The Future of Unions During COVID-19

(Pictured: Railroad workers in Chicago)

By Cameron Mancini and Brendan Muckian-Bates

When the pressure of the moment becomes untenable, it is the working class that has continued to muster the strength to hold the business class accountable. Strength in numbers alongside the panic of immediate loss of income and employment are an organizer’s best weapons. However, meeting the challenge of the present means that we must be strategic about what type of world we want to see once COVID-19 is over.

One hundred and one years ago, as American soldiers returned to the US following the end of the Great War, the pandemic of the H1N1 strain of influenza, known as “Spanish Flu” at the time, began ravaging the world. Between 1918 and 1920, it is estimated that around 17 to 50 million people died from this pandemic.

At the same time that millions were dying, workers began striking across major industries. The 1919 Steel Strike was one of the first attempts to organize basic industry by the mainstream labor movement, with the assistance of radicals like William Z. Foster and Mother Jones. In Seattle, WA, “nothing moved but the tide” as workers took over the city for a week. Coal miners struck and won a 14% wage increase.  In all, 1919 saw 4 million workers - 1/5 of the workforce - walk off the job in the US. But it did not end there; Winnipeg, Canada saw a massive General Strike, and in Italy and Germany, workers struck in the industrial centers of their nations, seized factories, and declared socialist republics.

At times of economic and social crisis, mass labor actions are not uncommon. Workers demand immediate changes to their living conditions when those conditions become unstable. Already in 2020, we’ve seen wildcat strikes shut down the Big 3 automakers, longshore workers threaten a walk out in Bay Area ports unless there is proper sanitary conditions in the port, grocery workers demand and win hazard pay in the Puget Sound area, Pittsburgh area sanitation workers refusing unsafe working conditions until they have proper protective gear, and tenants in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood threaten a rent strike.

It’s impossible to say how long or the effects to which COVID-19 will have on the US economy, but here’s what we know so far:

• On March 17th, White House officials briefed Senate Republicans that the unemployment rate could reach 20 percent. For context, at the height of the Great Depression, the unemployment rate was around 25%.

• Two weeks ago, the Imperial College of London released their model for how to combat the spread of COVID-19. Without severe disruptions to our daily routines, and the possibility of long-term, periodic quarantines, COVID-19 could return, killing an estimated 2.2 million people in the US alone.

• The Dow Jones dropped almost 10,000 points in the span of a month, from a high of 28,992 on February 21 to 19,173 on March 20. The percentage of the drop on March 16th is on par with that of the infamous Black Thursday of 1929.

The likelihood of COVID-19 disrupting the everyday living habits of Americans, not to mention the profound and unexpected impact it has had on everyday workers, would have been impossible only a month ago. Now, it is all but certain to have unforeseen, devastating impacts on everything it touches.

At times like these, we often remark with platitudes such as, “If only there was something we could’ve done.” It is clear at this point that President Trump’s handling of the situation has been abysmal. Every morning briefings are given downplaying the impact of this crisis, as though you can cover your eyes and ears and see no evil, hear no evil. The two capitalist parties in government haggle over relief efforts, each trying to outflank the other for electoral gains in the upcoming general election. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve doles out trillions of dollars to attempt to keep the economy afloat. It all amounts to covering up the reality that the economy is simply a juggernaut of immiseration for the working class. Keeping this juggernaut from sinking is the primary objective of the capitalist elites, which is obvious from the framing of the debate around what to do: keep the economy going -- but human needs and comfort are complete outside the scope of understanding for those in control of society. We need a cooperative commonwealth governed by the principle, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

While political pundits are seeking to negotiate policy proposals to mitigate this disaster, unions are organizing workers in the here and now. Take, for example, some of the recent actions by members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Just last week, IWW members in Portland, Madison, and Milwaukee took direct action against their bosses to demand specific changes in their workplace conditions. In Madison and Milwaukee, union members at CapTel Industries engaged in a one-day sickout over pay. Although these workers are classified by the state of Wisconsin as Telecommunications Service Priority Level 3, the same level designated for state and local first responders, their pay is far below those of other essential personnel. In Portland, when workers at the historic Crush Bar were told they would be laid off during the city’s lockdown, members of the Crush Bar Worker’s Collective marched on their boss, demanding they be paid their sick time and provide half-pay for their scheduled shifts. Instead of meeting their demands, management called the Portland Police Department on their former employees, despite the order from PPD that they would not respond to calls unless for severe, life-threatening emergencies. Following this action in the city, Wobblies at Voodoo Doughnuts, a popular tourist attraction, formally announced their plans to unionize. This coincided with management’s recent decision to temporarily lay off over a dozen employees. According to one member, management at Voodoo doughnuts is not paying out accrued paid time off in accordance with their store’s own policy.

In each of these cases, workers won some or all of their demands.

CapTel workers won a ninety percent adherence at work, meaning they have less time they need to be on call at their desks. Crush Bar workers won their accrued sick time after the bar closed. Voodoo Doughnuts workers are pushing for, and winning the fight on, union recognition, despite Trump’s NLRB suspending union elections.

Now, workers in several other industries are calling for actions to shut down their workplaces, too.

Whole Worker, a grassroots movement seeking to unionize Whole Foods stores across the country, are calling for a mass sick out on March 31st to protest lack of protection for workers and consumers.

On March 23rd, workers with the Starbucks Solidarity Movement called a nationwide sick out to protest corporate’s desire to keep stores open despite being deemed “non-essential personnel.”

First, these actions signify a shift in the thinking of many low-income workers. For workers in low-wage industries like food and beverage production or distribution, a missed paycheck can mean the difference between making end’s meet and skipping bills. Fast food and distribution workplaces are notoriously difficult to unionize. Few workers in these settings have connections to unions, and fewer attempt to help organize them. The mass surge in workplace actions in these industries shows that workers are beginning to understand the motto that, “Direct action gets the goods.”

Second, building unions that can continue organizing after a major crisis, continue to win demands, and continue to accelerate class consciousness need a legal framework from which to win. Many unions are bogged down by “no strike” clauses in their contract. A “no strike” clause means that during the duration of the contract, no union member is allowed to engage in a strike or sympathy strike against the employer. If they fail to abide by that, the union is legally required to denounce the action or face stiff fines and penalties. This can quickly drain union coffers, making union leaders more like business bureaucrats negotiating with management rather than with membership. Yet, these actions are often done without the use of these union contracts, and are therefore not subject to the same rules. Strikes and slowdowns can be called almost immediately, leaving management in a more vulnerable position.

Lastly, working people need institutions that can provide organizing capabilities in the most hard-to-organize industries. Around 36% (57 million)  Americans participate in the “gig economy” in some way, and around 10% of them work full time in this sector. A decade ago, the AFL-CIO dedicated almost thirty percent of its budget to organizing. In its internal budget for 2018-2019, however, the AFL-CIO dedicated less than ten percent of its budget to organizing. Its largest budget by-line is for political activities, which account for more than 35 percent of the budget. The #RedForEd movement that saw impressive statewide and citywide strikes across more than five states and multiple cities, winning millions of dollars from intransigent, conservative legislators and boards of education is a stark reminder that direct action gets the goods, while political lobbying is an expensive and distant form of organizing.

Too few workers are in formal unions at the moment. Only about ten percent of the overall workforce in the US is currently a dues-paying member of a union. Of this, over one in three public employees are in a union, but only around six percent of private sector employees are unionized. As COVID-19’s outbreak has shown, low-income private sector workers are the most at-risk for any financial or biological crisis that can strike at a moment’s notice, yet are also the most underrepresented unionized workforce.

A massive revival of the US labor movement is needed to circumvent the impending crisis we’re facing. An astounding three million Americans submitted unemployment applications in just the first week of major federal, state, and municipal actions designed to flatten the curve. If the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic continues as it has, we can expect even starker unemployment numbers to rise. As this happens, the strain placed on those deemed “essential” will continue. The federal government could, in all likelihood, place a federal restriction on strike actions in those industries deemed essential for the continued health of the country, as happened during WWII. Should this take place, these workers could be placed in greater risk of contamination, placing their well-being at risk for the sake of company profits.

We must be prepared for the coming crisis. We must be building for something better in the here and now. The working class is already showing how to do that. C.L.R. James wrote in his classic book Facing Reality that it was the duty of radicals to “observe and record” the actions by the working class. Given the stark reality we are facing, we can observe, record, and now take action. Here is what you can do:

1. Find out what your coworkers issues are concerned about. Meet together (perhaps a phone or video conference to be safe) and make a plan with them to get concessions from our boss. Get in the habit of practicing democracy with your coworkers.

2. Do a petition, or get a group of coworkers together and confront your boss as a group.

3. Walk off the job as a group, but state clearly you are not quitting, but you are refusing unsafe working conditions under section 502 of the National Labor Relations Act.

4. Contact the local IWW branch in your area, or our Organizing Department. Organizers from the union are ready to walk you through the steps of organizing something immediate, but also for the long haul. After the Coronavirus pandemic settles the crisis of unfair treatment, low wages, understaffing, and more remain. Organizing your coworkers into a militant, independent  collective action based union is the best chance to have power over your life at work and beyond.

Cameron Mancini is the General Secretary Treasurer of the IWW.

Brendan Muckian-Bates is the National Press Officer of the IWW.

When and Why Did Unions Start Signing Contracts?

By Robin J. Cartwright

In 1911 Bill Haywood complained that

the A. F. of L. couldn't have a general strike if they wanted to. … They have 271,000 different agreements that expire 27,000 different minutes of the year. They will either have to break all of those sacred contracts or there is no such thing as a general strike in that so-called 'labor organization.'

Today labor relations professionals take it for granted that unions seek to sign contracts with employers, but in Haywood's day this was a relatively new and controversial practice, one that started when he was a teenager. Contracts were originally invented by labor unions that believed they needed to give national leaders authority to restrain strikes and militancy, which could bankrupt the union or subject it to state violence. As labor unrest increased, employers looked for new methods to control their workforce and undermine strikes, eventually choosing to work with and co-opt moderate labor leaders and use their authority over union members to discipline the workforce. Over several decades, employers and union leaders experimented with a series of contracts, gradually developing a workplace contractualism that served both groups.

Labor relations before contracts

Prior to the rise of contracts, unions practiced a variety of other methods to interact with management. During the Lowell textile strikes of 1834 and 1836, among the first factory strikes in the United States, the workers made no attempt to get management to sign a collective bargaining agreement. The strikes were waged in response to a wage cut in 1834 and an increase in the price of room and board in company boardinghouses in 1836. In 1834, the workers, nearly all of whom were young women, organized mass meetings and signed petitions against the cuts, pledging to refuse to work if they were not rescinded, and imposing penalties on any worker who broke her pledge. Although the 1834 strike was defeated, the 1836 strike was better organized and succeeded in reversing the price increase - without signing a contract and with little in the way of labor-management meetings and negotiation.

Nineteenth-century craft unions , with a mostly male membership, often attempted to unilaterally impose their preferred wages and working conditions on employers without signing a written agreement, or even negotiating. Typically, union members would meet and vote on what they called "legislation" (i.e. union work rules). This legislation set wages, working hours, break times, days off, terms of apprenticeship, and specifics of how work was to be done (such as the size of work crews, how many machines could be run at once, and how many products would be produced per hour). Union members were obliged to refuse any order which conflicted with this legislation, and refuse to work at any company that did not abide by it. These craft unions organized skilled occupations that required extensive training - making it difficult for management to replace any worker. If a sufficient portion of the limited pool of skilled workers refused to work for any employer that did not abide by union legislation, they could compel employers to abide by the union's terms. For this strategy to work, the union had to ensure that the number of workers who were trained in their craft remained limited, and many craft unions attempted to do this by restricting the number of new apprentices taken on, and by keeping women, people of color, immigrants, and/or the Irish out of their trade.

Another common practice among nineteenth-century workers was to issue a "bill of prices" or "wage scale" - a written list of occupations in the workplace and the pay rate the union demanded for each one - and go on strike. In some cases, workers were able to compel management, via this direct action, to sign these bills of prices. In other cases, management met with a committee of strike leaders and negotiated a compromise bill. Perhaps the most common result, when management did not defeat the strike outright, was to raise pay rates - but not raise them as high as the union wanted - without signing anything. For example, during the New England shoe worker strike of 1860 , a few employers agreed to a bill of prices with the union, but most raised pay by a moderate amount without formally signing an agreement. The strike gradually petered out as management gave workers much of what they wanted; in some cases, the union unilaterally called off the strike after management made sufficient concessions.

