The
Industrial Workers of the WorldThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a...
(IWW) is a union of wage workers which
was formedWhen Bill Haywood used a board to gavel to order the first convention of the Industrial Workers of the World , he announced, "this is the Continental Congress of the working class...
in
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois, and with more than 2.8 million people, the 3rd largest city in the United States...
in 1905 as a response to disappointment by militant unionists with the conservative
American Federation of LaborThe American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1886 by Samuel Gompers as a reorganization of its predecessor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions...
(AFL). While the AFL primarily
organized workers into their respective craftsCraft unionism refers to organizing a union in a manner that seeks to unify workers in a particular industry along the lines of the particular craft or trade that they work in by class or skill level...
, the IWW was created as an
industrial unionIndustrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
– placing all workers in an industry into the same industrial organization – and promoted the class-based concept of One Big Union. Throughout the early part of the Twentieth century the IWW and the AFL
were frequently in direct conflictA labor federation is a group of unions or labor organizations that are in some sense coordinated. The terminology used to identify such organizations grows out of usage, and has sometimes been imprecise. For example, nationals are sometimes named internationals, federations are named unions,...
over the best way to organize workers, and how to best improve the society in which they toiled.
The IWW was formed by militant unionists, socialists, anarchists, and other labor radicals who believed in the concept of a working class exploited by, and in an economic struggle with, an employing class. The IWW therefore employed a great diversity of tactics aimed at organizing all workers as a class, seeking greater economic justice on the job and, ultimately, the overthrow of the wage system which they believe is most responsible for keeping workers in subjugation. Such tactics are generally described as
direct actionDirect action is politically motivated activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political goals outside of normal social/political channels. Direct action can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the...
, which is distinguished from other types of reform efforts — such as electoral politics — which the IWW members (referred to as Wobblies) believe depend upon appeal to members of a ruling class who derive benefit from the subservient quiescence of the working class.
While other unions (such as the
CIOCIO may mean:* Central Intelligence Organisation, the secret police in Zimbabwe* Chief information officer, the head of information technology within an organization* Chief investment officer, the head of investments within an organization...
) adopted tactics — notably the sitdown strike — which were pioneered by the IWW, labor laws passed by legislatures have sought to steadily erode the range and diversity of methods employed by all labor organizations. Confronted with such obstacles, militant IWW members tend to believe in a return to a union philosophy that was common a century ago, in which unjust labor laws are challenged directly by union actions, rather than accepted as a framework within which the union must operate.
The question of political action
By the time of the 1905 founding of the Industrial Workers of the World, the question of whether unionized workers could secure significant change by political actions of their unions had been in contention for some decades. The question had split the
National Labor UnionThe National Labor Union was the first national labor federation in the United States. Founded in 1866 and dissolved in 1872, it paved the way for other organizations, such as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. It was led by William H...
in 1872. It created divisions between the membership and the leadership of the
Knights of LaborThe Knights of Labor, also known as Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor, was one of the most important American labor organizations of the 19th century...
, who favored various political agendas including Greenbackism, socialism, and land reform. Labor historian Joseph Rayback believed that significant losses for organized labor in the 1890s pointed the way toward either socialism, or industrial unionism in order to maintain organized labor's momentum.
Yet
Samuel GompersSamuel Gompers was an American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor , and served as the AFL's president from 1886-1894 and from 1895 until his death in 1924...
, leader of the
American Federation of LaborThe American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio in 1886 by Samuel Gompers as a reorganization of its predecessor, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions...
, opposed both courses of action. He and John Mitchell, head of the
United Mine WorkersThe United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union that represents not only coal miners, but also clean coal technicians, health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees throughout the United States and Canada...
, joined an alliance of conservative union leaders and liberal business men in forming the
National Civic FederationThe National Civic Federation, was a federation of American businesses and labor leaders founded in 1900. It favoured moderate progressive reform and sought to resolve disputes arising between industry and organized labor. It emerged first in 1893 as the Chicago Civic Federation , which was also...
(NCF). That organization's critics believed that its goals were to suppress sympathy strikes, and to replace traditional expressions of working class solidarity with binding national trade agreements and arbitration of disputes.
