Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement, Addendum: A Revolutionary Vehicle? The Role of the IWW

The IWW, at its strongest, represented a fusion between the political and the economic, transcending the artificial and arbitrary divide between the two. By taking positions on specific political issues—expressed through direct action—as a union, we build organized nuclei for the proletariat to use, while pointing them in a revolutionary direction.

We must engage in an iterative process for building dual working class power against the ruling class. The failures of revolutionary movements before us teach us that we must transcend dualistic thinking and embrace contradiction, seeking equilibrium and balance rather than splits and purges. Current revolutionary unions fall flat on this in particular, with most—in particular the IWW and Workers Initiative—turning away from tackling the political problems faced by the class including war, climate change, and abortion. Doing so is a retreat to narrow trade unionism. The key to a revolutionary union movement is to take activist stances on all these issues and more, but to express them through concrete workplace struggles in ways that combine political and economic demands.

As militants currently operating either as members of the IWW or within other closely-aligned labor formations, we are proud of its accomplishments both past and present. Some of the world’s best labor organizers are active among our rank-and-file. We also see what the union could be in the future, and thus what it is not now. All currently existing revolutionary unions ultimately fall short of the characteristics analyzed in this essay. The CNT, for example, is not internationalist in its reach nor industrially organized. It is effectively a regional federation of craft and general unions. SI Cobas lacks administrative stability, constraining internal democracy to only those members who can regularly show up to meetings. The SAC is “difficult to distinguish…from a left-wing opinion bubble” according to member Rasmus Hästbacka. But we know and love the IWW best, so we will concentrate on evaluating how it specifically measures up to the criteria established in Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement. Revolutionary unionists outside the IWW should analyze their own organizations and get in touch with us. Working together, we can coordinate a truly revolutionary union movement capable of building a new society in the ashes of the old.

The IWW is at a potential turning point in its history. Youth radicalization is widespread after the Black Lives Matter Uprisings of 2020, and especially since Israel unleashed its genocidal war on Palestine. Since Trump’s election victory in 2016, the membership of IWW’s North American Regional Administration (NARA) alone has ballooned to nearly 10,000 organizers, and we have a financial surplus of a meaningful size. With Trump in the White House again, things certainly won’t be calming down anytime soon. If we can get our shit together as an organization to effectively apply our increasing administrative capacity, collective organizing experience, and financial resources, then we can unleash a class offensive against capital and state.

On the other hand, worker-organizers in the IWW are divided on the strategic and tactical choices our union faces. This has caused quite a bit of administrative dysfunction, factional infighting, and retaliatory purging that corroded the union’s internal democracy and inclusivity. One of the main sources of this discord is what might be called the big-fish-in-a-small-pond effect. With the union still small, far smaller groups of members can exercise disproportionate influence on the IWW's administrative structures. Unfortunately, big fish in a small pond tend to suck all the oxygen out of the ecosystem. Yet, we remain optimistic, because these problems are now in the open and have activated a wide swathe of the membership to seek solutions that can grow the union’s organizing efforts up to a mass scale.

In the North American context, especially in the US and Canada, the IWW is truly unique. There is no other union like the IWW. It is the only union in American history that has never segregated its locals based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, job role, or anything else. We are the only union here that calls for the abolition of capitalism. The IWW is also far more directly democratic than most unions, with only United Electrical (UE), ILWU, and independent union formations rivaling us.

Few other industrially organized unions exist, and those that do—such as the UFCW, Teamsters, and UAW—have largely abandoned industrial organizing in practice. AFL-CIO affiliated unions that were once industrial unions typically organize a few sectors of an industry rather than the industry as a whole. The UAW, for example, represents workers at "traditional" auto parts factories, electric vehicle shops, and some maquiladoras in northern Mexico. However, the UAW has chosen to respond to the decimation neo-liberal capitalist trade and austerity policies have wrought upon the industry in the U.S. by becoming more of a "general union" rather than choosing to expand its organizing to other sectors of the industry; e.g. workers in factories that manufacture sports / recreational vehicles or motor vehicles that are low-velocity like motor scooters. This trend is especially apparent in their expansion into organizing workers in higher education. While the ILWU and UE are generally better at industrial union organizing and aren't affiliated with the AFL-CIO, they have also reported to organizing outside of their respective target industries rather than expanding to sectors within the industry and then federating with other non-AFL-CIO unions that are employing a similar industrial organizing strategy.

For these reasons, we see a special value in using the IWW as a vehicle for rebuilding a revolutionary union movement inside the belly of the beast. By 1917,

“the general executive board concluded that the IWW had completed its preliminary phases of agitation and education. Now it could embark on its final phase: organization and control of American industry. General executive board members decided that the chaotic, mass mixed unions should become relics of the past, that the AWO [Agricultural Workers Organization] should become an industrial organization for agricultural workers, and that nonagricultural workers recruited by the AWO should be organized as soon as feasible into industrial unions in their respective industries”.

