)
2. Checklist for people who just became IWW members
Goals: build relationships between new member and other IWW members,
educate members so they can understand and make use of IWW procedures
and democracy, build peopleâs sense that being an IWW member is part of
who they are
â Attend branch social event
â Attend GMB meeting
â Attend new member orientation
â Report at GMB meeting about IWW activity at their job or that theyâre
otherwise involved in
â Attend some local public event with the IWW (picket, demonstration,
speak out, etc)
â Attend 3 GMB meetings
â Give a report at a branch meeting about an IWW activity somewhere else
(this involves calling at least one person in another branch and having
a conversation with them about whatâs going on in their branch/campaign)
â Participate in a branch committee
â Chair a GMB meeting
â Attend a meeting about organizing (either long term drive or short
term issue/workplace action) other than in their own workplace, debrief
afterward
â Read and discuss IWW literature and pamphlets
â Attend 6 GMB meetings
â Deliver a report or otherwise speak publicly as a representative of
the IWW at a local event/meeting (and report back to the GMB at a
meeting and/or by email)
â Write something for the branch newsletter (or, have someone else
interview this person and turn it into a co-written article)
â Play a key role at some local public action with the IWW â picket
captain, hand out leaflets, etc, (and report back to the GMB at a
meeting and/or by email)
â Write something for the Industrial Worker (or, have someone else
interview this person and turn it into a co-written article)
â Attend a Union-wide Event (and report back to the GMB at a meeting
and/or by email)
â Deliver a report (speak publicy) as a representative of the branch at
a union-wide event (and report back to the GMB at a meeting and/or by
email)
â Participate in a committee of the international (and report back to
the GMB)
â Start organizing in their workplace (and therefore go through the
other checklist)
Day 1 and 2 â Campaign membership: 2 Number of organizers: 2
You and your fellow branch members attend an IWW basic organizer
training, some of us like to call it the âBuild the Committeeâ training,
others call it the â101âł training.
Day 5 â You hold a small group meeting to pick a target. You do some
preparation before the meeting, put your thoughts in writing and bring
them to the meeting. If you canât geta group together, you write up a
plan on your own and you call someone in the branch and outside the
branch to talk it over. (If the plan is to organize your own workplace
you can skip to day 15, though you should still have the discussions
with the branch. Also, you should always have a partner to organize with
if at all possible. Flying solo as an organizer is a bad idea.) You make
a plan to track the necessary information â contact sheets,
spreadsheets/database, file cabinet, binder, whatever works for you.
Day 7 â You email the to IWW email list, write a post on the members
only web forums, call your GEB contact, and call your ODB contact to
find out who else in the IWW works in or is organizing in this
industry/company
Day 14 â You hold an open meeting with anyone from branch who wants to
attend. You present your plan and target. All of you have a discussion
about needed roles and assign tasks. People arenât as enthusiastic as
you had hoped, but you still feel pretty fired up.
Day 15 through 45 â You do research about your target online. You ask
the people listed under Day 7 to help you with this. You also gathering
contacts and social mapping as we talked about in the Organizer
Training. You also focus on relationship building at work. You take good
notes.
Day 46 â You have a complete or almost complete contact list. Youâve
talked to people outside your branch and people in your branch. You
begin one on one meetings with your coworkers. Youâre a serious
organizer, so you aim to do at least 3 conversations per week. Youâre a
realist, so you expect to succeed in 1/3 of these. You decide to do
these for the next 10 weeks or until you have a group of at least 10
people who are willing to attend an organizer training. You think to
yourself, if people are unwilling to attend a 2 day training then you
should not trust them with your and your co-workersâ jobs.
Day 67 â Campaign membership: 5 Number of organizers: 2
You hold a group new member orientation to the IWW for the people in the
campaign who have joined up. You invite people from the branch to attend
as well. Only some of them do. This annoys you. A few co-workers donât
show up, this hurts your feelings. Those of you who are there have an
awesome conversation about work and IWW vision. This excited you. Some
new members canât attend the orientation as a group so you make a plan
to get them oriented individually. You contact your GEB rep, ODB rep,
and someone from the OTC to help you with orientation materials and
curriculum, because your branch doesnât already have this stuff.
