Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

From their founding convention on June 27, 1905, through more than a decade of struggle and advance followed by several years of government repression, including deportations, mass incarceration, and killings, the Industrial Workers of the World (known as the IWW or “Wobblies”) has transformed the labor movement, relentlessly battling bosses while also challenging established unions on everything from politics and strategy to entrenched racism and sexism. Although still in existence today as a much smaller and less influential force, the early years of the Wobblies were characterized by tactical innovation, as well as a deeply inspiring culture of resistance and solidarity, leaving not only radical ideas but a rich tapestry of art, music, cartoons, and songs that continue to inspire new generations of radicals and organizers. As the continuation of a late-19th- and early-20th-century surge of anarchist and left socialist organizing, much of it led by immigrant workers, the Wobblies represented a vital progression in the labor movement's development.

It is fair to say that the IWW influence—directly or indirectly—can be felt in a wide diversity of labor militancy, from the mass wave of strikes that launched the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s to today's Justice for Janitors campaign's recognition strikes. While today's unions are often reluctant to directly acknowledge the debt they owe to this radical mass movement of the working class, IWW's legacy casts a long shadow across modern labor.

Born from an array of independent radical unions, most notably including the Western Federation of Miners, the IWW advocated the principle of “One Big Union.” In other words, in a time when within each workplace the workers were divided by craft, with different unions for every job description, the IWW urged all workers to join together in a single organization. Welcoming all workers in a time when many [Page 748]unions excluded women, nonwhites, foreign-born, and unskilled workers, the IWW helped move the labor movement away from its racist and nativist roots. In a time when most unions advocated only minor reforms and wage increases, the IWW were unapologetic advocates of revolution, and fierce advocates of class warfare. The preamble to the IWW Constitution reads,

IWW members directly advocated for strikes, direct action, and industrial sabotage, popularizing the black cat and wooden shoes as symbols for their strategy of damage to the instruments of the bosses. The Wobblies' philosophy of social change, sometimes known as anarcho-syndicalism, calls for all the workers of the world to join together in a worldwide general strike aimed at shutting down capitalism, bringing about a revolution to a worker-controlled, egalitarian, and just society. The IWW didn't believe in signing contracts, seeing them as an obstacle to worker unity and labor militancy. Recognizing that labor militancy and political transformation happened when workers were fighting for improvements, and aspiring to larger and more radical struggles, they viewed contracts as an obstacle, a means that bosses used to placate workers. The Wobblies also were alone in unions in opposing dues checkoff—the system where union dues are automatically deducted from paychecks—believing it limited direct union democracy and enmeshed unions in management bureaucracy.

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