In
Taking Care of Business, Paul Buhle writes,
In 1903, United Mine Workers President John Mitchell declared revealingly, "The trade union movement in this country can make progress only by identifying itself with the state." ... [The] new National Civic Federation ... sought to promote labor peace (on the terms of the employers, critics claimed) and to make class consciousness and class struggle obsolete.
By 1905, the NLU was history, and the Knights of Labor mostly a memory. Mitchell and Gompers of the AFL were beginning to build an alliance with the Democratic Party. The formation of the Industrial Workers of the World was in many ways a direct response to the conservatism of the AFL, and its failure to respond to the needs of western miners, lumbermen, and others. While the focus upon political action by the AFL (at the perceived cost of class solidarity) was just one aspect of the differing union philosophies, it was a significant one.
1908 split
For the first several years the differences between those who favored political action via electoral politics, and those who believed that working people could never obtain justice through political action, also played out within the IWW. Daniel DeLeon, head of the Socialist Labor Party, believed that a rise in wages for workers resulted in a rise in price, so that workers obtained no worthwhile gain from seeking higher wages. This argument suggested that one of the most significant immediate goals of unions was not worthwhile. James P. Thompson and
James ConnollyJames Connolly was an Irish socialist leader. He was born in the Cowgate area of Edinburgh, Scotland, to Irish immigrant parents. He left school for working life at the age of 11, but despite this he would become one of the leading Marxist theorists of his day. Though proud of his Irish background...
expressed the opposite viewpoint, grounding their writings in the work of Ricardo and Marx. When DeLeon launched a secret hearing against Connolly for "economic heresy" in 1907, the issue of politics vs. class struggle came to the attention of the entire organization.
The 1905 Preamble to the IWW Constitution had stated,
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class without affiliation with any political party.
At the IWW convention in 1908, members of the IWW removed the Preamble language about "struggle [on] the political, as well as on the industrial field," which DeLeon had made a condition of his participation at the founding convention in 1905. DeLeon followers walked out of the 1908 convention, never to return.
A divided IWW
After the Socialist Labor Party withdrew from the IWW in 1908, it formed an offshoot of the "Chicago IWW" in
DetroitDetroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the seat of Wayne County. Detroit is a major port city on the Detroit River, in the Midwest region of the United States. Located north of Windsor, Ontario, Detroit is the only major U.S. city that looks south to Canada. It was founded...
which adopted the name Industrial Workers of the World. (It changed its name to
Workers' International Industrial UnionThe Workers' International Industrial Union was a De Leonist political international active in the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia....
in 1915). Robert Hoxie, author of
Trade Unionism in the United States, referred to the Detroit IWW as
socialistic, and the Chicago IWW as
quasi anarchistic. Hoxie, who was writing in the 1913-14 time-frame (his book was a joint effort published in 1921), wrote that socialistic unions (some of which were AFL unions) "look forward to a state of society which, except for common ownership and control of industry and strong centralized government in the hands of the working class, does not differ essentially from our own." Although they were "revolutionary," they would attain their goals by peaceful means, both political and industrial. The quasi anarchistic unionists, on the other hand, envision an industrial society in which the unions would act as the government. Hoxie believed that quasi anarchistic unions were abhorrent of political action. Other authors have a different interpretation. Quoting passages from
Bread and Roses Too, Verity Burgmann has written,
the Chicago IWW was 'non-political' rather than 'anti-political'. J.R. Conlin insists too much has been made of the deletion of the political clause in 1908; equally significant was the rejection without discussion by the 1911 Chicago IWW Convention of an amendment to the Preamble that referred to 'the futility of political action'.
The Detroit IWW
The Detrouit IWW (which became the WIIU) created an industrial union structure that was similar to that of the IWW. The split between the Chicago IWW and the Detroit IWW was replicated in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Britain.
Unlike the IWW, which from 1908 onwards constitutionally restricted itself from political alliances, the WIIU advocated political associations, and maintained its close association with the SLP, although (as of 1922) it declined to openly affirm this association. Like the IWW, the WIIU advocated use of the
general strikeA general strike is a strike action by a critical mass of the labour force in a city, region or country. While a general strike can be for political goals, economic goals, or both, it tends to gain its momentum from the ideological or class sympathies of the participants...