We think the IWW today is at a similar historical juncture. The organization has reached a critical mass that should be directed into explicitly industry-based organizing. There are several industries where we have hundreds, one thousand, or multiple thousands of worker-organizers holding red cards. Education, retail, and the prison-industrial complex just to name a few.

Our role as an organization is to create a platform for, and pose a model of, revolutionary action by the working class, especially the organized working class. Our role is to spread our vision far and wide. Our role is to be elbow to elbow with the rest of the working class in our collective struggle for a better world—and to push them to the most radical types of action that we can convince them to take. Our role is to construct the foundation of dual power. Our task is to distinguish ourselves from other class struggle unionists—a grouping which includes syndicalist unions, the IWW, UE, Labor Notes, workers centers, Black Workers for Justice, and union reform caucuses like COREs—to situate ourselves at the very revolutionary end of the labor movement.

Our role is to embed ourselves in an ecosystem of labor and community organization, with the knowledge that we will have disagreements with the approaches of others. We must have the wisdom to cooperate with them when possible, in order to foster maximum solidarity within the class. Joe Burns—the director of collective bargaining at the Association of Flight Attendants (CWA) and the author of several books on militant unionism, including, most recently, Class Struggle Unionism—concisely summarizes why: “Organizers…know that normally there is a core of people who most want change...A good organizer pulls those folks together and engages the enemy, whether it be the boss or slumlord, and in doing so systematically pulls more and more people into the struggle.”

However, there are other areas where the IWW falls short of its revolutionary rhetoric. Ironically, the IWW currently organizes more like a general union than an industrial union. General unions are usually geographically based, collecting workers from all industries. That causes these unions to operate with little to no strategic targeting of key industries. Surveying the IWW, most of our local branches are General Membership Branches (GMBs), which gather workers of all industries within them. There are few Industrial Union Branches (IUBs) that concentrate workers from specific industries together to coordinate industry-based organizing campaigns. Right now, the only officially chartered Industrial Union (IU) administration is the IU 450 Printing and Publishing Workers Union (PPWU). When it was chartered in 2022, it was the first IU in the IWW since the 1950s. The IWW Constitution, and our own history, make it clear that IUBs and IUs are the true foundation of the organization. Additionally, a diversity of overlapping structures will strengthen and further democratize the union.

A greater diversity of union bodies could provide stronger strategic anchors to guide our organizing efforts. In “Towards a Revolutionary Union Movement”, we discussed workers’ councils multiple times throughout the text. IWW bodies such as IUs and constituent IUBs could prefigure themselves as workers’ councils, concretely laying the foundation for dual power and the transition towards communist production independent of any state. Regional Administrations (RAs) and constituent Regional Organizing Committees (ROCs) would then complete this prefiguration by combining industrially and geographically based workers’ councils. When the revolution comes, workers will have a ready-made vehicle—a One Big Workers’ Council—for the takeover of the productive process globally. They can then go on the offensive against any remaining capitalist bastions.

GMBs still have a positive and central role to play in this transformation of the union. For example, a GMB can act as the central nucleus from which IUBs covering greater, overlapping areas can grow. Taking the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region—locally called the DMV—the DC IWW GMB only extends 50 miles outside the city itself. Burgeoning IUBs in the education, service, and non-profit industries could negotiate different, more fluid arrangements for their geographical extents with General Headquarters. Perhaps these IUBs could each cover all of Maryland and Virginia. They could then help birth new, local IUBs across both states and recede to focusing solely on the DMV region. After all these IUBs come into existence, GMBs will still play an important role in the union. By facilitating a space for wobblies without enough other members from their respective industries to charter IUs or IUBs to exert collective political influence, they'll bolster our union's democratic culture. Finally, GMBs will always serve as a primary venue for hosting social gatherings of various kinds that build working class culture and solidarity.

But there is unfortunately a broader dogmatism, an aversion to concrete strategy and theoretical analysis that shrinks the imagination of our union collectively. It manifests as a hostility by some towards efforts like the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) and the General Defense Committee (GDC). The GDC, for example, became an "excellent vehicle to grow the anti-fascist movement" during the Trump years while drawing working class folks interested in defending their communities towards labor organizing. This refusal to recognize the connection between workplace and anti-fascist struggles would be a fatal flaw for the IWW to make.

There is also an ideological opposition by many to signing union contracts such as collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with employers. Opponents of signing any CBAs with employers base their arguments in the union's orthodox organizing model: Solidarity Unionism, which de-emphasizes the importance of signing formal collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) and pursuing legal remedies for union busting in favor of collective direct action by informal workplace organizing committees. Its core ideas are admirable—the union defines solidarity unionism as direct, democratic, caring, and industrial—but its practical applications are limited. Especially when a commitment to an anti-contractualist line is enforced as the only valid interpretation of the solidarity unionist organizing model.