If you equate any written agreement between labor unions and management with a union contract (an overly broad conception of contracts), then these bills of prices would be the first union contracts. However, they differed from modern union contracts in that they did not have expiration dates and normally only set the pay rate. None of the other normal components of modern union contracts - management rights clauses, grievance/arbitration procedures, no strike pledges, language on hours and working conditions, dues checkoff, etc. - were present.

In the latter part of the Civil War and after, American workers began organizing trade unions on an unprecedented scale. Prior to the Civil War, labor unions had primarily been local or regional bodies with little in the way of a national or international structure to coordinate local activity. Unionists now established labor organizations that spanned coast to coast, with national conventions, elected national leaders, and a nationwide strike fund for each trade. They formed the National Labor Union as an umbrella federation (and, after a split, the Colored National Labor Union).

Samuel Gompers, who would later become President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and an advocate of contracts, first joined a union as a young man during this time period. In his memoirs he wrote:

There was a vast difference between those early unions and the unions of today. Then there was no law or order. A union was a more or less definite group of people employed in the same trade who might help each other out in special difficulties with the employer. There was no sustained effort to secure fair wages through collective bargaining. The employer fixed wages until he shoved them down to a point where human endurance revolted. Often the revolt started by an individual whose personal grievance was sore, who rose and declared: "I am going on strike. All who remain at work are scabs." Usually the workers went out with him.

Thus, even after the Civil War and the rise of a truly national labor movement, contracts between employers and labor unions were still unheard of.

The Knights of Labor and the attempt to abolish strikes

Most national trade unions collapsed in the 1870s in part due to a severe depression. High unemployment made it easy for employers to replace union members, and insured a large supply of scabs in the event of a strike. Trade union after trade union went bankrupt funding failed strikes.

When the labor movement revived at the end of the 1870s, the new unions, both the Order of the Knights of Labor (KoL) and the new trade unions that would later found the AFL, were determined to avoid what they thought were the mistakes of previous trade unions. They required all locals seek permission from the national leadership before launching any strike. Any strike not authorized by national leaders would not receive any support from the national organization.

For example, the KoL's regulations stated,

Strikes … are, as a rule, productive of more injury than benefit to working people, consequently all attempts to foment strikes will be discouraged. … No strike undertaken without the sanction and orders of G.A. officers … shall be supported from the Strike Fund.

The KoL's Grand Master Workman (president) Terence Powderly explained ,

Strikes are a failure. Ask any old veteran in the labor movement and he say will the same. … An association well organized need never strike. It is only half organized unions that do so.

In response to the idea that the Order "protect and foster strikes" he satirically proposed that the union also "purchase a rifle and bayonet; also one hundred and fifty rounds of ammunition for each member" and acquire "the latest improved style of Gatling gun." He elaborated that men in office had "enacted laws which make it impossible for you to strike without the troops [being] called out" and that consequently encouraging strikes would bring severe repression upon the Order. Powderly further argued :

There are times when, under certain indignities and tyrannies, a refusal to strike amounts to downright cowardice; but these circumstances seldom arise. The average strike is brought about by the inflammatory speeches of some firebrand. … A strike seldom fails of one result, that is, to create confusion and distrust, and finally break the Union up. Whether the strike was successful, or not, it generally breaks up the branch engaged in it. One reason is, men expect that, as soon as they strike, they ought to walk up to the treasurer and draw five dollars a week, even though they have not paid in five cents.

Like the trade unions, the Knights felt that national union leadership needed to have a degree of authority over the membership to ensure members did not engage in strikes that would deplete their funds and/or provoke severe state repression. However, the Knights had a more ambitious approach to strikes than the trade unions - they wanted to abolish them. In the long run, the Knights intended to abolish strikes by abolishing capitalism, thereby making them unnecessary. In the medium term, they wanted the state to pass laws providing for the compulsory arbitration of all labor disputes. That objective was never achieved in the United States, although laws for voluntary arbitration were passed, and the Knights of Labor in New Zealand did get parliament to pass compulsory arbitration legislation during the 1890s (which the New Zealand IWW would later campaign against).

In the short-term, the Knights arranged for private arbitration with employers, instead of resorting to strikes, whenever possible, reserving direct action as a last resort. This private arbitration took several forms. KoL leaders were empowered to arbitrate disputes between their members and employers; they could order their members to accept a settlement they did not agree with. If the employer agreed, disputes could be submitted to a neutral third-party for arbitration.

In areas where the Knights of Labor were strongest they sometimes signed a written list of "rules and regulations" with an employers' association, laying out a process to use arbitration to resolve all conflicts. Usually one or two pages long, the rules forbade all strikes and lockouts and established a joint board of arbitration to resolve all disputes. These boards were composed of an equal number of representatives from the union and the employers' association, and had the authority to settle any dispute between workers and their employer in the factories covered by the agreement. In the event of a tie vote, each side was to select a disinterested person, those two would select a third person, and then the three of them would decide the matter at hand. Typically, they also provided for grievance committees and established a closed shop (or, as a compromise, permitted members to refuse to work with non-union co-workers).

These rules and regulations signed by the Knights of Labor have a great deal in common with twentieth-century union contracts, but there are some important differences. Perhaps most importantly, they had no expiration date - they were intended to last forever, to permanently end strikes and lockouts. They were much briefer and left most things specified in modern union contracts (including pay rates and working conditions) up to arbitration. There was no seniority and no dues checkoff. The Knights also had difficultly compelling their own members to abide by these terms. In 1886, in response to the failure of the Knights to suppress a wildcat shoe worker strike in Philadelphia , local shoe manufacturers locked out all of their employees for several weeks and then decided to arbitrate with a company union, on an open shop basis, rather than with the Knights - destroying the shoe workers' union in the city.

Initially, the Knights of Labor were larger than the trade unions and they grew rapidly until 1886, becoming larger than any previous labor union in North America. From 1886-1890, employers founded a series of employer associations that led a counter-offensive against the Knights which managed to destroy the union with a series of lockouts, aided by state violence and the backlash against organized labor after the Haymarket affair . The newly founded, and more conservative, American Federation of Labor then took the Knights' place as the largest labor union in the country. The reluctance of the Order's national leadership to authorize strikes did not save the union from being targeted and destroyed by employers.

The early twentieth century: progressive employers embrace contracts

Unlike the Knights, the AFL did not harbor grandiose plans of abolishing strikes or ending capitalism. They viewed strikes as labor's most powerful weapon, but one that should be used sparingly. The AFL compared going on strike to going to war - it was a powerful act, but one that was risky and dangerous, and which should only be undertaken when attacked or in extreme circumstances. They were willing to sign a peace treaty, but unlike the Knights were not willing to give up the right to strike permanently. So their agreements with employers only lasted for a fixed amount of time, after which they were free to strike again. Initially these agreements were called "trade agreements" but by the twentieth century the terms "contract" or "time contract" were used as synonyms. It was these AFL trade agreements that the early IWW denounced when it rejected contracts .

When the AFL began to grow steadily in the late 1890s and early 1900s, it found a section of the employing class (mainly the wealthier section) was now open to compromising with unions - something they were largely unwilling to do with previous labor organizations. This shift occurred for several reasons. Some larger employers believed they could use unions to undercut their smaller competitors . The general trend over the preceding forty years had been for labor unrest to increase, and the growing cost of suppressing it led some employers to start searching for a more cost-effective means of retaining control over their workforce. In addition, some employers were concerned that the suppression of organized labor encouraged the growth of socialist, anarchist, and other radical movements. They worried that the growth of radicalism, combined with the tendency for labor unrest to increase over time, could, in the long-run, result in revolution if left unchecked.

In 1900 these progressive employers, with the participation of AFL leaders, founded the National Civic Federation to advocate for reforms meant to stabilize capitalism. The NCF lobbied for progressive legislation, mediated between employers and unions in labor disputes, and encouraged employers to sign contracts with trade unions. The year it was founded it passed a resolution declaring "trade agreements between employers and workmen where established for a definite term of years have so fully demonstrated their value in maintaining industrial peace that they should be generally adopted." They told their fellow employers that "the practical operations of the trade agreement systems disprove the criticism that they mean a surrender to unjust or uneconomic demands of labor." An article in their newspaper , seeking to persuade their fellow capitalists to sign contracts, argued:

One of the permanent advantages of the trade agreement system is the influence which organized employers have in improving the organization of the workers. As long as employers are hostile, or as long as an association of employers exists solely to fight the lion, the latter is forced to put forward its fighting men. But when employers organize for conference and agreement, and are able to remove the long standing suspicions of the workmen, a change comes in union leadership. The officers become negotiators and bargainers-business men, like their employers.

The reformist wing of the employing class consciously set out to corrupt and co-opt union leaders by signing contracts with labor unions.

The NCF contended that unions would generally abide by the terms of their contracts and that union leaders could be relied upon to suppress strikes by their own members. Their newspaper argued that:

An agreement between an organization of employers and an organization of workmen is backed by the machinery and the power to enforce observance. In the thirteen years of the Iron Molders' and Stove Founders' agreements there has not been a contract violation nor a strike or lockout, except occasionally in a single shop, soon settled by the national officers of the two organizations. … These officers, as in all labor unions, have power to fine and expel members and to revoke the charters of local bodies that interfere with the enforcement of trade contracts.

The longshoremen's organization in their contracts with the dock managers on the Great Lakes have occasionally been called upon to discipline their members for violations, and in the case of the Buffalo strike in 1900 the International President, after revoking the charter of the local union and supplying the places of a majority of the strikers with union men from other locals, filled the remaining places with non-union men. Mr. Samuel Mather, of the Dock Managers' Association, … says regarding their agreements with the Longshoremen's Union, "I am very happy to be able to testify that since that continuous arrangement was inaugurated, about three years ago, our business has been conducted with great advantage compared with what prevailed before. … If any occasion of dispute arises, it has not caused the work to terminate"

By signing contracts with labor unions, employers could convert them from organizations that incited strikes into organizations that broke strikes. In the eyes of the NCF, this was a more effective and cost-effective means of controlling their workforce than their previous reliance on violence and repression.

The NCF also praised a contract signed by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which established a cartel in bituminous coal mining . As settlement of a nation-wide strike in 1897, the union and coal operators signed a national contract, and a series of district contracts, that not only covered wages, hours, etc., but also specified the minimum price coal could be sold at and the amount each operator was to sell. Prior to this contract competing firms often undercut each other by increasing the amount of coal they sold, flooding the market and causing the price to plummet. This contract allowed them to sell less coal at a higher price, increasing their profits. The UMWA acted as the cartel's enforcer by striking any firm that would not sign the contract and abide by its price fixing. The UMWA also insured that a portion of the operators' increased profits went to its members in the form of higher wages. This early contract is one of the more flagrant cases of larger employers using union contracts to undermine their smaller rivals and deter competition. Higher wages undercut smaller firms because their lower profit margins made it more difficult to afford them. Higher wages also buttressed the cartel's position by acting as a barrier to entry, discouraging the founding of new companies in the industry and protecting operators from increased competition.

A more important contract from this time period was the Protocols of Peace , negotiated between the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (a predecessor to UNITE-HERE) and the Cloak, Suit, and Skirt Protective Association (an employers' association), as settlement of the cloak makers' "great revolt" (strike) of 1910 in New York City. The Protocols established a modern system of grievance machinery to settle disputes and enforce the contract. Its grievance procedures were foreshadowed by the Knights of Labor's arbitration system, but the Protocols was more elaborate, with added layers of bureaucracy, and focused more on enforcement of the contract's terms. Earlier trade agreements, too, had provisions for labor-management meetings to resolve disputes but did not have a true grievance system with numerous steps and arbitration involving outsiders. The Protocols not only allowed union members to file against their employers, but permitted employers to file grievances against the union, usually for wildcat strikes. In order to suppress wildcat strikes and uphold its part of the bargain, the ILGWU put locals into receivership when they defied the no-strike pledge, and recruited unionized scabs to undermine wildcat strikes.

