What Next for Occupy Oakland?

Posted Tue, 12/20/2011 - 3:11pm by IWW.org Editor

By John Reimann - Fellow Worker Reimann has been involved with Occupy Oakland, along with several other members of the Bay Area IWW since its inception. The opinions expressed here are the author's alone, though they generally reflect the views of many others who are active in OO and are rank and file union members.

The port shut down of Dec. 12 showed that there is a lot of support for and strength in the Occupy Oakland movement. Sometimes, though, the greatest problems for a movement can arise exactly out of the successes, when we don’t think enough about what problems there are. 

Worker Participation Necessary 

The port shut down was accomplished with the active involvement of almost none of the workers there, especially the longshore workers. This can become a critical weakness if actions continue against employers and those actions don’t come from the workers themselves. In fact, there were several reports that a layer of the longshore workers were somewhat hostile to the Occupy pickets, who were causing them to lose a day’s pay. 

This cannot continue. We cannot continue to act in the place of workers; we must find a way to draw in a wider layer of working class Oakland. If we don’t, we will alienate large sectors of the working class. 

In order to do this, we should make a drive into the work places. Where there are unions and where officials of those unions claim to support Occupy Oakland, we should ask them to organize work place meetings for us to meet with the workers. If they don’t do this, then their “support” doesn’t really count for very much, but in any case, we can find ways to get into those work places. The purpose of such meetings would be to discuss with those workers the issues they are confronting and how Occupy Oakland can help them. This includes the public sector workers who are facing layoffs and cuts. In many cases the union leadership has accepted these cuts, but we in Occupy Oakland should not. 

Solidarity Unionism, Occupy, and the moral right of the working class to control the workplace

Posted Tue, 12/20/2011 - 3:10pm by IWW.org Editor

By "The Union Thug" - originally posted at nebraskaworker.wordpress.com. The views expressed here are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the IWW.

On November 2, 2011 Occupy Oakland successfully shut down the ports in Oakland along with the approval and aid of the union, ILWU Local 10, which has a contract with the port’s legal owners.  This event was a tremendous leap in consciousness and something the U.S. working class has not done nor attempted in decades.  Shortly after, Occupy Oakland passed another resolution for a West Coast port shutdown.  Occupy movements in Portland, Long Beach, Seattle, Vancouver, Anchorage, Honolulu and Tokyo responded.  On December 12, 2011 the Occupy movements succeeded in shutting down the ports completely or partially in most of those cities.  However, this time around Occupy did not have the full support of the unions involved.

This action has sparked debate between Occupy and the traditional labor movement encompassed in the AFL-CIO.  The unions’ argument is that Occupy did not have the right to shut down the workplaces (ports) where they did not work and that this needed to be decided democratically within the bureaucracy of the ILWU.

We don’t buy this argument.  The Occupy movement is a reaction to the ruling class monopolizing the distribution of profits that are produced socially and collectively by the world’s working class.  They use these profits to buy the government and re-instill this class monopoly; therefore, we must find strategic ways to disrupt the creation and movement of these profits as a class. We propose that the Occupy movement adopt a strategy of class struggle known as solidarity unionism and apply it to strategic points in the economic system that we are all protesting against.

In this article we are going to define what solidarity unionism is, as practiced by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW); make the argument that the entire working class has a moral right to every workplace, especially those of strategic importance in the world economy; discuss the 1934 Toledo Electric Auto-Lite strike as a historical example of solidarity unionism; and finally how this type of strategy could further the goals of the Occupy movement.

Holding the line: informal pace setting in the workplace

Posted Tue, 12/20/2011 - 2:51pm by IWW.org Editor

By Juan Conatz - originally posted at recompositionblog.wordpress.com

Often when talking to people about their frustrations at work and the prospects for organizing, a common response is one of negativity and desperation.

“I could never get anything goin’ where I work!”
“Other people don’t care.”
“It would be too hard.”

These types of sentiments cut across industries and sectors. Even folks in officially unionized workplaces that have unaddressed grievances feel this way many times.

But while your preconceived ideas of what workplace organizing entails may clash with the obstacles you think of, other things going on in your workplace perfectly mesh with what we commonly call ‘job actions’. Slowdowns, work to rule and pace setting are all tactics that workers have used in response to management doing ans saying things we don’t like. Most commonly, nowadays, it seems like our coworkers do these things as individuals, but when it expands beyond that…well, there’s an opportunity to get somewhere.

Background

In early 2010, I was working at a warehouse as a forklift driver in Iowa City. Most of my day was spent on the shipping side of the building, pulling pallets off the production lines and staging them in a different area so they could eventually be loaded onto trucks. I also spent a fair amount of time loading these trucks, as well.