.
The WIIU was criticized for focusing more on party propaganda than on organizing workers. From 1908 to 1922, the relationship between the IWW and the WIIU was characterized as "bitter".
The WIIU shared much of its membership with the SLP, and struggled after DeLeon's death in 1914. The WIIU never did conduct a strike of any importance. It disbanded in 1924.
The Chicago IWW
The Chicago IWW is the organization that survives as the modern Industrial Workers of the World. After the 1908 split, the Chicago IWW began to refer to itself as the Red IWW, and the Detroit group as the Yellow IWW.
Hoxie observed that quasi anarchistic unionists like those in the Chicago IWW have a different goal than the socialistic unionists such as the Detroit IWW:
They look forward to the complete abolition of the state and of existing governmental machinery. They visualize, not a political, but an industrial society, where the unions would be the government. All political action is abhorrent to them, partly because the state is outside their scheme of things and political action is a recognition of a compromise with it, but largely because they believe that experience has proved it to be not only useless as a working-class weapon but positively harmful to working class interests.
Other authors have a different interpretation of the Chicago IWW's relationship to politics. Quoting passages from
Bread and Roses Too, Verity Burgmann has written,
the Chicago IWW was 'non-political' rather than 'anti-political'. J.R. Conlin insists too much has been made of the deletion of the political clause in 1908; equally significant was the rejection without discussion by the 1911 Chicago IWW Convention of an amendment to the Preamble that referred to 'the futility of political action'.
Hoxie continues,
[The Chicago IWW unionists] have noted that political associations and political gains make the workers soft, conservative, and nonrevolutionary. Revolution degenerates into mere reform, and political preferment makes traitors of working-class leaders . . . Direct action, therefore, has become their slogan, that is, the making and enforcing of demands upon the enemy directly by the workers, through demonstrations, strikes, sabotage and violence. At this point, however, the quasi anarchistic revolutionary unionists themselves split into two camps, centralizers and decentralizers.
Centralizers
Of the centralizers, Hoxie observes,
The centralizers believe that the actual building up of the industrial organization will train and educate the workers in the conduct, not only of industry, but of all social affairs, so that when the organization has become universalized it can perform all the necessary functions of social control now exercised by the state in its legislative, executive and judicial capacities. This universal organization of the workers will then displace the state, government and politics in the present sense; private ownership, privilege and exploitation will be forever abolished. The one big unionThe One Big Union is a concept which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amongst working class trade unionists.Unions initially organised as craft or trade unions. Workers were organized by their skill: carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers, each into their respective unions. ...
will have become the state, the government, the supreme organic and functional expression of society; its rules and decisions will be the law.
Decentralizers
Hoxie explains the decentralizers,
The decentralizers look forward to what they call a free industrial society. Each local group of workers is to be a law to itself. They are to organize as they please. The present industrial and social arrangements are to be overthrown simply by making it unprofitable for the employing class to own and operate industries. Future society is to consist of independent groups of workers freely exchanging their products. The proper proportions of investments and production, the ratio of exchange of goods, etc., will automatically be determined, just as they are under competitive industry, only then the competition will be between groups of workers, instead of between individuals. Universal knowledge and a superior morality, which will spring up as soon as capitalist society is abolished, will take the place of our present complicated system of social control and do away with the necessity of government in the present sense.
Beyond the described differences, Hoxie concludes, the theories, methods, and policies of the centralizers and the decentralizers are much the same.
However, in 1924 (three years after Hoxie's analyses were published), as the Detroit IWW languished, the Chicago IWW was once again split by a division between centralizers and decentralizers. The modern IWW website describes an off-shoot led by James Rowan of the
Lumber Workers Industrial UnionBetween 1915 and 1917, the Agricultural Workers Organization of the Industrial Workers of the World organized hundreds of thousands of migratory farm workers throughout the midwest and western United States...
(LWIU), who invoked the E-P (Emergency Program.) "The E-Pers believed that the administration of the IWW was too strongly emphasizing 'Political Action' as opposed to Organizing on the Job. The E-P claimed to oppose 'centralism' in favor of 'decentralism', but the E-P sought to centralize power within individual Industrial Unions."