The ILGWU succeeded in signing similar Protocol-like contracts with employer associations in other parts of their industry and in other cities, and it influenced the content of other unions' contracts. Larger employers signed not only to deter strikes and regain control over their workforce, but in hopes of undercutting their smaller competitors (who had smaller profit margins and would have greater difficulty paying union wages). In some cases they secretly agreed to sign a Protocols-like contract with the ILGWU before a strike even began, provided the union was able to compel smaller companies to join the employers' association and sign the same agreement.

After the First World War and the Red Scare, employers largely abandoned their interest in signing contracts with the ILGWU or other unions and attempted to go union-free. Some returned to the use of violence and repression to suppress labor unrest (others had never abandoned violence and repression). Some experimented with what historians call "welfare capitalism" - giving workers relatively generous benefits to reduce turnover and prevent unionization. Some established "employee representation programs" (company unions).

1940s-1970s: Heyday of the union contract

After the great depression began, labor unrest and left-wing radicalism revived, prompting employers and the state to institute many of the reforms they had first experimented with in the early twentieth century. In response to the strike wave of 1934, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, in an effort to protect commerce and prevent future strikes by encouraging employers to sign contracts with labor unions. The author of the act, Senator Robert F. Wagner, had been a member of the New York State legislature when the Protocols of Peace was signed, which he supported. The architect of the Protocols of Peace, Louis Brandeis, was appointed to the Supreme Court several years after mediating between the ILGWU and CSSPA during the cloak makers' great revolt, leaving his position on the board of arbitration (the final step in the Protocols' grievance process). He was still on the Supreme Court in 1937, where he voted in favor of the constitutionality of the NLRA.

Force of law alone was never sufficient to compel most employers to abide by the NLRA or sign contracts with business unions. A version of the rights in the NLRA were originally included in the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, but they were ignored by employers and the law was later struck down as unconstitutional. When the NLRA was passed in 1935 it established a government agency to enforce those rights, but because there were no punitive damages for violating it most employers simply did not obey the law. It was the wave of sit-down strikes at the start of 1937 that convinced many employers of the need to sign contracts, or at least keep their anti-union activity legal. Most famously, the notoriously anti-union U.S. Steel (which controlled the majority of steel production in the U.S.) chose to sign a contract with the CIO's Steel Workers Organizing Committee to prevent a sit-down strike at its plants and regain control over its workforce. Most unionists expected that unionizing U.S. Steel would require an enormous battle, but they signed a contract without a fight.

A minority of employers continued to violently oppose unionization even after the sit-down strikes. Perhaps the best known was Republic Steel, which committed the Memorial Day Massacre along with the Chicago police. These employers were finally brought into line during the Second World War. In exchange for a no-strike pledge, the federal government denied any contract for war supplies to any company that violated the NLRA, giving the law some teeth and bringing an end to corporate America's long tradition of murdering union organizers.

Although the NLRA did a great deal to institutionalize workplace contractualism, dues checkoff did not become a near-universal part of union contracts until the Second World War . During the war, union dissidents would sometimes withhold dues as a way of pressuring union leaders, which could encourage them to violate the no-strike pledge. Union leaders and the state insisted that employers directly deduct dues from employees' pay to remove this source of rank-and-file leverage. There were unions as early as the late nineteenth century that had dues checkoff, but it was not until the war that nearly all union contracts had it.

For the next thirty years, it was a social norm for employers to abide by the NLRA. Although most employers remained non-union, they largely kept their union-busting activities legal until the 1970s . To control their workforce, employers treated their employees relatively well (this was the low point of income inequality) and, when that failed, signed contracts with unions, relying on union leaders to keep workers in line. Flagrantly violating the NLRA was stigmatized.

Beginning in the late 1970s, employers began looking for alternative means of disciplining their workforce, which they eventually found in the form of higher unemployment and permanent replacement scabs. In the 1980s, they used these tools to destroy the labor movement and de-unionize much of the workforce, inaugurating the current era of low union density and low strike rates. They have spent much of the past thirty years gradually dismantling the remains of contract-based unionism.

Workplace contractualism and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)

Workplace contractualism developed in fits and starts, with different components added in at different times. What we think of as a standard union contract was really only commonplace for roughly forty years (1940-1980). The previous period of experimentation with different forms of contracts (1880-1940) lasted longer. The later period (1980-present), of tiny, weak unions and very few strikes, has now lasted almost as long as the heyday of the union contract. The exact point when the labor movement started signing contracts depends on how you define contracts. There is no hard and fast point at which the movement passed from non-contracts to contracts, and even agreements that clearly count as contracts took on different forms at different times. One way to approach the issue is to look at how the early IWW viewed contracts, and then find the point in history in which an agreement matching that conception was first signed.

Historians generally write that the early IWW refused to sign contracts, and the IWW of that time repeatedly issued pamphlets and public proclamations denouncing contracts. A 1913 pamphlet written by IWW General Executive Board member Joseph Ettor and published by the IWW stated:

Industrial Unionists disdain to lower the history and ideals of the working class by entering into contracts or agreements with employers … Contracts and agreements tend to foist a false feeling of security on the worker.

In the pamphlet The IWW - its History, Structure, and Methods , Vincent St. John (the second General Secretary-Treasurer) wrote, "No part of the organization is allowed to enter into time contracts with the employers." In her old age, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn recalled that the IWW

did not believe in making any contracts. They believed that as long as you were organized, you could hold the office to what it said it was going to do. But a contract, a piece of paper held you and so they didn't make any contracts.

Bill Haywood told Congress

We say that no union has a right to enter into an agreement with the employers because they are members of the working class; and finally we say that the working class has no right to enter into an agreement because it is the inherent mission of the working class to overthrow capitalism and establish itself in its place.

However, despite this rhetoric, the early IWW actually did make agreements with employers. On Philadelphia's waterfront , the IWW made several verbal agreements with employers to terminate large strikes in exchange for a number of concessions, including a closed shop and partial control over hiring and firing. In the 1912 Lawrence textile strike it drew up a "list of grievances" similar to the "bill of prices" used by unionists in the mid-nineteenth century, negotiated with management, and agreed to call off the strike after management granted most of their demands. If we look at the early IWW's constitution, we find it didn't explicitly ban contracts by name. What it said was:

Any agreement entered into between the members of any Union, or organization, and their employers, as a final settlement of any difficulty or trouble which may occur between them, shall not be considered valid or binding until the same shall have the approval of the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World.

No Union of the General Organization, Industrial Department, or Industrial Union of the I. W. W. shall enter into any contract with an individual or corporation of employers binding the members to any of the following conditions:

(a) Any agreement wherein any specified length of time is mentioned for the continuance of the said agreement.

(b) Any agreement wherein the membership is bound to give notice before making demands affecting hours, wages or shop conditions.

(c) Any agreement wherein it is specified that the members shall work only for employers who belong to an association of the employers.

(d) Any agreement that proposes to regulate the selling price of the product they are employed in making.

(e) No Industrial Union or any part of the Industrial Workers of the World shall enter into any agreement with any Labor Organization.

This section was removed in the late 1930s, except for the requirement for GEB approval, which was not removed until the 1940s. Histories of the IWW generally label this removal as the IWW signing contracts for the first time. It appears that by "contract" Bill Haywood and others who claimed that the IWW did not sign contracts meant an agreement that violated any of these five conditions, not any agreement in the broadest sense of that term.

The Knights of Labor's arbitration agreements would have been contracts in this sense because they violated part (b) by permanently forbidding strikes, although they did not violate part (a). The AFL's trade agreements violated both (a) and (b), and in some cases other clauses. The UMWA's contracts establishing a coal cartel additionally violated part (d); those contracts may be why early Wobblies included part (d). If merely getting things in writing counts as a union contract, the earlier "bill of prices" used by some unions before the Civil War would count as the first contracts. However, they were not contracts in the sense that the IWW opposed because they did not violate any of these stipulations, and because the early IWW itself issued similar documents. Therefore the first contracts, in the sense of contracts that the early IWW opposed, were invented by the Knights of Labor in order to abolish strikes.

Over the course of the twentieth-century, employers and/or the state in most countries eventually adopted measures designed to co-opt and control labor unions, abandoning older, more violent strategies designed to suppress unions. They used co-opted unions to maintain control over their workforce, and sought to marginalize radical unions that refused to cooperate in this process. In some countries this took the form of works councils or state subsidies for labor unions, but in the United States it took the form of workplace contractualism, because that was the form moderate labor unions invented and preferred. The process of co-opting unions was not entirely one-sided; employers had to make significant concessions to moderate union leaders to get them to cooperate and those concessions affected the structure of labor relations. Since the rise of neoliberalism forty years ago, employers have abandoned this strategy in most of the world, adopting alternative methods to discipline their workforce. The paucity of labor unrest has made working with moderate labor unions no longer an attractive option for most of the employing class. The origins of union contracts in restraining strikes, and the extensive history of employers using contracts to control workers, should make those of us who would like to revive labor unrest cautious about reviving contracts - or oppose it altogether.

This essay was originally published at Organizing Work , a media platform associated with the Industrial Workers of the World.

Building Working-Class Defense Organizations: An Interview with the Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee

By First of May Anarchist Alliance

The General Defense Committee of the Industrial Workers World (IWW) has become an important pole of struggle for pro-working-class revolutionaries in the Twin Cities. While active on a number of different fronts it is the participation of the General Defense Committee (GDC) in the year-long struggle against police killings and brutality in the Twin Cities that has largely led to the significant growth of the organization. The GDC has grown to approximately 90 dues-paying members in Minnesota, and has several active working-groups. In the wake of Trump's election victory, Wobblies (1) and others across the country have begun establishing their own GDC locals - strongly influenced by the Twin Cities' model.

First of May Anarchist Alliance spoke to Erik D. secretary of the Twin Cities GDC Local 14 about the history and work of the General Defense Committee there. Erik is a father, husband, education worker, and wobbly who's also been involved in the youth-focused intergenerational group, the Junior Wobblies.

This interview originally appeared on First of May Anarchist Alliance's website .

Fellow Worker Erik, can you tell us about the origins and history of the General Defense Committee, its relationship to the IWW, and how the militants who founded the current Local conceived of it?

As I understand it, the General Defense Committee (GDC) was first founded by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1917, in response to the repression of wobblies and anti-WWI draft protests. I haven't learned enough about the historic GDC to really speak much about it. I joined the IWW in 2006, and we didn't formally charter the current local as a GDC until 2011. In 2011, the committee was 13 wobblies. But we had actually started organizing ourselves prior to 2011, calling ourselves the Local Defense Committee.

Are there historical or modern examples or inspirations that influence the way GDC sees itself, its activity and organization?

One of the things I've appreciated about the Twin Cities GDC is the very practical intention to learn, with a specific focus on learning in order to act. From the very beginning we engaged in mutual education. Since one of our early orientations was to anti-fascist and anti-racist work, we did a fair bit of reading on the topic of fascism and anti-fascism (Sunday mornings with coffee).

I mention this period of mutual education because we have a lot of inspirations, but none of them have been role models, per se. We have looked to previous movements largely in order to inform our own work and to learn from our elders and the experience of previous generations, but not as Role Models To Be Emulated. That's been important.

With that caveat, we have a lot of inspiration. I get new inspiration every time I read a book, it seems. Some of the inspiration is local: here, I'd specifically highlight Anti-Racist Action and Teamsters Local 544. Anti-Racist Action (ARA) came out of a Minneapolis-based group of anti-racist skinheads who decided they needed to find a way to kick racist skins and organized fascists out of the Twin Cities. Teamsters Local 544 was the local that organized the 1934 strike that made Minneapolis a union town, innovated new forms of the picket (specifically, the 'flying picket'), and engaged for a short time in open physical confrontation on the streets.

Beyond the Twin Cities, I think our members have a lot of very different inspirations. One of mine has always been John Brown, but I grew up partly in Kansas. I guess the Black Panther Party would be the most common source of inspiration among early members; our advocacy of Community Self Defense certainly owes a lot to the Panthers, including their Survival Programs. The most recent addition to my 'Hall of Inspiration' is Rudy Shields, whom I learned about from Akinyele Omowale Umoja's We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement.

