I took IWW’s Organizer Training 101: Build the Committee course in January when the opportunity to take it in person at my local GMB presented itself. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but had a vague sense of wanting to “do more” or at least learn more when it came to labor organizing and aligning myself with the values and operations of my fellow workers, not just at the IWW but in society in general; this has been a larger pursuit for me for the last decade or so, and I find myself, increasingly so the older I get, constantly searching for lenses through which to focus this desire to help things get better. When I joined the IWW I was hoping I was signing on to a cause that could take this impulse to the next level, so naturally organizer training seemed like a foundational building block.
I’m not exactly sure that I’m the ideal candidate for organizer training. I am self-employed, a contractor who works from home and never sees fellow workers, someone who files his 1040-SR every three months (uh, roughly) and can’t take sick days, has no health care, and enjoys zero job protection and exists entirely at the whim of some faceless middle manager in accounting. Well, wait, maybe I am the ideal candidate for organizer training. I may not be able to directly affect my own work environment, but I can certainly help others articulate and define their own needs and concerns, and learn to advocate for them effectively even if I’m not actively changing my own material conditions. And that was the attitude I took with me to Rhizome House in January.
I have spent a lifetime enduring forced retreats and dry, corporate “learning sessions” or “retreats” where the primary lessons learned involved crafting a plausible excuse for not attending; I have also been to weird raves in the desert involving flamethrowers and a head full of peyote. I wasn’t sure which way this one was going to lean but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to inveigle a revolt this early in my IWW tenure.
Thankfully the Fellow Workers from Detroit were competent, professional and dedicated to keeping the operation on rails. Right from the start I sensed that this marathon sessions, 14 hours over two days, was going to zoom by. Starting with the basic assumption that “You are a worker, and as a worker you are a person who deserves rights, and that begins with the right to organize,” we plunged into the work of building a committee at your own workplace, starting with yourself and slow expanding outward.
The trainers worked together nicely, building points off of each other respectfully, and always allowing comments or differing interpretations from attendees. Frankly it was a lot of information to get through, but at each stage where a new concept was introduced, we were broken into small groups (or more often simply asked to turn to the person sitting next to us) and asked to roleplay the situation that had just been examined by the instructors. And from both sides of the conversation. So not only were we absorbing this information by actually acting it out, we were usually being tasked with seeing the opposite viewpoint, so we could empathize better with people who might not want to hear the message. Usually these roleplay sessions involved recruiting people at your workplace to discuss issues involving that office or shop without coming off as a heavy-handed labor goon, or just as importantly, without tipping off management that an attempt to organize was underway and setting off their alarms too early in the process. We learned the delicacies of introducing what should be normal but still and too often in this country reads as “radical,” this idea that all workers deserve protection and dignity, into a capitalist ecosystem that, as always, defines value purely on the basis of profits and ignores that profits are created by people.
Anyway, I now know that you can foment a workplace revolution in a Subway sandwich shop thanks to our trainers. I am fairly confident after this training that I could convince a crypto tech bro to demand better material conditions.
Continuing on from the one-on-one sessions, we later broke out into larger groups, including one where we staged a walkout on an unsuspecting boss who had just eliminated workplace breaks. That was wildly cathartic and I thank one trainer for allowing me to focus decades of suppressed boss rage on a fellow worker by proxy for a few minutes.
The team-building is real, btw. Take OT 101 and you’ll swiftly reach a point where you’re ready to fall on a grenade for these people you just met 27 hours ago. I would have walked past you on the street yesterday and today we’re the crew of the IWSS Intersectional, on a five-year mission to organize all the things.
The pacing, again, was perfect, the segue from one section to the next presented in a logical, comprehensive way, and weirdly super orderly for prima facie anarchists. Like watching a fish walk, but maybe that’s a skill we’ll all need to teach ourselves to get through these strange times.
Thanks again to our Fellow Workers for guiding us through the basic building blocks of organizing principles, thanks to the FWs at Northeast Ohio IWW GMB for setting it up, and thanks to the workers that make up the IWW most of all.