Sabotage
When disgruntled workers damage or destroy equipment or interfere with the smooth running of a workplace, it is called workplace sabotage. While Luddites sought to "turn back the clock" to an era before the introduction of workplace machinery, radical labor unions such as the
Industrial Workers of the WorldThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a...
(IWW) have advocated sabotage as a tactical means of self-defense against unfair working conditions.
The first references to the terms "sabotage" and "passive resistance" in the IWW press appeared in approximately 1910. These terms were used in connection with a strike against a Chicago clothing company called Lamm & Co., and the connotation of sabotage in that job action referred to "malingering or inefficient work."
The IWW was shaped in part by the
industrial unionismIndustrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
philosophy of
Big Bill HaywoodWilliam Dudley Haywood , better known as Big Bill Haywood, was a prominent figure in the American labor movement. Haywood was a leader of the Western Federation of Miners , a founding member and leader of the Industrial Workers of the World , and a member of the Executive Committee of the Socialist...
, and in 1910 Haywood was exposed to sabotage while touring Europe:
The experience that had the most lasting impact on Haywood was witnessing a general strike on the French railroads. Tired of waiting for parliament to act on their demands, railroad workers walked off their jobs all across the country. The French government responded by drafting the strikers into the army and then ordering them back to work. Undaunted, the workers carried their strike to the job. Suddenly, they could not seem to do anything right. Perishables sat for weeks, sidetracked and forgotten. Freight bound for Paris was misdirected to Lyon or Marseille instead. This tactic — the French called it "sabotage" — won the strikers their demands and impressed Bill Haywood.
For the IWW, sabotage came to mean any withdrawal of efficiency — including the slowdown, the strike, or creative bungling of job assignments.
Ralph ChaplinRalph Hosea Chaplin became a labor activist when, at the age of seven, he saw a worker shot dead during the Pullman strike in Chicago, Illinois. He had moved with his family from Ames County, Kansas to Chicago in 1893. During a time in Mexico he was influenced by hearing of the execution squads...
, an IWW artist and poet, drew the
IWWThe Industrial Workers of the World is an international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. At its peak in 1923 the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a...
's image of a
black catA black cat is a feline whose fur is uniformly all black, or almost all black. It is not a particular breed of cat and may be mixed or of a specific breed. The all-black pigmentation is equally prevalent in both male and female cats....
with flashing teeth and bared claws as a symbol of the IWW's concept of sabotage. In testimony before the court in a 1918 trial of IWW leaders, Chaplin stated that the black cat "was commonly used by the boys as representing the idea of sabotage. The idea being to frighten the employer by the mention of the name sabotage, or by putting a black cat somewhere around. You know if you saw a black cat go across your path you would think, if you were superstitious, you are going to have a little bad luck. The idea of sabotage is to use a little black cat on the boss."
Historically the IWW was
accused of outright damage to property — for example, getting the blame for causing wheat field fires in a book of fiction by
Zane GreyZane Grey was an American author best known for his popular adventure novels and stories that presented an idealized image of the rugged Old West...
, published in 1919 at the height of the
red scareIn US history, the term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong anti-communism: the First Red Scare, from 1917 to 1920, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The Scares were characterized by the fear that communism would upset the capitalist social order in the United States; the...
. The extent to which the IWW actually practiced sabotage, other than through their "withdrawal of efficiency," is open to dispute. IWW organizers often counseled workers to avoid any actions that would hurt their own job prospects. Even so, when the term "sabotage" is applied to workers, it is frequently interpreted to mean actual destruction. A study by Johns Hopkins University in 1939 determined,
Although there are contradictory opinions as to whether the IWW practices sabotage or not, it is interesting to note that no case of an IWW saboteur caught practicing sabotage or convicted of its practice is available.
There is the possibility that the IWW has employed rhetoric about the tactic of sabotage moreso than actual practice. Of course the expression
disgruntled worker may apply to either organized or spontaneous actions, and employers have long hired
security guardA security guard, is usually a privately and formally employed person who is paid to protect property, assets, or people....
s to prevent and detect any sort of sabotage, whatever the cause.