One of the first projects of the Twin Cities GDC was organizing a "Picket Training", which seems like a kind of simple project, but you all attached some importance to it. How come?

I think the history of the Picket Training is actually the beginning of the history of the local GDC, so forgive me for a longer answer. The IWW was always heavily involved in local May Day events, naturally. In both 2007 and 2008 we had dispiriting and potentially dangerous experiences in marches that were organized by other groups. These happened when we were 'out-marshaled' and 'peace-policed.' Folks might remember the 2006 "Day Without An Immigrant." In 2007 immigrant protection and rights continued to be major issues, and the march was partly centered around pro-immigrant demands.

So it was worrying when wobblies who had been active in local anti-fascist actions saw someone they thought they knew from a fascist rally elsewhere in the state videotaping the crowd (we were never able to confirm the identity because of what happened next). Fascists videotaping an immigrants rights march is extremely concerning; they were likely videotaping either to research immigrants rights' groups (including antifa groups), or to identify potentially undocumented people.

A few wobblies went to talk to the videotaper and get in the way of the camera. Shouting commenced, and the self-appointed organizers of the march successfully pushed the wobblies back into the crowd, allowing the videotaping to continue.

The May Day parade the next year found wobblies promoting militant chants shut down by the same sort of marshals.

At roughly the same time, the local IWW was doing a lot of organizing. While some of us had prior experience in organizing pickets and direct actions, the Starbucks Workers campaign, the Jimmy John's campaign, the Sisters Camelot Canvas Union, and the Chicago-Lake Liquors campaigns all provided early experience and training in planning and executing pickets and direct actions, in a context where we were already committed to IWW ideas and practices. Some of these were particularly challenging, such as doing intelligence and the occasional flying picket of scab canvassers in the Sisters Camelot campaign. Since they never stayed put, it felt like a throwback to the 1934 strikes and the flying pickets. It was cold both Winters.

There was one particular occasion at the University of Minnesota AFSCME strike in 2007 where the IWW promoted, and executed, a hard picket line in the early morning hours at a delivery dock. This was going extremely well until a UMN delivery truck driver rammed the picket line. I was in the wrong place at the moment, and ended up on his hood. I found out later I'd crushed three neck vertebrae; it took two surgeries and a lot of physical therapy to get past it. It also gave me a serious motivation for doing pickets and direct actions better. Just a week after a truck hit me, a delivery truck hit another picketer at an IWW picket of D'Amico's restaurant, thankfully without serious consequences.

Finally, 2008 was the end of an intense two-year process organized at disrupting the Republican National Convention. Most of us already had a critique of 'summit hopping' styles of disruption, few of which have been effective since before the FTAA in Miami 2003. But a number of wobblies were serious and on occasion influential participants in (at least the early period of) the two years of planning that ended up calling itself the "Welcoming Committee." The Welcoming Committee meetings (which were held in the same community space as the early IWW at the time, the Jack Pine Community Center) hammered out some early agreements and principles, including, along with other interested groups, the well-known Saint Paul Principles. This process also gave local wobblies experience in critically thinking through on-the-street tactics and what it would take to actually win goals and actions on those streets, whether in labor pickets or direct actions(2).

All these motivations and experiences were in the forefront of our minds when we thought up the picket training. We knew we had to get better at this, and though we all had some experience, that's not the same thing as having teachable knowledge. So we researched, wrote, debated, and practiced. We adopted a principle of teaching the tactics quickly rather than perfecting the training first, and encouraged people to think about themselves as the next trainers. In order to keep track of our curriculum and to make it portable, we created a trainer's manual, a trainee manual, and a setup manual, which we update frequently.

We offer the trainings to non-wobblies, and while we avoid being an on-call security group, we are trusted locally as providing quality security and planning successful actions. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and on-the-streets protest since Ferguson, I think the GDC has earned a bit of respect from other local organizations as a result.

Anti-fascism seems to have been a key concern for the Twin Cities GDC from the start. Can you explain a bit about why this was the case and how the GDC intended to "do" anti-fascism a bit differently than other antifa groups?

Partly that was organic, because of the people involved. One of our members was a member of the Baldies, and later Anti-Racist Action, and brought a lot of experience on that front to the table(3) .Others also had anti-fascist experience. Given that density of experience and expertise, it was fairly natural that we were interested in anti-fascism from the beginning.

Our first major action was the disruption of a David Irving event (4). Like most of his events in recent years, promotion and entrance to these is secretive and even paranoid. We created fake identities and profiles, acquired tickets and location information, and mobilized over 80 locals who hated the idea of fascists meeting in our city. This put our early group's planning abilities to the test, since the meeting was on an upper floor of a downtown hotel with a front desk by which everyone would have to walk.

As we went along, and based in part on discussions and debates both internal to the GDC and to the local IWW, we formulated a clearer understanding of the relationship we think should exist between anti-fascist work (I think these days, I'd say "Community Self Defense," which would include antifa work) and unionism(5).

Part of the clearer rationale was to establish faith and credit with groups that may have bad impressions of unions, or prioritize other forms of work, and to bring a more diverse group of fellow workers into the IWW. Another part was the understanding that if the IWW ever gets close to its goal of genuinely challenging the foundations of capitalism, we will have to have a group and an orientation capable of defending the union and its workers. We didn't feel that we should wait until the attack came to organize to fight it.

I think the most significant difference of our anti-fascism from other anti-fascist groups is our relatively public, or mass, orientation. Many anti-fascist groups operate largely as affinity groups, stressing secrecy and small numbers, for good reasons. But the types of pressure we can place on the fascists with these sorts of organizations is limited, and the risks to members enormous. Our anti-fascism has taken a mass orientation: we aim for the largest, most public, and most militant forms of engagement possible, consistently pushing for more radical analysis and actions. While some groups consider mass organizations fundamentally reactive and apolitical, the GDC has made its own anti-capitalist and revolutionary politics clear, in order to avoid being captured by liberals.

It seems apparent that the GDC really "took off" during the recent upsurge against police killings in the Twin Cities (Jamar Clark, Philando Castile, Phil Quinn, Michael Kirvelay & others) - could you say a little bit about why this was the case, how the GDC oriented itself and what allowed it to be a place for militants to come and to grow?

Right. The GDC began to grow very rapidly with the engagement at the Fourth Precinct. I want to talk for a minute about the types of engagement that we practiced there, but first I would like to point out the time difference: we'd been meeting irregularly since 2009, were chartered in 2011, and began to 'take off' in 2015. We didn't develop in a rush, despite our feeling of urgency. In retrospect, we should have done more, earlier, and more seriously. You can only prepare to be ready for crisis and then wait to respond in an organized fashion. By the time the police murdered Jamar Clark, after Ferguson and other places had already seen massive protests, we were ready to respond in public, I think.

About two months previously, we'd tested our ability to organize a disciplined mass march and directly confront racists. A group of racists organized a Confederate Flag display on the state capitol grounds. The state sold them a permit. We weren't going to tolerate that. We had meetings ahead of time to organize a counter-protest. We had decided to explicitly make clear that this was a GDC action, and to use our own marshaling teams, and worked with a large variety of other groups. One especially important person in that entire process person is the aunt of Marcus Golden, who murdered by the Saint Paul Police Department in January 2015. She joined the IWW and the GDC shortly afterwards, and seems to be everywhere at all times, moving the work along.

The march began where Marcus was murdered, and ended at the Christopher Columbus statue on the capitol grounds, after ensuring that the Confederate Flag wavers were no-shows. The sheer numbers of people and organizations pledging to come, along with our clearly demonstrated militance, scared them off.

When Jamar was killed, GDC members mobilized quickly. Young Black activists began an occupation of the Police Fourth Precinct. The Fourth Precinct is in North Minneapolis, which is a heavily policed Black neighborhood. In the 1960s, the building of the Fourth Precinct was constructed as a community center called "The Way," in response to two Summers' of uprisings demanding racial justice in the USA. As a metaphor of how unfulfilled the promises made to the civil rights movement have been, I can't think of a starker local one than the transformation of a Black-oriented Community Center into a fortress of blue terror.

Once the occupation was established, which took a matter of minutes to hours, activists began setting up the infrastructure for a long haul. It was already cold, but it got arctic during the eighteen days of the occupation. GDC members were heavily involved in the direct confrontations with police, to be sure, but far more importantly, we created direct relationships with local militants and young people from the neighborhood, whose politics and responses were often directly at odds with the activists who had started the occupation.

Local youth tended to a far greater degree of militancy, and simply understood more clearly what was necessary to protect the encampment, regardless of whether the self-appointed official protest leaders thought. We often provided security at night, when cars would drive at us menacingly, or shots would be fired in nearby alleyways. We were not present in an organized fashion at the moment when White Supremacists showed up and shot people at the occupation, and so I can't say how well we would have responded that night.

An important point about the rise in our local appeal during the struggle for the Fourth Precinct was that we were a largely disciplined group that could reliably be counted on to do what we promised. Equally important is that while we showed up consistently and stayed in solidarity with the protest, we never relaxed our principled criticism of other groups' tactics. Critiques weren't made on social media or publicly, but we were consistent in pushing in person for more radical and militant approaches.

At one point, the self-appointed protest leaders had had enough of being challenged by local youth and militants like ourselves. Pissed that they were losing the obedience of the crowd, which was largely demanding increased militance, one of them grabbed a mic during a tense moment during the encampment and id'd one of our white members as an undercover cop. Frankly, we were fortunate that the person she accused has been active in anti-racist circles for decades and is locally well-known as a result. If the accusation had been made against one of our younger members, the outcome might have been less peaceful.

As a consequence of that event, and a lot of others similar to it, the GDC wrote and released a public statement explaining 'badjacketing' and demanding that no one involved in seeking justice should engage in it (6). We pushed that line hard for what felt like months, but was really just about a week during the occupation. Then the tide started turning and a large number of groups and individuals began to consider the downsides of that sort of action, and condemn it. I think the outcome of our stance against badjacketing actually was greater over time and after the occupation.

For those that aren't so familiar with the last year of activity in the Twin Cities, what have been some high points and challenges of this struggle against the police- and how has the GDC concretely participated in and contributed to this struggle?

With specific reference to our anti-police work, a few things have come together. Those of us who'd been involved in previous actions had some knowledge of police personnel and leadership already; like most municipalities, our local cop leadership would be laughably incompetent if they weren't so oppressive and largely untouchable. A few particular people had started to catch our attention over the years, among them especially Bob Kroll, who was elected President of the local cop union in 2015.

Kroll has a long and documented history of brutality on the job and off, and has been accused of wearing a "White Power" badge on a jacket, and being involved in a process where the then-chief presided over the demotion, retirement, or firing of every single Black officer in the MPD. He also called the first Muslim to serve in the US Congress a "terrorist."

We had already written up a report on Bob Kroll, summarizing his history with documentation, but hadn't really distributed it(7). When Kroll started lying in public about the details of Jamar Clark's murder by two MPD officers, we released the report along with a demand that local reports stop allowing him to comment on subjects related to race and policing, without mentioning his background. We had a big effect in publicizing Kroll's history, to the point that he's been complaining about how frequently people refer to his background, calling him a White Supremacist, etc. We've had little to no effect on local reporters, unfortunately.

While the Fourth Precinct occupation was ongoing, we caught wind of a fundraiser being held by Sheriff Stanek (heavily involved in the crackdown on the protesters at the RNC Convention in 2008) for his reelection at a bar and bowling alley in Northeast Minneapolis. The site was about ten blocks from the Minneapolis cop union's headquarters. We planned and announced a march to the cop union headquarters at night from a local park.

The very same day, however, the police forced the Fourth Precinct occupation out. There was a great deal of anger and disappointment over the course of the day, and people weren't ready to give up just yet. We went ahead with our planned protest, starting with about 20 protesters at our rally site.

We began to march not to the cop union headquarters, but to the bar and bowling alley where the fundraiser was being held. The vast majority of Black Lives Matter protesters were across the river in downtown Minneapolis, inside City Hall. When they left City Hall, a large contingent came and joined us outside the bar. By the time they arrived, many of the fundraiser guests had fled, and the rest had locked themselves inside. We held an impromptu rally outside the bar, and then marched to the cop union headquarters. It was an energetic, militant march. We'd made the cops so nervous that they'd installed security fencing around the property, and had placed snipers in the upper floors of the building across the street.