Day 98 â Campaign membership: 8 Number of organizers: 2
You hold another new member orientation. You invite people who have
already been to one to attend and help facilitate discussion. Some new
members canât attend the orientation as a group so you make a plan to
get them oriented individually.
Day 116 and 117 - Sympathetic but inactive supporters: 20 Campaign
membership: 12
Number of organizers: 2 Number of delegates: 1 Officers: Treasurer
You host another organizer training. Some people have scheduling
difficulties such as childcare needs, so your branch pays for childcare
for them so they can attend. Some people have scheduling difficulties
that you canât get around, like medical appointments, so you make a plan
to catch them up on the content as best as you can. You decide to hold a
4 hour session later that focuses on A-E-I-O-U like the first part of
the training. You ask the Organizer Training Committee and the
Organizing Department Board to help you with this. They do. The training
ends with a session where you create your plan to win, including
immediate next steps and a timeline for the next piece of your
campaignâs plan. Your plan is awesome. You aim to have a committee equal
to 15% of the total workforce at your target, and supporters equal to
65%. You donât get to cover all the details of how to get there so you
set a date for a follow up meeting in two weekâs time. At this meeting
you do social mapping, among other things, and push people to use the
training. You emphasize talking to key workplace leaders and build a
list of them by name/identifying information (âthe one on nights who
wears the Sox hatâ). You know that workplace leaders are harder to move.
You expect to succeed 1/5 of the time. Talk to all the identified
leaders first before repeating a conversation with a leader who says no
or isnât sure.
You identify one member of the organizing committee who is very
organized personally, this person becomes your first delegate. You
convince that person to start thinking about money. You start to get
other members of the organizing committee to turn in receipts to the
delegate. You have the delegate turn the receipts into the branch
treasurer. You make sure they report at every meeting on the financial
state of the organizing drive â giving a report on the bank balance, and
an account of how much dues was taken in and expenses.
organizer who supports and pushes your coworker organizers. You also set
a goal of making each of your campaignâs key wobbly organizers train two
or three more people to be committed and capable wobbly organizers just
like yourselves. You use the checklists that accompany this timeline,
and you give out copies of this pamphlet. You set up follow
conversations with people to see what they thought of the pamphlet.
Day 118 â You begin to debrief individually with everyone who attended
the training. You begin one on ones with workplace leaders. Everyone at
the training begins to have 3 conversations per week. With leaders, you
expect 1/5 of these conversations to succeed. Since there are other
areas of the workplace where you donât have leaders identified, you
begin outreach to other workers in these areas, in order to identify
leaders. You push everyone to do these conversations. You really expect
only half of the people to do so, but it still bothers you that not
everyone does this. You begin to have short role plays at your committee
meetings as part of reportbacks on how the one on ones are going.
workplace leaders on organizing and how you will help them build
relationships to other IWW members. You make this a central piece of
your own work.
Day 138 - Sympathetic but inactive supporters: 30 Campaign membership:
22
Number of organizers: 5 Leaders involved: 2 Number of Delegates: 2
Officers: Treasurer, Secretary
The core organizers in the campaign are beginning to get tired. You hold
a committee meeting to discuss how the individual conversations are
going. You layout a plan to win including a campaign timeline. A few
people come to the meeting who are not doing the individual
conversations. Aa few people who are doing at least some individual
conversations donât come. This bothers you, but youâre fired up to see
so many people working on the campaign. At this meeting you discuss
difficulties people are having in their conversations with co-workers
and brainstorm solutions. You set goals for continuing conversations.
You start spreading paperwork around in order to take administrative
workload off of organizers. Your group elects another delegate to
collect dues. The group decides to turn the previous delegate into the
campaign treasurer. The group gets its own bank account and gives both
delegates signing authority on the account. The new delegate becomes a
campaign secretary, the secretary will take care of reporting to the
branch on the progress of the campaign and fielding any questions from
people not directly in the campaign. Both officers agree to report every
month, with the campaign secretary reporting on membership and
communications from people and groups outside the campaign and the
treasurer continuing financial reports.
Day 152 - Sympathetic but inactive supporters: 35 Campaign membership:
30
Number of organizers: 4 Leaders involved: 4 Number of Delegates: 2
Officers: Treasurer, Secretary
Your original core co-organizers burns out and quietly leaves campaign.