In 1918, sedition and anti-sabotage laws were passed in the United States. The General Executive Board of the IWW issued a statement referring to the anti-sabotage law, which concluded:
The membership will find it to their advantage to forget and drop the word. The word itself is not worth it. It may arise again in the future in its true light and in its true meaning. If so, the future will care for itself. We should be and are too busy building the One Big UnionThe One Big Union is a concept which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries amongst working class trade unionists.Unions initially organised as craft or trade unions. Workers were organized by their skill: carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers, each into their respective unions. ...
to argue with Congress or departments of justice as to the real meaning of a poor French word.
Robert Hoxie, whose work was collected in the 1921 publication
Trade Unionism in the United States, was one of the foremost experts on the trade union movement in the early twentieth century. Hoxie considered the Industrial Workers of the World the "most clear representative" of revolutionary unionism in the United States. In his discussion of the IWW, he explained the nature of sabotage in detail that is worth quoting at length:
Sabotage is an elusive phenomena and is difficult of accurate definition. Briefly described it is called "striking on the job." J. A. Estey, in his "Revolutionary Unionism," does well when he says: "In Syndicalist practice it [sabotage] is a comprehensive term, covering every process by which the laborer, while remaining at work, tries to damage the interests of his employer, whether by simple malingering, or by bad quality of work, or by doing actual damage to tools and machinery" (p. 96). This definition puts admirably the essential, underlying characteristics of sabotage, but in practice it ranges even beyond such limits. There are almost an indefinite number of ways of "putting the boots to the employer" which have come to properly be included under the general designation, and some of them have been employed by conservative unionists time out of mind. Ca' Canny or soldiering is one of them, which was a practice long before revolutionary unionism was known to the mass of workers. In essence it is practiced by every union that sets a limitation on output. Living strictly up to impossible safety rules enacted by the employers for their own protection is another method. Wasting materials, turning out goods of inferior quality or damaging them in the process, misdirecting shipments, telling the truth about the quality of products, changing price cards, sanding the bearings, salting the soup and the sheets, "throwing the monkey wrench into the machinery"—all are methods of practicing sabotage that have become familiar.
Violence and sabotage as tactics
In 1969 the
History of Violence in America reported about the 1918 trial,
Unlike the other national federations such as the Knights of Labor, the American Federation of Labor, and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the IWW advocated direct action and sabotage. These doctrines were never clearly defined, but did not include violence against isolated individuals. Pamphlets on sabotage by Andre Tridon, Walker C. Smith, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn were published, but Haywood and the lawyers for the defense at the Federal trial for espionage in Chicago in 1918 denied that sabotage meant destruction of property. Instead Haywood claimed it meant slowing down on the job when the employer refused to make concessions.
Robert Hoxie wrote,
In the popular conception of things revolutionary unionism is generally distinguished by violence and sabotage. The tendency, however, to make violence the hall-mark of revolutionary unionists is a great mistake. The bulk of revolutionary unionists embraces the most peaceful citizens we have, and on principle. Most violence in labor troubles is committed by conservative unionists or by the unorganized.
Hoxie continues,
In short, violence in labor troubles is a unique characteristic of no kind of unionism, but is a general and apparently inevitable incident of the rise of the working class to consciousness and power in capitalistic society.
Secondly, revolutionary unionism is not to be marked off from other kinds of unionism my its employment of sabotage as an offensive and defensive weapon. It is true that sabotage is a weapon whose use is highly characteristic of revolutionary unionism, but the notion that its use is confined to revolutionary unionists fades out the moment its true character and varied forms are known. It is moreover distinctly repudiated by many revolutionary unionists, is not confined to revolutionary unions, and, it might be added, is not confined to workers alone.
Hoxie explains,
As the unionists point out, essentially the same thing is practiced by employers and dealers who adulterate goods, make shoddy, conceal defects of products, and sell goods for what they are not.
Dues collection
The IWW relies upon members to submit dues voluntarily, instead of relying on the "dues check off" system, in which dues are automatically deducted from workers' paychecks by their employer. Throughout the organization's history, a constitutional provision has prohibited IWW organizations from allowing employers to handle union dues.
IWW dues collection most typically operates according to the Job Delegate system, which was developed by the Agricultural Workers' Organization (AWO) of the IWW.