A few GDC members continued to help hold down the Justice4Jamar movement locally after the eviction from the precinct. They joined a new coalition called the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar, and showed up outside the Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman's office every Friday for "Freeman Fridays," keeping Jamar's name in the news and the demand fresh. I was out of the country at the time, but on one of the coldest days of the year, the GDC played a large part in a mass march. The cold caused some innovations: entering local Cub Foods for a while looked like fun!

Of course, the local police haven't stopped murdering people since Marcus Golden and Jamar Clark. This year we had a number of people murdered by the police: Michael Kirvelay, whose sisters called the police for help while he was in a mental crisis, and who was murdered by them; Phil Quinn, a Native man also experiencing a mental health crisis, was murdered in 2015. Map Kong, a Cambodian-American murdered in his car while having a bad reaction to drugs, Geno Smith, and Philando Castile. The last is a bit closer to me than the others, since Philando worked at the school where my son went for 7 years, and my daughter had been there for 6 years already. They both knew and loved Philando ("Mr. Phil," they called him), like all the students did. Personally, I'm grateful I started fighting against police murder when I did; I think if I hadn't had some actual experience I would have been far more shaken when it came that close to home.

We're still fighting for justice for Philando and all those murdered by the cops. After Philando was murdered, a group of mostly younger activists marched to Minnesota Governor's Mansion, not far from the school where Philando worked. That occupation remained in place for some time, but never reached the militancy or organization that we saw at the Fourth Precinct, for a bunch of different reasons. After the occupation was cleared out, the GDC organized and called for a rally and march to shutdown the two municipally owned liquor stores, which help to directly fund the police department whose officer, Jeronimo Yanez, murdered Philando.

We organized this as a GDC-led action, and as such we organized it in our fashion. We did a lot of turnout work, education about the connection between the stores and the police department, and publicly promised that we would picket the stores with the intention of denying them important Saturday evening business.

This action drew the attention of more racists who tried to troll us. This was average and expected. We also drew explicit threats from Wisconsin National Guard veterans who claimed they would show up armed, and posted images of personally owned military weaponry on our pages to scare us off. We took these very seriously and began research and documentation. Shortly after, we released our security report on the situation, along with a public statement that we were unafraid, provide for our own security and don't rely on police, and we were going ahead. We did create a few new security tactics appropriate to the situation, which were useful in keeping us all safe.

Despite the threats, the protest was large and well-attended. We rallied at a point midway between the two stores, not letting on which store we were heading to. Before we even began marching, the both stores closed, which represented significantly more economic damage than we'd even hoped to inflict by picketing one of the stores.

What kind of folks began to join and participate in the GDC? How was its composition similar or different from the IWW or the anti-police movement in general? So far, the GDC seems to have "succeeded" as a multi-racial organization - how is this?

Most significantly were newer Black members and other members of color. Some had joined prior to the precinct, but it's my impression that anti-confederate flag action, and the precinct occupation, were important moments in attracting Black members. The African People's Caucus of the IWW was active prior to both of these events, and I think that their work, which was often behind the scenes, was often the most important work done, communicating revolutionary and antifascist politics to people who may not have encountered them in this way previously.

Probably the best way to describe the membership of the GDC in general is that members often have direct experience with forms of oppression that are not based solely in the workplace, and a desire to confront those challenges from a revolutionary and consistent place. All of our working groups arose either from skills members already had or had developed and were willing to share, or from needs we had. In addition to Anti-racism and anti-fascism, and training people to do more effective pickets and direct actions, we struck working groups like cop watch, harm reduction, and survivor support.

New working groups seem to have a period of incubation after being struck, during which the people involved start to think out, collectively and carefully, what a GDC and community self defense oriented approach would look like, and then get started. Once disciplined action is taken, especially if it's successful, we seem to have an influx of new members who are also affected by or concerned with those forms of oppression. I'm happy with the way that this approach has found knowledgeable and skilled members and connected them with others.

The Twin Cities IWW has been a fairly sizable and active Branch for years - this no doubt provided a good basis to build from, but there has also been some informal controversy and debate within the Branch over some Wobblies' orientation towards the GDC. What were the concerns and how has that played out?

Yes. The local GDC wouldn't exist without the local IWW, and I strongly feel that GDC locals should encourage all eligible members to join the IWW and begin workplace organizing. In terms of controversy, it's my impression that there were criticisms; I was definitely aware from the beginning that a few members opposed the formation of a GDC, but there wasn't ever a clear debate or discussion. GDC members solicited critique and engagement from wobblies, but nothing much really came of it, unfortunately.

Some concern was definitely based in the notion that organizing against fascists would put IWW members as a whole at risk of fascist attack. A few other objections seem possibly to have been that this was macho adventurism, and a distraction from the work of organizing at the workplace. All of these deserve a serious response. In some ways, however, the GDC's more controversial ideas have become common sense. The idea that anti-fascism is optional for unionists, for instance, seems to be moot at the moment. This isn't as much because of our work, necessarily, as because of recent history: it's hard to retain any illusion about the role of the police, or the threat of fascism to workers, after Ferguson, or after Trump's election.

How has the GDC maintained a democratic culture in the context of constant action and growth? What are the main ways for Defenders to communicate, raise ideas, and debate issues? How does political development work within the GDC - what would you like to see in terms of political and educational culture within the GDC?

The people involved at the beginning were all wobblies with a fair bit of experience in the organization and a dedication to democratic practice. So in that sense there was already a basic common culture and attitude. I'm not certain we've always done this as well as we could, though we usually self-correct fairly quickly. I think over the last year the most important nuts-and-bolts contribution to a democratic practice and culture has been found in improving our paperwork and bureaucracy, actually. With regular minutes and agendas, asking people to write motions ahead of time, and being as organized as possible, our organization has grown in transparency.

I'm not certain that we currently have the practices and culture in place to maintain this without serious new effort. The rapid growth in membership proposes a challenge to this: it means that the serious and lengthy process of mutual education, which was the basis of our common understandings and analysis, and made our planning and actions easier and more coherent, will now have to be sped up and transformed into a process that can handle large numbers of new members.

There is a very serious need for lots of educational initiatives, as well as finding ways to encourage people to take part in them. We need lots of writing, lots of one-on-ones, lots of explanations, and lots of patience. If you've been around for awhile, get used to hearing the same explanations of ideas, acronyms, etc. That's a sign that we're growing. If it's irritating, please get involved in making the explanations better. Along with speedily connecting new members to working groups, I think continuing the practice of mutual education is our greatest current challenge.

What initiatives of the GDC are you excited about and what do you see as the biggest challenges and weaknesses to overcome as we move into the Trump era?

The GDC has experienced solid growth as an institution for the last few years. Here in the Twin Cities, we helped folks in St Cloud organize and apply for charters for a new IWW and a new GDC local, both of which I believe were just approved.

The projects we take on in the GDC are organized by working groups. As we've grown in numbers and capacity, the number of working groups has grown. Every new working group makes me excited.

The Survivor Support working group is our newest working group, and has already taken numerous successful direct actions. I'm really excited about this project. It remains the case that many more people of color are murdered by police than fascists, and many more women experience rape and violence at the hands of partners, friends, and acquaintances than they do from the faces of the Men's Rights groups. We must address everyday violence and oppression in our attempt to build Community Self Defense.

The post-election moment feels very new, at least at the moment. In the days immediately following, a very large swell of interest in both the GDC and the IWW happened, and a lot of my personal energy recently has gone into helping other groups charter by giving as much practical advice and history as possible. Because I am convinced that the GDC and the IWW have immense potential for the next few years, this growth is thrilling and exhausting at once.

It's thrilling partly because of the new energy, and the sudden appearance of people who are, perhaps for the first time, to fight. It's exhausting because the task ahead of us is immense, and will require a nearly constant process of mutual education.

Thankfully, creating trainings is something we've been doing well in the Twin Cities, and with the new energy, I'm hopeful we can continue to both grow and consolidate our growing power. We've started thinking about what the process of doing mass, mutual education would look like, and thinking of how to implement it. The point of all of our trainings, beyond the specific skills taught, is to spread the skills and analysis we have as widely as possible among the working class, in order to increase our confidence, competence, and militancy. The next year is going to lit, if we do it right.

Finally, we've been debating and developing a long-term strategy for GDC growth in the Twin Cities. Without going into details, I'll just say that the long term strategic and nut-and-bolts planning of our group is inspiring, and gives me hope.

The Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee Local 14 contact info:

Web: https://twincitiesgdc.org

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TC.GDC/

Twitter: @TCGDC

Contribute $: https://fundly.com/support-revolutionary-community-organizers-in-minneapolis

Address: c/o Twin Cities IWW 2 E Franklin Ave Suite 1, Minneapolis, MN 55404

Members of the First of May Anarchist Alliance are among those active in the Twin Cities IWW General Defense Committee. For more information on First of May: m1aa.org

Notes

1 A nickname for members of the Industrial Workers of the World union (I.W.W.)

2 For a discussion of the "St. Paul Principles": http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/2/16/1065414/-A-Principled-Stand-on-Diversity-of-Tactic-Avoiding-Uniformity-of-Failure; For more on IWW activity during the 2008 RNC: http://www.iww.org/nl/node/4384

3 The Baldies were among the first anti-racist skinhead crews in the U.S. Anti-Racist Action, is a radical direct action anti-fascist network that was a key to fighting KKK and neo-nazi organizing from the late 80's until recent times.

4 David Irving is probably the most famous Holocaust-denier "historian" in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving

5 "Unionism and Anti-Fascism" (2013) https://twincitiesgdc.org/antifascism/

6 "No To Badjacketing: the State Wants To Kill Us; Let's Not Cooperate" (2015) https:// twincitiesgdc.org/badjacketing/

7 "Robert Kroll: Not Credible on Race or Policing" (2015) https://twincitiesgdc.org/2015/11/29/ kroll-report/

To Escape Trump's America, We Need to Bring the Militant Labor Tactics of 1946 Back to the Future

By lifelongwobbly.com

Back to the Future, Part 1:

The last general strike in the US was in Oakland in 1946. That year there were 6 city-wide general strikes, plus nationwide strikes in steel, coal, and rail transport. More than 5 million workers struck in the biggest strike wave of US history. So what happened? Why haven't we ever gone out like that again? Congress amended US labor law in 1947, adding massive penalties for the very tactics that had allowed strikes to spread and be successful - and the business unions accepted the new laws. In fact, they even went beyond them by voluntarily adding "no-strike clauses" to every union contract for the last 70 years, and agreeing that when they do strike in between contracts it will only be for their own wages and working conditions, not to support anybody else or to apply pressure about things happening in the broader society. When we allowed ourselves to lose our most important weapons 70 years ago, we took the first step towards Trump's America. We're stuck in the wrong timeline - if we want to get out, we have to bring the militant labor tactics of 1946 back to the future!

Back to the Future, Part 2:

The Oakland General Strike began early in the morning of December 3, 1946, when police were trying to break up a picket line of mostly female department store clerks who had been on strike since October 21 ("Back to the Future Day"). A streetcar driver saw it happening and stopped his car. This stopped all the cars
behind him. All of the passengers who were no longer going to work began immediately picketing at other businesses in Oakland, calling out those workers, and shutting down the businesses. The strike spread from there. Some important points:

1. The heroes of this story are the department store clerks who maintained an effective picket for 6 weeks, shutting down the operations of the business, refusing limitations on their ability to picket, and defending their picket when the cops were trying to break it. We need to re-learn how to organize "hard" pickets which actually disrupt commerce, and how to defend those pickets from our enemies. We also need to reject all of the limitations that courts, and the unions, will tell us we have to impose on our pickets.