If your branch is functioning well and reaches out to them, they stay
around. If the branch is not functioning well, they drop out and
possibly quit the union. Your campaign is at a big point now! After
about five months, youâre having a meeting to plan your first action.
You talked to people around the union and did a lot of thought ahead of
time so you arrive with a plan. You wanted to make sure, in case the
group didnât have any ideas or any good ideas but you sill engage
everyone in a group brainstorm and discussion to plan together. The plan
that the group comes up with is awesome. Your doing a march on the boss.
The group lays out roles and people take assignments. You all check in
to see who is doing their one on one conversations. You help anyone who
is struggling, by having a role play and brainstorming.
Day 154 â You check in that everyone did their part for the action
Day 155 â Action. You march on the boss. You scare the hell out of the
boss. Itâs awesome.
Day 157 â You hold a meeting to respond to managementâs response to the
action, if
necessary.
Day 166 - Sympathetic but inactive supporters: 50 Campaign membership:
35
Number of organizers: 5 Leaders involved: 5 Number of Delegates: 3
Officers: Treasurer, Secretary
Your new organizers begin to get tired. One campaign member (preferably
a workplace leader) that you have been working with begins to act like
an organizer. The group elects one more delegate. You make a motion at
the branch meeting to make sure the branch is training new delegates in
how to report.
You have a big group meeting with everyone who is involved in the
campaign. You hype your victories, discuss work issues to agitate
people, assess campaign and lay out social map so far, lay out the plan
to win, set goals, give assignments, and set deadlines. You check in to
see who is doing their one on one conversations. You help anyone who is
struggling, by having a role play and brainstorming. All of you continue
conversations with co-workers.
Day 168 â You hold a new member orientation to the IWW for the people in
the campaign who have joined up. You get the branch to do this, not the
organizer(s). The organizers handle turnout, not running the orientation
or getting a space etc. You set a date or set the wheels in motion to
set a date. You start working on turnout as soon as date and time and
place are figured out.
Day 180 - Sympathetic but inactive supporters: 55 Campaign membership:
40
Number of organizers: 3 Leaders involved: 7 Number of Delegates: 3
Officers: Treasurer, Secretary
Two of the new organizers burn out and quietly leave campaign. If the
branch is functioning well, they have had an IWW orientation and people
in the branch reach out to them, they stay around. If the branch is not
functioning well, they drop out and possibly quit the union.
You hold a committee meeting. The committee plans a shorter organizer
training focusing on key skills, to increase the number of organizers
involved. (Either one 4 hour session or two 2 hour sessions.) You also
have each organizer pick two coworkers to target to teach how to
organize on an individual basis by involving them in small group
conversation, debriefing, and covering the basics. You prioritize
turning workplace leaders into organizers. The group also elects two of
the campaignâs experienced organizers to attend the upcoming union-wide
Training for Trainers, so the campaign can do better at trainings.
Youâre one of the people elected. Then the meeting shifts gears. You
discuss how the individual conversations are going and how to do turn
out for the shorter organizer training. A few people are at the meeting
who are not doing the individual conversation. A few people who are
doing at least some individual conversations donât come to the meeting
Day 194 â Shorter training
act like the experienced lead organizer who supports and pushes their
coworker organizers. You will need to help them with this role and push
them to really do it.
Day 195 - Sympathetic but inactive supporters: 60 Campaign membership:
45
Number of organizers: 8 Leaders involved: 10 Number of Delegates: 4
Officers: Treasurer, Secretary
You begin to debrief with everyone who was at the training. You
celebrate victories, agitate on issues, push the plan to win. Everyone
continues to talk with coworkers. The group elects one more delegate,
preferably from your pool of good organizers. You submit the bylaws you
have been working on with a membership list put together by the
secretary and the delegates to General Headquarters and petition for an
Industrial Union Branch charter. Once you have this charter you need to
hold a meeting and brainstorm what is going to be handled by the GMB and
what is going to be handled by the Industrial Union Branch. Ideally the
GMB handles solidarity work with other unions and allied causes, new
member orientation, and organizer training. The IUB handles building the
campaign, keeping members caught up on their dues and social and
educational events for workers in the industry.
You talk to the Organizer Training Committee schedule a version of the
OTCâs Committee In Action advanced training, also known as the
âOrganizing 102âł training. You schedule an IUB strategy and planning
retreat for two weeks after that training.