For the most part, the majority of my interaction with co-workers was limited to the other shipping forklift driver, the shipping manager and 2-3 temps who used a pallet jack to drop off pallets for me to stage.

The shipping manager, Phil, was basically a ‘lead’, with little power himself. Any power he had was mostly snitching power in that he directly answered to the Warehouse Supervisor. Phil was in his mid 40s and a casualty of the bad economy, being a recently laid of worker at a factoiry that made parts for General Motors.

Wisconsin's New Free Speech Restrictions

Posted Tue, 12/20/2011 - 2:27pm by IWW.org Editor

Since the February uprising in Wisconsin, which began with a three-week occupation of the Capitol in Madison, the building has been home to a variety of demonstrations and political actions.  What perhaps stands out the most is the Solidarity Sing-along, which draws upwards of 100 participants and has been going on for more than 40 weeks.  The singers gather in the rotunda each weekday at noon to sing songs that include both traditional labor and protest songs and some new songs penned in the months since Governor Scott Walker first introduced his plans to bust the public employee unions and impose devastating austerity measures on the working class of Wisconsin.

In recent months police have begun arresting and ticketing people for trivial "violations", such as wearing hats or sunglasses in the Senate and Assembly galleries, holding signs, or exercising their right (protected by the Wisconsin constitution) to record legislative sessions.  These restrictions have apparently been a lead-up to the real crackdown.  Just last week, the Walker administration announced a new policy that will severely curtail the free speech rights exercised by the Solidarity Sing-along and other groups who use the Capitol building. 

The new rules require groups of four or more people to apply for a permit from the DOA at least 72 hours in advance “for all activity and displays in state buildings”.  Groups can be charged $50 per hour per police officer if law enforcement is determined to be necessary.  Payment for law enforcement could be required in advance as part of the permit process and protesters could face additional charges for liability insurance.  The rules are vague and arbitrary, and so far the administration has refused to clarify them or answer questions from citizens about how they will be enforced, leaving room for abuse by police and DOA officials.

These rules are obviously aimed at making free speech inconvenient and restrictively expensive for most people.  Free speech is a hard-won right for Americans.  Between 1907 and 1916, free speech demonstrations lead by the IWW swept the western United States.  In Spokane, the Industrial Worker published a call to all workers to defend their rights: "Wanted -- Men to Fill the Jails”.  And fill the jails they did!  As one Wobbly got dragged from the soapbox and arrested, another would take his place and the call would go out for more “footloose rebels” from all over the country to hop on a train and come join the fight.  The struggle can be seen as a victory as it eventually led to the founding of the American Civil Liberties Union.  The Wisconsin chapter of the ACLU is currently working to help defend the right of Wisconsin citizens to speak freely in the Capitol.

Waves of Struggle, The Winter Campaign at the Post Office in Edmonton

Posted Tue, 12/20/2011 - 2:12pm by IWW.org Editor

By Phinneas Gage - originally posted at recompositionblog.wordpress.com

Christine braced herself, took a deep breath and then jumped up on to a mail tub and began to shout “help! help! I am being robbed.” A sea of faces stared at her blankly. She got the attention her fellow Letter Carriers, but everyone was looking at her like she was crazy. That was fine, she was acting crazy. “Canada Post is robbing every single one of us, they are robbing people collecting pensions, they are robbing workers who aren’t even working here yet. We need to stand together, Winnipeg walked out and we need to show them that we have their back and will stand with them”.

Some began to nod knowingly; she then explained that workers earlier in the week had walked out in an unlawful strike in Winnipeg over technological change that was causing twelve hour days and massive job loss. She explained that Winnipeg was a testing ground for the new work methods and that the workers in Winnipeg were not just fighting for themselves they were fighting for everyone at Canada Post Corporation. Christine explained the struggle, the stakes, and that our fellow workers in Winnipeg were counting on a show of solidarity from across the country. She may have been a bit dramatic, but she was also being honest, sometimes you have to shout to be heard.

The meeting Christine called was part of a wave of work floor meetings across the city. The wave started at another workplace, Depot Nine. At some of these meetings stewards read statements published by “The Workers Struggle with the Modern Post” a grassroots Postal Workers blog based out of Winnipeg. Some of the meetings were open assemblies open to all employees, where workers could plan their next steps and air grievances. These meetings were part of a very flexible plan, part strategy and part flying by the seat of our pants. The workers led the struggle and often the official union structures were left behind in the dust as workers on the floor took initiative. This wasn’t centrally planned but it didn’t just happen spontaneously. It wasn’t outside and against the union nor was it a struggle within it against some abstract bureaucracy- we were trying something new on our own terms.