2. The streetcar driver who stopped his car when he saw the cops breaking the picket deserves an honorable mention, like Peter Norman ("the white dude" at the Mexico City Olympics). He knew which side he was on, and he didn't just keep moving. He saw fellow workers under attack and he used his power as a worker to support the right side - despite the fact that the retail workers strike had no immediate tie to his own wages and working conditions. He didn't ask his union if it was OK. He didn't wait to go back to his union meeting and ask them to pass a resolution supporting the retail workers. Basically, it doesn't even matter whether he was a union member. It doesn't even matter if he abstractly thought that women should be quitting their jobs now that World War 2 was over, or if he abstractly supported Jim Crow - he supported fellow workers against the cops. Since 1947, "secondary strikes" like that have been illegal, and his union could have been attacked by the court - but the union probably would have been training him all along that he can only strike in between contracts, and definitely not for anyone else's cause. We need to reject any limitation on our ability to strike in support of fellow workers, or to strike about things beyond our own specific workplaces.

3. The passengers on his streetcar and the ones behind it also deserve credit for immediately forming mass pickets, reinforcing the retail workers' picket and also spreading throughout the city and pulling other workers out on strike. They didn't come up with this all in the moment, they learned how to do this over years of tough strikes, including the 1934 general strike in San Francisco that also shut down Oakland. Mass pickets have also been illegal since 1947, and we've lost those traditions. We urgently need to relearn them.

4. The unions didn't call the Oakland General Strike - but they sure as hell called it off, and left the retail workers alone in the cold. The general strikes that have happened in the US have almost never been called ahead of time by union. They've almost always happened by workers semi-spontaneously going on strike in solidarity with other workers, supporting the demands of the first group and adding their own. (I say "semi"-spontaneously because the working class had years of practice and preparation leading into each strike - something that's been forcibly removed from our culture over the past 70 years.) Yet by the third day of the Oakland General Strike, the local union leadership was already declaring that the strike was over and everyone except the retail workers should go back to work. As the streetcar drivers were told by their union president, " The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is bitterly opposed to any general strike for any cause. I am therefore ordering you and all those associated with you who are members of our International Union to return to work as soon as possible … No general strike has ever yet brought success to the labor movement. " Once the retail workers were left to keep striking alone, it was only a matter of time before they were beaten and had to give up. If we're serious about reviving strikes, we need to prepare people as much as we can for how quickly the union leadership and the Democratic Party will do everything they can to prevent strikes from the start, and to get workers back to work.

Back to the Future, Part 3:

The 70th anniversary of the Oakland General Strike is coming up in three weeks, on December 3rd. As all of our movements go into overdrive, and we all start networking and holding bigger events than we're used to, we should consider holding "Spirit of '46" events across the country on December 3rd to talk about the Oakland General Strike and the relevance of their tactics for today. This is obviously coming up very soon, but it seems do-able, and if it's presented right, could pull a lot of interest. What else can we start doing to prepare for the kind of labor movement we need - the kind that is ready to stand up to the state and the capitalists? What should we think about the calls that have already started circulating for a general strike to stop Trump's inauguration?

1. The "Labor for Bernie" initiative showed the potential for a cross-union, bottom-up movement that fought for big goals, overcame the separation that is built into the labor movement, and directly challenged the right of the Democratic party and the labor bureaucracy to speak for union members or the working class . We've all just seen that electoral politics are inadequate to stop fascism - it's time for union members and supporters to build a similar movement that is based on supporting all labor action, rejecting all limits on strikes and pickets whether they come from the government or the unions themselves, making all pickets effective, and spreading strikes when they occur (through so-called "secondary" strikes and pickets) - as well as driving police out of the labor movement. This movement should organize in city-wide groups independently of any union structure, inviting all workers to be involved, and then those groups could network nationally. The groups should be open to any worker, union member or not, but should keep union and non-profit staff and and high officers out. Once they get going, it is important that they consider themselves to have all of the legitimacy they need to organize pickets or call strikes, whether through calling for mass workplace meetings to organize action or through supporting minority action - these groups will need to do this because the existing labor structures will put brakes on all action by citing their no-strike clauses and respect for labor law. It's important for these groups to have a name that people can identify with, like "Labor United for All", "Labor Against Fascism", or "One Big Union."

2. The IWW is experiencing a sudden growth spike, as most radical left groups probably are right now. In particular, the IWW's General Defense Commitee, which focuses on defense of the working class and community self-defense, is seeing a lot of interest of people wanting to start new locals. The GDC has a picket training that began with the 2005 Northwest Airlines strike, when the union was trying to tell workers to keep the pickets tame and ineffective. The training focuses on the tactics needed to hold effective, disruptive pickets and to maintain them against scabs. These tactics have ended up being very useful for community self-defense. We should try to make sure that we spread this picket training to as many of these new locals as possible, and prepare as many trainers as possible. If we're going to have the labor movement we desperately need, we're going to have to re-learn how to hold effective pickets, and how to engage in community self-defense - very, very quickly.

3. The growth that we're seeing shows that people think we have something to offer now that electoral anti-fascism is discredited. We should double down on our efforts to recruit and to integrate these new members. We also need to prove that they are right when they think we have something to offer. We need to organize boldly, which will inspire our new members to become active and take leadership, and will also inspire hundreds and thousands of more people to join.

4. We absolutely need to double down on our support for Latino workers. We need to prepare to mobilize boldly against any repression that they face, and to support them when/if they take action. They've already proven through the May Day strikes of 2005 and 2006 that they know how to organize mass industrial action better than any other group of workers in this country. We also need to emphasize our Spanish-language materials and infrastructure in an effort to make our organization a useful tool for Latino workers.

5. Millions of union members, and workers, voted for Trump. A lot of factors went into this, including massive undercurrents of hatred and bigotry, but it also seems that there was an economic element - many white workers saw him as the only program offering anything different from decades of factory closures, social cuts, and poverty with no escape. Our best bet to win them away from fascism is if we show that we have a real program to fight for, and win , a better world. If we can't do that, we won't. (The business union leadership have already thrown themselves on the mercy of the victor and declared that they're ready to work with Trump - but it's debatable whether he'll have any use for them.) We're on the verge of being in a similar situation for organizing as radicals were during Jim Crow - and we will have to organize in the same way, focusing on the needs and defense of the most oppressed and vulnerable groups of workers and forcing bigots at work to decide whether they'll side with the boss or with their co-workers. Someone can vote based on abstract bigotry and still choose to side with their flesh-and-blood co-workers against the boss that yells at both of them every day. And if they don't, they're scabs, and we'll have to treat them as such. As CLR James and Grace Lee Boggs put it in 1958, " if a white worker or group of white workers after reading and contributing to the paper as a whole finds that articles or letters expressing Negro aggressiveness on racial questions make the whole paper offensive to him, that means that it is he who is putting his prejudices on the race question before the interests of the class as a whole. He must be reasoned with, argued with, and if necessary fought to a finish. "

6. It's good that people are already thinking in terms of how we can use our power at work to exert pressure on our lives outside of work. We're supposed to think that we only have power at the ballot box, every four years. It's just become much more obvious to a lot of people that we don't have any power there. We need to encourage workers to think about leveraging their power at work in new ways in every possible respect. As the old slogan goes, the National Guard can't dig coal with bayonets - if the government legislates against women's reproductive rights, it can only do so if healthcare workers accept it; if the government sends more police into schools, they will only find students to criminalize if the teachers have not gone on strike. We need to push as hard as we can to break through this limitation of self-confidence, where workers think that workplace action (if they even take it at all) can only be about their own conditions. Even the head of the Chicago Teachers' Union, one of the most confrontational and inspiring unions in the country, accepts copsin schools and does not challenge these limitations. When workers do break through on this - and they've got to, sometime, somewhere - we need to be ready to support them with everything we've got.

7. The initial discussion of a general strike points to the kind of labor movement that we've needed for a long time and we're going to desperately require now. We are entering a period where the state will bring on all ferocity against any oppositional movement. They've also made it clear that the very existence of unions is one of their targets - Reagan focused on crushing militant unions to scare the rest; the current Republican party, including Trump, want to completely abolish unions, as they basically have in Wisconsin since 2011.

8. A general strike will only ever happen over the ruins of labor law and workplace contractualism. As we saw in Wisconsin in 2011, the day after people began talking about general strike, the international unions came down hard saying that nobody in Wisconsin had the authority to call a general strike, since each union's contracts prohibited striking. Ironically, if the Republicans try to pass nationwide right-to-work laws or outlaw dues checkoff, the only way to stop it would be a general strike - but the union leadership is neither willing nor even capable of calling such a strike. At the end of the day, if we believe that workers can overcome capitalism - then we have to believe that they can overcome US labor law and workplace contractualism.

9. We will also need to be ready for minority strikes or action when and if they happen. Many workers and union members may have voted for Trump and may actually want him to take office. We still need to create a movement that encourages and supports action by any size group of workers, whether it's individual fast food workers refusing to serve cops , or groups of workers going on strike, for whatever reason, even if they aren't the entire workforce. We particularly need to support trends where workers are taking action at work over issues beyond just wages and working conditions, and to emphasize how much potential power we have if we only use it. As we all begin holding mass meetings in cities around the country and building new infrastructures, we should plan out some kind of "flying picket" infrastructure which can mobilize mass pickets in immediate defense of any minority workplace action especially.

10. And what about the ideas which have begun floating around about a general strike on January 20th to stop Trump's inauguration? I would say that we in the IWW should be cautiously optimistic, but should wait and see whether this catches on more broadly before we consider officially engaging with it - in the meantime, we should emphasize our efforts to build a sustained, pro-strike culture and infrastructure along the lines of what I've written above. I want to be clear, that I think it is absolutely correct to promote as much unrest as possible (including industrial unrest) to prevent the inauguration. If there is a lot of excitement around the country for a day, or a week, or a month of "no work, no school" to prevent the inauguration, that would be a fantastic development. There are some who think that the IWW can just ignore Trump because we do not take a stand on politicians - this is missing the point of what is happening in this country and would be a disastrous mistake. The biggest challenge towards any industrial action will be the union bureaucracy. The AFL-CIO is "ready to work with Trump", and would be incapable of calling for or organizing a general strike even if they wanted to. We need to build the kind of movements which can challenge the hegemony of the business unions and call for strikes over their heads. Maybe a starting point would be agitating hospitality and restaurant workers in DC to shut down all hotels and restaurants leading up to the inauguration, or agitating media workers to refuse to broadcast anything by Trump. The main point is that there won't be one general strike that saves us and then we all go back to normal - our focus has to be recreating a culture of militant, production-stopping strikes which seek to spread through secondary strikes and mass pickets, and which take aim at all injustice in society, not just workplace issues.

Nothing is a foregone conclusion, as bad as it looks right now. One day we will raise a cooperative commonwealth from the nightmare of capitalism, and one day there won't be any more presidents to inaugurate. As surprised as we all might be to have waken up on November 9 and found ourselves hurtling towards fascism, we have to remember that sometimes we will be surprised by spontaneous outpourings of solidarity that people will show as they create new movements which leave us struggling to catch up. The protests which began the night after the election are a very encouraging step in that direction, and they still have time to spread from the street to every aspect of society.

This was originally posted at lifelongwobbly.com.

On the Front Lines of Class War: Why the Fight for a Livable Wage is Everyone's Fight

By Colin Jenkins

"There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class - the rich class - that's making war, and we're winning."

- Warren Buffett (2006)

In the spring of 2004, amid the thaw of a frigid New York City winter, a brave group of Starbucks baristas began organizing. Like most service-sector employees in the United States, they were faced with the daunting task of trying to live on less-than-livable wages. Inconsistent hours, inadequate or non-existent health insurance, and less-than-dignified working conditions paled in comparison to their inability to obtain the most basic necessities. Apartment meetings, backroom discussions, and after-hours pep talks - all fueled by a collective angst - culminated into a sense of solidarity, the natural bond that occurs when workers take the time to realize their commonalities and shared struggle. On May 17, 2004, they officially announced their affiliation with the Industrial Workers of the World, an all-encompassing union with an impressive history of labor activity in the US. A petition for unionization followed suit. Their demands were simple: Guaranteed hours with the option for fulltime status, an end to understaffing, a healthier and safer workplace, and increased pay and raises.

