Communism; Industrial Workers of the World; Socialism
Explaining organization by industries rather than by trades, "The One
Big Union Monthly," March 1, 1919, page 25, takes for instance the
stockyards:
"We do not know how many crafts there are in the stockyards, but
there are many. According to the old style, these crafts would be
organized each by itself, the carpenters belonging to the national
union of carpenters, the engineers to the national union of
engineers, the butchers to the national union of butchers, etc. It
also belongs to old style unionism to leave the unskilled workers
unorganized. Our method would be to organize all the workers in a
plant, as a branch of the Stockyard Workers' Industrial Union. This
would imply the cancelling of trade distinctions and craft lines.
As against the employer we would face him not as butchers,
laborers, carpenters or engineers, but as stockyard workers, no
matter whether we are office clerks or laborers, or carpenters, or
engineers. This is what we mean with industrial unionism. The
various branches would combine into district organizations if
necessary, and all of them together would form the Stockyard
Workers' Industrial Union as part of the Industrial Workers of the
World. By being thus organized we hope to be able to carry on the
fight locally, or by districts, or on a national scale with better
chance of success, than if we were split up in a great number of
unions in each plant, with little or no contact with one another.
The advantages of the one big union idea are so apparent that no
honest worker will, in earnest, contradict us."
The famous Preamble to the platform of the I. W. W. throws a startling
light upon this revolutionary industrial union, which has, within recent
years, been getting a very strong hold on immigrants from Europe:
"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, and the few who make up the
employing class have all the good things of life.
"Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers
of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and
the machinery of production and abolish the wage system.
"We find that the centering of the management of industries into
fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the
ever-growing power of the employing class.
"These conditions can be changed and the interests of the working
class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all
its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary,
cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department
thereof, thus making an injury to one, an injury to all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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