Tuesday, August 22, 2006

From the pages of 'The Industrial Worker', the monthly newspaper of the Industrial Workers of the World, a syndicalist union, mostly active in Canada and the USA:
The latest issue contains some articles on recent IWW organizing. The first is 'Starbucks Fires 3 IWWs For Union Organizing'. It is a report of the latest events in the ongoing campaign of the IWW to unionize workers at the Starbucks coffee shops. This campaign has been ongoing since 2004, and the IWW Starbucks Union has had at least some limited success in their organizing. This is, of course, a very difficult job considering the dispersed nature of the employer and the fantastically high turnover of staff at places such as Starbucks. The campaign has had the most success to date in NYC. Further information can be found at the IWW website at http://www.iww.org .
Also in this issue are reports on the Chicago Couriers Union (IWW), the Shattuck Cinema Landmark Theatre in Berkley, CA, the Ecology Center Curbside Recycling Program, also in Berkley, and the Pittsburgh East End Food Co-op. Though the astute may discern something of a "pattern" in the above, previous issues of the IW have reported on organizing campaigns in "non-fashionable" workplaces such as independent truck drivers in Stockton, CA and taxi drivers in California. Both of these campaigns have been about the organization of immigrant workers.
The IWW continues to grow, and its many recent organizing campaigns provide a much better example of anarchy in action than the silliness promoted by some who wish to prolong the long dead tactic of playacting at militancy by travelling anarchists who have no connection to a locality and no practical proposals but who want to seem so brave by challenging and losing against the police whenever an international meeting of the ruling class is held. Without, of course, any enduring results.
The IWW has become a lighthouse for NA anarchists who want to get beyond the stage of childish rebellion and actually create anarchism. It continues to attract the best of young anarchists today.

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