"Solidarity Unionism," Grassroots Organizing, and the Formation of a New Front

It is only fitting that such a daring endeavor would fall under the banner of the IWW. Proudly asserting itself as "One Big Union" and "A Union for All Workers," the "Wobblies" shun hierarchical and highly-bureaucratic union models that have dominated the American labor scene for much of the past half-century, instead promoting and utilizing direct action that is member-run and member-driven. Deploying what they refer to as "solidarity unionism," as opposed to "business unionism," the preamble to the IWW's constitution echoes an old-school, militant, trade-union tone, boldly (and correctly) proclaiming, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people" - a far cry from the timid and capitulating modus operandi of the modern adaptation. However, it is not just a much-needed infusion of labor militancy that makes the IWW attractive, it is its grassroots approach to labor organizing. In a post-industrial landscape that is overrun with underemployment, the IWW's model represents accessibility and a sense of empowerment for disconnected workers who find themselves on virtual islands - outside the potentially radical confines of a traditional shop floor. And when considering that wages have either dropped or remained stagnant in the midst of ever-growing costs of living over the past 30 years, it is no surprise that American workers are reaching their collective breaking point and seeking refuge in the form of a shared struggle.

After decades of a disastrous neoliberal agenda that has placed the American working class in an all-out sprint to the bottom, the growing needs of low-wage workers coupled with the "wobbly way" to create a perfect storm. As such, the Starbucks Union captured a vibe and sparked a movement. 2007 saw the arrival of Brandworkers, "a non-profit organization bringing local food production workers together for good jobs and a sustainable food system." Following a similar grassroots blueprint, the NYC-based organization was founded "by retail and food employees who identified a need for an organization dedicated to protecting and advancing their rights," and stands on "a simple principle: that working people themselves, equipped with powerful social change tools, were uniquely positioned to make positive change on the job and in society." Their direct-action, "Focus on the Food Chain (FOFC)" initiative specifically targets "the rapid proliferation of sweatshops among the food processing factories and distribution warehouses that supply the City's (NYC) grocery stores and restaurants" and that of which "increasingly relies on the exploitation of recent immigrants of color, mostly from Latin America and China." In an unprecedented effort, FOFC "creates space for the immigrant workers of NYC's industrial food sector to build unity with each other, gain proficiency in the use of powerful social change tools, and carry out member-led workplace justice campaigns to transform the industry." Ultimately, "Focus members and their allies are using organizing, grassroots advocacy, and legal actions to build a food system that provides high-quality local food and good local jobs."

Groups like the Starbucks Workers Union and Brandworkers created momentum. In 2010, six years after baristas came together in Manhattan, a band of sandwich makers gathered 1,200 miles westward, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thus, the next wave of grassroots, low-wage labor activity - this time stemming from the fast-food industry and, more specifically, the corporate brand of Jimmy John's sandwiches - took hold. Sporting T-shirts that read, "Wages So Low You'll Freak" - a mockery of JJ's corporate slogan, "Subs So Fast You'll Freak" - JJ workers, also under the direction of the IWW, embarked on the first ever unionization drive for fast-food workers. Emily Przybylski, a bike delivery worker at the restaurant chain, captured the spirit of the moment. "A union in fast food is an idea whose time has come," she told reporters. "There are millions of workers in this industry living in poverty, with no consistent scheduling, no job security and no respect. It's time for change." As Labor Day 2010 approached, JJ workers at one Minneapolis store filed for a union election, and actions such as leafleting and picketing were coordinated at stores in 32 states, "from Clovis, California to Miami, Florida."

The embryo created by baristas in NYC, and nurtured over the better part of a decade by the likes of the Brandworkers and Jimmy John's workers in Minneapolis, came to a head in 2012. On Thursday, October 4th, 2012, the spread of low-wage discontent struck the epicenter of corporate exploitation, as "more than 70 Los Angeles Wal-Mart workers from nine stores walked off the job." These walkouts accompanied over "20 charges of unfair labor practices" filed with the National Labor Relation Board. A week later, Wal-Mart workers across 28 stores in 12 states, staged labor protests in the form of strikes and walk-outs. The first workers' strike in the company's 50-year history spread to stores in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Washington, D.C., and Orlando. This movement, much like its predecessors, was largely formed out of grassroots organizing efforts that were over a year in the making. In June 2011, "OUR Walmart," a workers advocacy organization supported by and coordinated with store associates from across the country, dispatched "nearly 100 Associates representing thousands of OUR Walmart members from across the United States to the Walmart Home Office in Bentonville, Ark., and presented a Declaration of Respect to Walmart executive management." The Declaration included a list of requests: Listen to us, the Associates; Have respect for the individual; Recognize freedom of association and freedom of speech; Fix the Open Door policy; Pay a minimum of $13/hour and make full-time jobs available for Associates who want them; Create dependable, predictable work schedules; Provide affordable healthcare; Provide every Associate with a policy manual, ensure equal enforcement of policy and no discrimination, and give every Associate equal opportunity to succeed and advance in his or her career; and provide wages and benefits that ensure that no Associate has to rely on government assistance.

In November of 2012, merely weeks after Wal-Mart workers took a courageous stand, fast-food workers from McDonald's, Wendy's, Burger King, Taco Bell and KFC staged protests in various locations around New York City, "demanding $15 an hour in pay and the right to form a union." A few months later, in the spring of 2013, fast food strikes gained momentum with numerous walk-outs across the country. In April, NYC workers - backed by labor, community and religious groups - staged protests at more than five dozen restaurants. Over the course of the next month, similar actions were carried out in Pennsylvania and Chicago. In Chicago, the actions spread from the fast-food industry to retail, with low-wage workers from Macy's, Sears, and Victoria's Secret also participating. On Friday, May 10th, "400 workers at more than 60 fast-food restaurants in the Detroit metro area walked off the job" in what may have been "the largest fast food strike in American history." The Detroit event was significantly effective as it "shut down multiple restaurants entirely, including multiple McDonald's outlets, a Long John Silver's, a Burger King, two Popeye's restaurants, and a KFC." "One McDonald's worker, Jay Robinson, told reporters that when he started at McDonald's over two years ago, he was paid $7.40 an hour,"writes Aaron Petkov for Socialistworker.org. "Robinson has gotten raises since then - and now makes $7.48 an hour." In his efforts to care for himself and a 2-year-old daughter, "It's a day-to-day struggle," he told reporters. "And the owners make millions." At another McDonald's restaurant, "management attempted to avert a shutdown by bringing in replacement workers, but those replacement workers (in a moment of incredible solidarity) then promptly joined the strike." This wave of low-wage labor militancy continued through the summer. On Thursday, August 29th, workers at numerous fast-food chains participated in coordinated strikes in nearly 60 cities nationwide. Citing poverty wages and the need for more rights in the workplace, "a dozen workers didn't show up for their shift at a McDonald's on 8 Mile Road (in Detroit), forcing the closure of the dining room." In Raleigh, N.C., about 30 workers picketed outside a Little Caesars location. One employee, Julio Wilson, expressed the discontent of his peers, saying the $9-an-hour he was paid was not nearly enough to support himself and his 5-year-old daughter. "I know I'm risking my job, but it's my right to fight for what I deserve," Wilson said. "Nine dollars an hour is not enough to make ends meet nowadays." In Indianapolis, "several employees walked off the job from a McDonald's outlet at 16th and Meridian streets." "Most people here have a family to support, and most people here barely make enough to make ends meet,'" employee Dwight Murray said. "We're here today because we feel like McDonald's is a $6 billion entity and it's not unfeasible for them to pay $15 an hour.

Corporate Greed, Propaganda, and Union-Busting

Despite the obvious needs for livable wages, there is much opposition. Union-busting has become a staple of employee orientations throughout the corporate landscape, with retail giants like Target and Wal-Mart regularly unleashing "aggressive anti-union push (es), and distributing pamphlets and other propaganda to employees." Corporations like Target have become notorious for making employees watch dramatized "training videos" on the so-called "dangers" of unionization in an attempt to convince workers that higher wages, more benefits, and an overall sense of dignity at the workplace would somehow not be good for them. This concerted effort to maintain a grip on poverty wages has led to the formation of intricate networks of union-busting firms that employ corporate lawyers and "anti-union strategists" to offer "continuing education" for business owners and executives. "At these seminars," writes Kim Phillips-Fein, "lawyers and labor relations consultants from the nation's top union-busting law firms come to speak to rapt, intimate groups of executives, advising them on how to beat union election drives, do end runs around the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and decertify unions, all the while hawking their own firms' services." Of course, "union members are expressly banned." To complement this behind-the-scenes movement, corporate mouthpieces like Fox News have taken up the propaganda charge against unions by referring to them as "monopolies" that prevent non-union workers from securing jobs, coining terms like "union thugs" as a fear tactic, displaying video snippets of supposed "union violence," utilizing doublespeak like "right to work" to suggest that accepting low wages is somehow a right that should be fought for, and airing modern-day snake oil salesmen to convince its working class viewers that unions are given extra benefits at their expense. In addition to ideological propaganda, special interest groups, wealthy donors, and Super PACs fueled by the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United decision - such as Koch Industries PAC - have placed virtual ATMs in Governor's mansions and Congressional offices to ensure political opposition to workers' needs while remaining corporate (and thus profit)-friendly.

Starbucks' corporate response to the organizing efforts made by those fateful NYC workers in 2004 was fierce. "Faced with the first serious effort in decades to unionize one of its stores, Starbucks launched what a former worker called 'a scorched-earth campaign' against pro-union employees," reported Josh Harkinson. "The union busting has just been absolutely relentless," says the worker, Daniel Gross, who was fired in 2006 due to his involvement in the initial organizing efforts at the Manhattan store where he worked. The Minneapolis Jimmy John's workers were met with similar tactics, which included bizarre personal attacks from store owners and management through social media. On March 22, 2011, after lobbying for sick days from the restaurant chain, six workers - all of whom were "key figures" in the union organizing efforts - were fired for "defaming the brand and disloyalty to the company." Shortly thereafter, another "pro-union" employee was berated and humiliated on social media by owners and managers, some of whom went as far as posting the employee's personal telephone number on a public Facebook page and asking people to text the employee to "let him know how they feel." An Assistant Manager then posted disparaging personal comments about the pro-union employee, making fun of his appearance and including a picture of the employee for all to see. In addition to these reactive measures deployed by some companies, corporate behemoths like Wal-Mart have relied on proactive union-busting programs for years. In 2007, Washington-based Human Rights Watch released an extensive report accusing the retail giant of "routinely flouting its workers' human rights through a sophisticated strategy of harassing union organizers, discriminating against long-term staff, and indoctrinating employees with misleading propaganda." The report includes examples of "workers forced into unpaid overtime and an alleged strategy of squeezing out long-serving staff who are more costly than low-wage, temporary, younger workers," highlights "elaborate tactics to stop staff from coming together to fight for better conditions," and even describes detailed measures such as "focusing security cameras on areas where staff congregate and shifting around loyal workers in 'unit packing' tactics to ensure votes for union recognition are defeated." The report also found that each store manager, as a part of their training, receives a "manager's toolbox" manual which instructs them on "how to remain free in the event union organizers choose your facility as their next target," and that managers are also given access to and instructed to call a 'union hotline' if they suspect staff are discussing unionization - an action that would deploy corporate specialists from the company's headquarters to "address the situation."

The reasons for such opposition are clear. Corporate profits remain at an all-time high because companies are able to pay poverty wages to their employees and rely on government welfare programs to cover the rest (ironically, while also enjoying historically low corporate tax rates ). Additionally, the economic storm that has lingered over the heads of the American working class for the past five years has equaled a virtual paradise for corporate America. Three simple facts highlight this current economic landscape:

• Corporate profit margins just hit another all-time high as companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before.

• Wages as a percent of the economy just hit another all-time low as companies are paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP.

• Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades as companies don't employ as many workers as they used to. As a result, the employment-to-population ratio has collapsed.

