Industrial Workers of the World tactics

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is a union of wage workers which was formed in Chicago in 1905 as a response to disappointment by militant unionists with the conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL). While the AFL organized workers into their respective crafts, the IWW was created as an industrial union, placing all workers in an industry into the same industrial organization, and promoted the class-based concept of One Big Union. Throughout the early part of the Twentieth Century the IWW and the AFL were frequently in direct conflict over the best way to organize workers, and how to best improve the society in which they toiled.

The IWW was formed by militant unionists, socialists, anarchists, and other labor radicals who believed in the concept of a working class exploited by, and in an economic struggle with, an employing class. The IWW therefore employed a great diversity of tactics aimed at organizing all workers as a class, seeking greater economic justice on the job and, ultimately, the overthrow of the wage system which they believe is most responsible for keeping workers in subjugation. Such tactics are generally described as direct action, which is distinguished from other types of reform efforts — such as electoral politics — which the IWW members (referred to as Wobblies) believe depend upon appeal to members of a ruling class who derive benefit from the subservient quiescence of the working class.

While other unions (such as the CIO) adopted tactics — notably the sitdown strike — which were pioneered by the IWW, labor laws passed by legislatures have sought to steadily erode the range and diversity of methods employed by all labor organizations. Confronted with such obstacles, militant IWW members tend to believe in a return to a union philosophy that was common a century ago, in which unjust labor laws are challenged directly by union actions, rather than accepted as a framework within which the union must operate.

Perceived limitations of political action

By the time of the 1905 founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, the question of whether unionized workers could secure significant change by political actions of their unions had been in contention for some decades. The question had split the National Labor Union in 1872.Workers and Utopia, a Study of Ideological Conflict in the American Labor Movement 1865-1900, Gerald N. Grob, 1969, pages 26-30. It created divisions between the membership and the leadership of the Knights of Labor, who favored various political agendas including Greenbackism, socialism, and land reform.A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback, 1966, page 146. Labor historian Joseph Rayback believed that significant losses for organized labor in the 1890s pointed the way toward either socialism, or industrial unionism in order to maintain organized labor's momentum.A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback, 1966, page 197.

Yet Samuel Gompers, leader of the American Federation of Labor, opposed both courses of action. He and John Mitchell, head of the United Mine Workers, joined an alliance of conservative union leaders and liberal business men in forming the National Civic Federation (NCF).A History of American Labor, Joseph G. Rayback, 1966, page 210. That organization's critics believed that its goals were to suppress sympathy strikes, and to replace traditional expressions of working class solidarity with binding national trade agreements and arbitration of disputes.David Brundage, The Making of Western Labor Radicalism: Denver's Organized Workers, 1878-1905, 1994, page 147.

In "Taking Care of Business", Paul Buhle writes,

In 1903, United Mine Workers President John Mitchell declared revealingly, "The trade union movement in this country can make progress only by identifying itself with the state." ... [The] new National Civic Federation ... sought to promote labor peace (on the terms of the employers, critics claimed) and to make class consciousness and class struggle obsolete.Paul Buhle, Taking Care of Business, Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor, 1999, pages 61-62.

By 1905, the NLU was history, and the Knights of Labor mostly a memory. Mitchell and Gompers of the AFL were beginning to build an alliance with the Democratic Party.Paul Buhle, Taking Care of Business, Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor, 1999, page 62. The formation of the Industrial Workers of the World was in many ways a direct response to the conservatism of the AFL, and its failure to respond to the needs of western miners, lumbermen, and others. While the focus upon political action by the AFL (at the perceived cost of class solidarity) was just one aspect of the differing union philosophies, it was a significant one.

1908 split

For the first several years the differences between those who favored political action via electoral politics, and those who believed that working people could never obtain justice through political action, also played out within the IWW. Daniel DeLeon, head of the Socialist Labor Party, believed that a rise in wages for workers resulted in a rise in price, so that workers obtained no worthwhile gain from seeking higher wages. This argument suggested that one of the most significant immediate goals of unions was not worthwhile. James P. Thompson and James Connolly expressed the opposite viewpoint, grounding their writings in the work of Ricardo and Marx. When DeLeon launched a secret hearing against Connolly for "economic heresy" in 1907, the issue of politics vs. class struggle came to the attention of the entire organization.The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975, Fred W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, 1976, pages 37-38.

The 1905 Preamble to the IWW Constitution had stated,

Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party. http://www.workerseducation.org/crutch/constitution/1905const.html Retrieved July 30, 2007.