At the 3/12 General Membership Branch meeting, the Northeast Ohio IWW voted to approve the following resolution in support of the Railroad Workers United push for public ownership of U.S. railroads. While the resolution is a statement of support, it is also a powerful and detailed indictment of the rail industry. It states the case for public ownership and democratic worker control of North America’s rail industry in clear language. The resolution reads as follows:
Whereas, rail infrastructure the world over is held publicly, as are the roads, bridges, canals, harbors, airports, and other transportation infrastructure; and
Whereas, numerous examples of rail infrastructure held publicly have operated successfully across North America for decades, usually in the form of local/regional commuter operations and state-owned freight trackage; and
Whereas, due to their inability to effectively move the nation’s freight and passengers during WWI, the U.S. government effectively nationalized the private rail infra-structure in the U.S. for 26 months; and
Whereas, at that time it was agreed by shippers, passengers, and rail workers that the railroads were operated far more effectively and efficiently during that time span; and
Whereas, every rail union at that time supported continued public ownership (the “Plumb Plan”) once the war had ended; and
Whereas, specifically, when the rank & file rail workers were polled by their unions in December 1918, the combined totals were 306,720 in favor of continued nationalization with just 1,466 in favor of a return to private ownership; and
Whereas, the entire labor movement at that time was in favor of basic industry being removed from private hands, with the delegates to the 1920 AFL Convention voting 29,159 to 8,349 in favor, overruling the officialdom of the AFL and its conservative position; and
Whereas, in the face of today’s crumbling infrastructure, crowded and clogged highways and city streets, poor air quality, lack of transportation alternatives and deepening climate crisis, expanded rail transportation – for both freight and passenger – presents a solution to these social ills and problems; and
Whereas, the rail industry today however is contracting – rather than expanding – at a time when we need more trains, trackage, rail workers, and carloads, not fewer; and
Whereas, the private rail industry is moving 5 to 10% less freight than it did 16 years ago, and in recent years has shuttered diesel shops and classification yards, and has drastically reduced the number of employees; and
Whereas, the private rail freight industry is generally hostile to proposals to run any additional passenger trains on their tracks – despite having legal common carrier obligations to do so – making it difficult if not impossible to expand the nations’ passenger rail network; and
Whereas, the rail industry has come to focus solely on the “Operating Ratio” as a measure of their success, and in doing so have engaged in massive stock buybacks and other measures that deliver short-term gains for stockholders but at the expense of the long-term health and vitality of the industry; and
Whereas, the Class One carriers’ failures to move freight effectively have contributed greatly to the ongoing supply chain crisis, resulting in some of the highest inflation rates in many years; and
Whereas, these “Fortune 500” corporations have raked in record profits, in both “good” years and “bad”, right through the “Great Recession,” the pandemic, and otherwise, right up to the most recent Quarterly financial announcements; and
Whereas, during these years of record profits, these same Class One carriers have:
• Failed to solicit nor accept new but “less profitable” freight traffic.
• Forwarded less freight than 16 years ago.
• Stonewalled practically every attempt by Amtrak and other agencies to add passenger service.
• Failed to run Amtrak passenger trains on time, despite regulation and law to do so.
• Downsized the infrastructure, physical plant, and capacity.
• Eliminated nearly a third of the workforce.
• Outraged shippers and their associations by jacking up prices, providing poor service, and
• Assessing new demurrage charges.
• Thumbed their nose at state and federal governments.
• Blocked road crossing and increased derailments by the implementation of extremely long trains.
• Threatened and attempted at every turn to run trains with a single crew member.
• Opposed proposed safety measures, from Positive Train Control (PTC) to switch point indicators;
• The End-of-Train Device (EOT) to Electronically Controlled Pneumatic Brakes (ECP).
• Taken a hostile stance towards the myriad unions, refused to bargain in good faith, consistently demanding concessions, all the while expecting these “essential workers” to labor through the pandemic without a wage increase.
Therefore, Be It Resolved that the NORTHEAST OHIO IWW GENERAL MEMBERSHIP BRANCH supports the public ownership of the rail infrastructure of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, under democratic workers’ control, to be operated henceforth in the public interest, placed at the service of the people of all three nations; and
Be it further resolved that the Northeast Ohio IWW GMB supports the Rail Workers United movement for public ownership, and,
Be it Further Resolved that the NORTHEAST OHIO IWW GENERAL MEMBERSHIP BRANCH urges all of its members to voice their support for this proposal; and
Be it Further Resolved that the NORTHEAST OHIO IWW GENERAL MEMBERSHIP BRANCH urges all other IWW branches, industrial unions, and chartered bodies to take a similar stand; and
Be it Finally Resolved that the NORTHEAST OHIO IWW GENERAL MEMBERSHIP BRANCH urges all labor unions, environmental and community groups, social justice organizations, rail advocacy groups and others to push for a modern publicly owned rail system, one that serves the nation’s passengers, shippers, communities, and citizens.