Maintaining this environment has become a top priority for wealthy investors, the corporations themselves, and the politicians who are funded by both. By gutting the middle class through the destruction of unions (as of 2011, only 11.9% of the American workforce was unionized - a 70-year low) over the past three decades, corporations have enjoyed a relatively clear path towards establishing these beneficial conditions of today - where 20% of the population owns 89% of all "privately held wealth;" and where the top 1% of the population owns 42.1% of all "financial wealth (total net worth minus the value of one's home)." In addition to corporate-friendly policies that became commonplace starting with the Reagan years and continuing through both Bush', Clinton, and now Obama, the emergence of globalization has allowed for the replacement of American workers through the process of offshoring and the subsequent exploitation of extremely impoverished populations of workers abroad. Therefore, this latest surfacing of labor militancy from within the ranks of the domestic, low-wage, service-sector workforce represents the biggest threat - not only in its tangible fight for economic justice in the form of a livable wage, but also in its potentially revolutionary orientation which identifies with the modern working class and, most notably, the working poor - that corporate hegemony has faced within the geographic confines of the U.S. in decades. "If these guys are seen to succeed, it could really light a fire, because the dissatisfaction is unquestionable," labor historian Peter Rachleff explains. "The corporation knows that, and they have a lot of resources [and] plenty of lawyers" to combat these working class movements.

Workers' Victories and Building Momentum

Despite a well-funded and highly-coordinated opposition, there have been many victories and positive developments along the way. The mere emergence of a new labor resistance - let alone the fact that it has developed from within the low-wage service-sector and from one of the most disenfranchised demographics of the working class - is very encouraging. While some have questioned the roots of the movement and the extent of the involvement of more traditional, hierarchical unions like SEIU (Service Employees International), there is no denying the politicization and sense of empowerment that is being internalized by the involved workers themselves. Considering the near-death of working class consciousness in the U.S., this development simply cannot and should not be underestimated. The infusion of a direct-action model that insists on a worker-controlled approach to labor battles (i.e. the IWW) is certainly a leap forward. And this method has proven effective in more ways than one. On Tuesday, December 28, 2008, NYC Starbucks baristas were vindicated by National Labor Relations Board judge, Mindy E. Landow, when she ruled that Starbucks had "illegally fired three workers and otherwise violated federal labor laws in seeking to beat back unionization efforts at several of its Manhattan cafes" and ordered Starbucks "to pledge to end what she said was discriminatory treatment toward workers who supported the union at four of its Manhattan shops: 200 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, 145 Second Avenue at 9th Street, 15 Union Square East and 116 East 57th Street." Two years later, the IWW Starbucks Workers Union, following a "determined campaign of grassroots actions in Starbucks stores and communities all over the country," secured another victory when the company's corporate office gave in to demands for workers to receive time-and-one-half pay for working on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. "We're deeply moved to have been able in our modest way to increase respect for Dr. King's legacy while ensuring that Starbucks employees who work on his holiday are fairly compensated," said Anja Witek, a Starbucks barista and SWU member in Minnesota. "This is a great example of what baristas and all low-wage workers can achieve by getting organized and taking direct action in support of workplace justice issues." In February of 2012, after a long and drawn-out battle with Jimmy John's, a federal judge ruled the company illegally fired the six employees who had campaigned for sick time, and ordered the company to "reinstate the workers with back pay within 14 days." In a spirited testimony, Erik Forman, one of the fired employees, remarked:

"It has already been over a year since we were illegally fired for telling the truth. For all the hard work and dedication of the NLRB's civil servants, employers like Jimmy John's prefer to break the law and drag cases through the courts for years rather than let workers exercise their right to win fair pay, sick days, and respect through union organization. The dysfunctional U.S. labor law system gives Mike and Rob Mulligan (JJ franchise owners) and their cronies in the 1% carte blanche to trample on workers' rights. Jimmy John's workers, and the rest of the 99%, will only be able to win a better life by taking our fight from the courtroom back to the shop floors and the streets."

The latest low-wage workers strike, which took place on December 5th across "100 cities through the day," signified, according to the Guardian's U.S. affiliate, "a growing clamour for more action on income inequality." In front of a Walgreen's in downtown Chicago, nearly 200 protestors chanted, "We can't survive on eight-twenty-five…Walgreen's, Walgreen's, you can't hide. We can see your greedy side!" In Washington, D.C., dozens of workers carrying signs singing loudly, "Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way, it's no fun, to survive, on low low low low pay." "In New York City, about 100 protesters blew whistles and beat drums as they marched into a McDonald's chanting "We can't survive on $7.25." This collective outrage has empowered workers while also placing the problem of income inequality back on the public agenda. Major media sources that had barely uttered a word about such inequality in recent decades have now begun to showcase it. The Catholic Church's latest Pope, Francis, has made waves during a near-month-long tirade exposing the flaws of capitalism, recently asking, "How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market drops 2 points?" and referring to the "widening gap between those who have more and those who must be content with the crumbs." And calls for a federal minimum wage increase have gained steam with U.S. Labor Secretary, Thomas Perez, writing on his blog, "To reward work, to grow the middle class and strengthen the economy, to give millions of Americans the respect they deserve - it's time to raise the minimum wage." Though, of course, the Democratic Party's proposal to raise the current rate from $7.25 to $9.00, or even $10.10 in other proposed legislation, would hardly equal a significant change for tens of millions of working poor. Still, despite reformist-based rhetoric from politicians, the agenda is being shaped by the brave workers who have risked all to take a stand.

The battle cry "Fight for $15" has stuck. Numerous small and localized labor organization like Detroit 15 - a group of fast-food and retail workers from the Detroit area fighting "for fair wages and the right to form a union without interference" - and Fast Food Forward - a movement of NYC fast-food workers coming together to "build community engagement, hold corporations and their CEOs accountable, and to raise wages so that all Americans can prosper" - have sprung up amidst the movement-at-large, helping to form collaborative efforts with community and religious organizations which possess built-up social capital to be used, and to make the collective decision-making process more accessible to the workers themselves. Socialist candidate, Kshama Sawant, who made the "Fight for $15" cause a key part of her election campaign, made history by winning a seat on the Seattle City Council in November. Sawant's victory was significant not only for working class interests that have been in dire need of a true "left wing" for decades, but also for the fact that her platform was able to pull local Democrats toward a more authentic (though still reformist), left-wing, working-class agenda. As Seattle Times columnist, Danny Westneat, reported:

"You can't look at the stagnant pay, declining benefits and third-world levels of income disparity in recent years and conclude this system is working. For Millennials as a group, it has been a disaster. Out of the wreckage, left-wing or socialist economic ideas, such as the 'livable wage' movement in which government would seek to mandate a form of economic security, are flowering."

The Future of the American Working Class

If you're reading this article, chances are you are a member of the working class - not because the article specifically pertains to your interests but because, by definition, a large majority of us are compelled to work for a wage or salary to survive. The Occupy slogan which may seem a bit hyperbolic on the surface - breaking society into two camps: the 99% and the 1% - is actually not far off. The 99% essentially refers to the working class - those of us who are underemployed, unemployed, making minimum wage, making an hourly wage, working multiple jobs, earning a salary, working as "salaried professionals," working "under-the-table," etc.. In other words, if you weren't born with enough privilege and generational wealth to carry you through life, you are likely working for a wage in some form or another, or would be compelled to do so if left to your own means.

Jay Robinson, Julio Wilson, Dwight Murray, and their fellow employees are correct in their estimation: Multi-billion dollar corporations can and should pay their workers a livable wage. Considering how far removed we are from the age-old concept of workers "enjoying the fruits of their labor," a seemingly minimal expectation of earning a livable wage for fulltime work has become a revolutionary notion. But it shouldn't be. This issue is not just a low-wage problem - it's a working class problem. It's a middle class problem. It's a societal problem that destroys living standards for everyone outside of elite circles. And, while it is nowhere near the end-all, be-all of solutions to a toxic system, the premise of "a chain being only as strong as its weakest link" is certainly an improvement over the neoliberal, "greed is good" mantra which has dominated monetary and governmental policy over the past thirty years. For low-wage workers themselves, besides allowing the dignity of "earning a living," a livable wage infuses more expendable income into the economy while allowing for the opportunity to live without a chronic reliance on public assistance. "If you earn your money through wages (unlike many of the 1 percent, who earn through things like investments and a tax system biased in favor of capital gains over income) then a higher wage, minimum or otherwise, would mean that you'd spend the additional dollars, creating jobs for other workers," explains market analyst Marshall Auerback. "You'd pay down your mortgages and car loans, getting yourself out of debt. You'd pay more taxes - on sales and property, mostly - thereby relieving the fiscal crises of states and localities. More teachers, police and firefighters would keep their jobs. America would get a virtuous cycle toward higher employment and, more importantly, the cycle would be based on a policy which creates higher incomes, not higher debt via credit expansion." Furthermore, the establishment of livable wages eases the burden placed on the rest of the working class, which has contributed approximately $7 billion per year to fund public assistance programs that serve as a form of subsidization for Fortune 500s. That figure, from an October 2013 report by UC Berkeley's Labor Center, includes four major social benefits programs that low-wage workers are forced to use in order to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families. Specifically, the amount is broken down to Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program ($3.9 billion), the Earned Income Tax Credit ($1.9 billion), food stamps ($1 billion), and Temporary Aid for Needy Families ($200,000), and doesn't include other publicly funded programs like child care assistance, WIC, or section 8 housing, among others.

For those who see low-wage workers protesting for higher pay and think, "why don't they just get a better job" or "why don't they go to college, like I did, and earn a degree?" - think again. In 2012, nearly 300,000 Americans with college degrees were working minimum wage jobs. Furthermore, nearly one-half of all recent college graduates with jobs are underemployed. "Of 41.7 million working college graduates in 2010, about 48 percent of the class of 2010 work jobs that require less than a bachelor's degree, and 38 percent of those polled didn't even need high school diplomas." Even worse yet, 40% of recent college graduates are unemployed. In other words, the idea that earning a degree guarantees a livable wage is exactly that - an idea, no longer based in reality. For those who see low-wage workers striking for a livable wage and think, "what do they expect, they're working at McDonald's" or "these aren't careers we're talking about" - think again. Fact is, since the arrival of globalization, American manufacturing companies - the traditional suppliers of a livable wage - have jumped ship, moving their operations overseas to exploit impoverished workforces that are compelled to labor for next-to-nothing. Since this shift, America's working class has become largely reliant on the service industry. In other words, low-wage, service sector jobs are now careers - not by choice, but by necessity. The 2008 economic crisis and subsequent "recovery" only intensified this shift as "mid-wage occupations ($13.84 to $21.13 per hour) constituted 60 percent" of job losses during the 2008 recession, but only 22 percent of the job gains during the recovery. In contrast, "low-wage occupations ($7.69 to $13.83 per hour) constituted 21 percent" of job losses during the recession, while representing 58 percent of new jobs created during the aftermath. This is a staggering displacement that has seen once-livable employment virtually replaced by now-unlivable wages. As a result, the "characteristics of minimum wage workers" are changing, as 75 percent of them are now adults, many of whom have dependents to care for, and 70 percent of who have at least a high school degree.

The American working class has found itself in a breakneck "race to the bottom" during the corporatist era. However, recent developments stemming from "solidarity unionism," low-wage worker revolts, and a backlash against neoliberal policies and the extreme income inequality which they have bred have shown that American workers are, in fact, beginning to "rise like lions after slumber." If the thundering wave of low-wage labor militancy that has swept the country is any indication, the slumber is officially over. And if the "dramatic actions by and on behalf of workers" in places likes Seattle the past few months - including a "defeat of concessions at major grocery chains, Boeing workers' big 'no' vote on concessions, a $15 minimum wage voted in for airport workers, and election of a socialist (a candidate who made a city-wide $15 minimum wage the centerpiece of her campaign) to city council" -represent a microcosm of things to come, the proverbial race to the bottom - whether it has struck bedrock or not - is over. Because of their emergence as a viable sector of embedded labor, courageous, low-wage workers in the service industry now represent the front lines of an ongoing class war. They represent, as Dave Frieboth notes, "a general uprising of young, displaced workers trapped in low-wage jobs;" people who "looked at the wage disparities and saw that, as a simple matter of fact, the system isn't working." The further they can be kept down in terms of wages, benefits, and overall standards of living, the more effectively their lowly presence may be used as leverage to drive all working Americans' standards down. Thus, their status affects the status of the working class as a whole. They are not only fighting for themselves - they are fighting for all of us. In this sense, "an injury to one" truly is "an injury to all." Their fight is everyone's fight.

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