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| Red Justice |
IWW Scotlandhttp://iwwscotland.org/* IWW Scotland The IWW is an international union for all workers. We have four branches in Scotland, and are growing exponentially. Whether you are in another union, or not, we can help in the fight to win in your workplace. |
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| agentmancuso |
Re: IWW Scotland
Can we have a breakdown of 'eliminate'? Who exactly are 'the bosses' anyway?
And how about Xmas every day while we're at it? |
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| Dave Coull |
Re: IWW ScotlandAlthough it started in the USA, and has traditionally been mainly a North American thing, the IWW recruited many thousands of members in Russia during the period between the February 1917 revolution and the October revolution (which happened in November). The IWW was opposed to dictatorship, and many of the Russian IWW members lost their lives under Joe Stalin because of this opposition.Having been suppressed in Russia by Joe Stalin, later on, in the USA, during the McCarthyite witch-hunts, IWW members were persecuted by the forces of "democracy". These members of a union born in the USA would be called before the Committee on Un-American Activities and asked if they were members of the Communist Party. Of course they weren't, but many of them refused to answer, on the grounds that it was none of the State's damn business what people were or were not members of. So some IWW members ended up in jail, and some got sacked from their jobs, because of this principled stand. Ironically, some folk who really WERE members of the Communist Party just lied about it, because, unlike those IWW members, they had no problems with answering, they just answered untruthfully. |
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| Red Justice |
Interesting. I have an Internet friend in the US involved with helping IWW.
Have not joined (as yet) seem to feature in Dumfries, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Can't be bad belonging to a union promoting grassroots activity. |
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| Rinty |
Its not a union as such, not a trades union really. There are few good people involved but I just dont see the point of them. | ||||||
| Dave Coull |
I don't think the IWW was ever intended as a "trade" union. Not a union of one particular trade, or even of one particular industry, come to that. It set out to be the one big union of the working class. At its very first meeting, of 200 delegates, in Chicago, in 1905, Big Bill Heywood, a real product of the Wild West, a miner from the Rocky Mountains, couldn't find anything to use as a gavel to call the meeting to order, so he took off his shoe and banged it on a table and proclaimed "Welcome to the Continental congress of the working class". Historically speaking, the IWW has organised workers, has made demands for better wages and conditions, has opposed worsening of these, and has fought strikes in support of these demands. These are all things that you would expect a "union" would do. It's true that nowadays the IWW is in many ways just a shadow of its former self, but it does still involve itself in workers' disputes wherever and whenever it has the ability to do so. Historically speaking, the IWW had little interest in getting folk elected to political office, and was always rather distrustful of ambitious politicians, and of political parties which claimed to be the "vanguard" of the working class. I think that is still the case.
Yes.
Neither have I. |
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| Rinty |
They do campaign for woklers rights but dont, as far as I know actually represent workers or provide the sort of back up workers need in tribunals etc. In Scotland they do have members of left parties including people who were MSPs, which does go against the grain internationally with the IWW. | ||||||