An industrial union response to trade union bureaucracy in the matter of Occupy Oakland

[doe_witch]

Solidarity Unionism, Occupy, and the moral right of the working class to control the workplace
By "The Union Thug" - originally posted at nebraskaworker.wordpress.com. The views expressed here are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the IWW

Comments

[redstar826]

Do only the workers at a certain workplace have the moral right to decide what happens at a particular workplace? Or do any and all workers have that moral right?

Honestly, I don't feel that I should have the right to show up at someone else's workplace and shut things down without the support of the folks who actually work there. Especially if we are talking hourly workers who would be losing a day's pay in the event of a shutdown.

I'm not from the West Coast and I'm not familiar with the ILWU, but if their reluctance to participate in December 12 port shutdowns is reflective of their rank-and-file members' wishes, I'm not sure I can support that sort of action.

[doe_witch]

I think I agree with you, which is kind of why I posted this- to get some opinions from fellow radicals and labor activists on the Occupy Oakland issue. The thing is, I (unsurprisingly) agree with the general philosophy behind this piece, which is that if the ILWU actually gave a fuck about representing workers, it would have endorsed this and encouraged the rank and file to strike. But I also think it's unfortunate that the communication between unions and Occupy branches is lower than it should be, because it does mean that rank-and-filers are left out of the choice to strike and use other forms of direct action in their own workplaces

[redstar826]

Yeah, I'm far from an expert on solidarity unionism but it looks like something I would be okay with. I'm not involved with an occupy group here (and i still have mixed feelings about the occupy movements as a whole), but the folks I do know who are involved are mostly labor folks who have been doing union activism for years, so that makes me happy. And I get the impression that in my area, labor groups and occupiers are trying to work together. And lol you can't get shit done around here if the UAW doesn't like you, so it's good they they are all trying to play nice with each other.

I've been getting a lot of reports from e-mail lists I'm on from folks working with occupy movements around the country and it seems like in some areas the occupiers are really trying to work with existing activist and/or labor groups, and in other areas it seems like they are discouraging existing groups from getting involved.

[doe_witch]

I am not an expert voice on this but I will definitely say that here in Boston there at least seems to be a reluctance amongst Occupiers to engage with local unions. I can understand why, to a degree- some of the locals seem to be run by a bunch of tools, and there is also the fear about getting co-opted by organizations. But this is obviously not helping us plan a lot of effective action strategies. After the Dewey Square camp was evicted, I was at the GA immediately following that event, and I joined discussion with an ad-hoc working group for planning future actions; I raised the question, "Who has trade union connections?" and very few people in attendance did. Others wanted to know who had experience with labor organizing, and I commented on behalf of myself and a few other cautious Wobs that, well, I'm in an industrial union, but it didn't wield enough influence in the relevant industries to fight the trade unions' leadership, so um, having trade union connections would be really fucking helpful and we kind of all need to work