Solidarity unionism as it is currently implemented has become an obstacle to the IWW's further growth and development. IWW campaigns and branches that embrace a heterodox strategy towards CBAs receive no support and little acknowledgement from the NARA administration. There is a belief amongst most of the union's leadership that the IWW should purely organize on the shop floor and avoid community organizing entirely. Overheated rhetoric arguing that signing CBAs and paying our organizers will inevitably transform the IWW into a business union is common on union forums. Wage agreements and direct action are no longer a means to an end, but rather have become the end goal. Rank-and-file members are growing increasingly unhappy with the leadership's rigid interpretation of solidarity unionism, as well as their use of the union's administration to stifle the development of alternative, flexible organizing models still in accord with the IWW's principles. It's just like the narrow business unionism we love to hate, but with a less effective version at winning real, long lasting gains for workers.

Exemplifying this within the IWW is the outcome of the union’s 2024 convention, which passed a watered down, purely symbolic Palestine Solidarity resolution that cut out all the substance its creators intended it to include. The product of deliberation by a large cross section of members from many branches and industries, the Palestine Solidarity resolution originally directed the North American Regional Administration (NARA) of the union to coordinate and initiate collective worker action around the genocide in Palestine. It also would have allowed all of NARA to join Labor for Palestine as one united body. Instead, the resolution says all the right things but requires no material support nor action on the part of general headquarters or the executive. Which means it is all on branches and an informal inter-branch committee to undertake everything with no wider institutional support. The results disappointed and infuriated a wide swathe of the IWW's rank-and-file membership.

At the heart of these sometimes paralyzing internal disputes is a lack of coherent industrial strategy within the labor movement. Strategy is an arena where we could, and should, be distinguishing ourselves within, but instead we’ve become emblematic of the problem among class struggle unionists. Joe Burns elaborates on this failing of the IWW:

"Finally, in terms of our strategic focus, there is a significant trend within the progressive wing of labor that views our problems as primarily a lack of correct organizing skills or techniques as opposed to a class struggle strategy capable of taking on capital. This has led to a focus on small employers, particularly the Industrial Workers of the World. While this has the advantage of testing out new strategies in workplaces that are more manageable especially for a union without resources, this does not represent a strategic plan to take on capital. While experimentation has its value, it is time for class struggle unionists to pool our resources to reorganize the industries at the heart of the US economy".

Compounding this perception of the IWW within the labor movement is our lack of communications infrastructure above the branch level. The effect is that even when criticisms of the IWW are incorrect or misunderstand our positions, we have no way of setting the record straight. There is the Industrial Worker, our union’s newspaper, but nothing else. We need to be able to effectively broadcast our victories, strategies, and philosophies to the masses of workers who are more open to revolutionary ideas than in a long, long time. After the IWW's 2020 Referendum, the union created a proper Communications Department with a small staff. Unfortunately, the segment of the union's membership who are against the IWW hiring any paid staff prevailed after heavy infighting throughout 2021, and disbanded the department.

We already punch well above our weight for a small, grassroots union, but imagine how much we could accomplish if we set our collective organizational will on it? If you are a member of the IWW, then there are immediate next steps you can take to play a significant role in changing our union for the better. To end, we will leave you with a plethora of suggestions. Just by picking one of these recommendations and being consistent at pushing for it will make a real impact towards building a revolutionary union movement:

1. Organize in your workplace and lean on your branch for support.
2. If you have organizing experience but aren’t currently organizing in your own workplace, become an external organizer for a union campaign.
3. If there’s no branch near you, organize your workplace and form an IWW Job Branch. A job branch is an IWW branch chartered at a specific workplace (or group of workplaces) by and for the workers on the shop floor. They have significant, near total, autonomy over their own affairs.
4. If you have a GMB nearby, gather workers in the same industry as yourself to charter IUBs and IUs.
5. Become a trainer for the union, and use the Organizer Training 101 as a means of internal political education about industrial organizing strategy, as well as IUs and IUBs.
6. Fully democratize the union by advocating for open elections for the Organizer Training Committee to the entire rank-and-file membership, rather than limited to a small cadre of trainers.
7. Support efforts that combine community and workplace organizing like the GDC.
8. Volunteer to organize with IWOC.
9. Get involved in regional union bodies like the Southern Coordinating Committee (SCC) if they are active in your area.
10. Run for a position on the Education Department Board to produce new media for the union.
11. Run for a position on the Organizing Department Board to help coordinate workplace organizing campaigns and trainings across the union.
12. Run for the International Committee to help strengthen IWW coordination with revolutionary unions globally.

Whatever you choose, remain an active and engaged member. Together, we can address our shortcomings as an organization and herald a new age of revolutionary unionism that brings capital to its knees once and for all.

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