At the IWW convention in 1908, members of the IWW removed the Preamble language about "struggle [on] the political, as well as on the industrial field," which DeLeon had made a condition of his participation at the founding convention in 1905. DeLeon followers walked out of the 1908 convention, never to return.The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975, Fred W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, 1976, pages 39. The IWW began a century of commitment to the idea that electoral politics could be seen as a distraction to the real struggle, which the IWW identified as class solidarity among all working people.

Direct Action

Minority unionism

itdown strikes

lowdowns

abotage

When disgruntled workers damage or destroy equipment or interfere with the smooth running of a workplace, it is called workplace sabotage. While Luddites sought to "turn back the clock" to an era before the introduction of workplace machinery, radical labor unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) have advocated sabotage as a tactical means of self-defense against unfair working conditions.

The first references to the terms "sabotage" and "passive resistance" in the IWW press appeared in approximately 1910. These terms were used in connection with a strike against a Chicago clothing company called Lamm & Co.,The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975, Fred W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, 1976, page 46. and the connotation of sabotage in that job action referred to "malingering or inefficient work."The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975, Fred W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, 1976, page 81.

The IWW was shaped in part by the industrial unionism philosophy of Big Bill Haywood, and in 1910 Haywood was exposed to sabotage while touring Europe:

The experience that had the most lasting impact on Haywood was witnessing a general strike on the French railroads. Tired of waiting for parliament to act on their demands, railroad workers walked off their jobs all across the country. The French government responded by drafting the strikers into the army and then ordering them back to work. Undaunted, the workers carried their strike to the job. Suddenly, they could not seem to do anything right. Perishables sat for weeks, sidetracked and forgotten. Freight bound for Paris was misdirected to Lyon or Marseille instead. This tactic — the French called it "sabotage" — won the strikers their demands and impressed Bill Haywood.Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 152.

For the IWW, sabotage came to mean any withdrawal of efficiency — including the slowdown, the strike, or creative bungling of job assignments.Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, pages 196-197.

Ralph Chaplin, an IWW artist and poet, drew the IWW's image of a black cat with flashing teeth and bared claws as a symbol of the IWW's concept of sabotage. In testimony before the court in a 1918 trial of IWW leaders, Chaplin stated that the black cat "was commonly used by the boys as representing the idea of sabotage. The idea being to frighten the employer by the mention of the name sabotage, or by putting a black cat somewhere around. You know if you saw a black cat go across your path you would think, if you were superstitious, you are going to have a little bad luck. The idea of sabotage is to use a little black cat on the boss."Red November, Black November: Culture and Community in the Industrial Workers of the World, Salvatore Salerno, 1989, SUNY Press, page 178, from U.S. v. W.D. Haywood, et al, testimony of Ralph Chaplin, July 19, 1918, IWW Collection, Box 112, Folder 7, pp. 7702 & 7711, Labor History Archive, Wayne State University.

Historically the IWW was "accused" of outright damage to property — for example, getting the blame for causing wheat field fires in a book of fiction by Zane Grey, published in 1919 at the height of the red scare.The Desert of Wheat, Zane Grey, 1919. The extent to which the IWW actually practiced sabotage, other than through their "withdrawal of efficiency," is open to dispute.Roughneck, The Life and Times of Big Bill Haywood, Peter Carlson, 1983, page 197. IWW organizers often counseled workers to avoid any actions that would hurt their own job prospects. Even so, when the term "sabotage" is applied to workers, it is frequently interpreted to mean actual destruction.The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975, Fred W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, 1976, page 82. A study by Johns Hopkins University in 1939 determined,

Although there are contradictory opinions as to whether the IWW practices sabotage or not, it is interesting to note that no case of an IWW saboteur caught practicing sabotage or convicted of its practice is available.The I.W.W.: Its First Seventy Years, 1905-1975, Fred W. Thompson and Patrick Murfin, 1976, page 81.

There is the possibility that the IWW has employed rhetoric about the tactic of sabotage moreso than actual practice. Of course the expression "disgruntled worker" may apply to either organized or spontaneous actions, and employers have long hired security guards to prevent and detect any sort of sabotage, whatever the cause.

General strike

trike issues

No strike clause

The contract question

Injunctions

Dues collection

The IWW relies upon members to submit dues voluntarily, instead of relying on the "dues check off" system, in which dues are automatically deducted from workers' paychecks by their employer. Throughout the organization's history, a constitutional provision has prohibited IWW organizations from allowing employers to handle union dues.

IWW dues collection most typically operates according to the Job Delegate system, which was developed by the Agricultural Workers' Organization (AWO) of the IWW.

ee also

Notes