1905–1950 Foundation and office workers in the IWW General Office, Chicago, summer 1917 The first meeting to plan the IWW was held in Chicago in 1904. The seven attendees were Clarence Smith and
Thomas J. Hagerty of the
American Labor Union,
George Estes and
W. L. Hall of the
United Brotherhood of Railway Employees,
Isaac Cowan of the U.S. branch of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
William E. Trautmann of the
United Brewery Workmen and Julian E. Bagley WW1 veteran and author.
Eugene Debs, formerly of the
American Railway Union, and
Charles O. Sherman of the
United Metal Workers were involved but did not attend the meeting. The
IWW was officially founded in Chicago, Illinois in June 1905. A convention was held of 200
socialists,
anarchists,
Marxists (primarily members of the
Socialist Party of America and
Socialist Labor Party of America), and radical trade unionists from all over the United States (mainly the
Western Federation of Miners) who strongly opposed the policies of the
American Federation of Labor (AFL). The IWW opposed the AFL's acceptance of
capitalism and its refusal to include unskilled workers in craft unions. The convention took place on June 27, 1905, and was referred to as the "Industrial Congress" or the "Industrial Union Convention". It was later known as the First Annual Convention of the IWW. The
Finnish-language newspaper of the IWW,
Industrialisti, published in
Duluth, Minnesota, a center of the mining industry, was the union's only daily paper. At its peak, it ran 10,000 copies per issue. Another Finnish-language Wobbly publication was the monthly
Tie Vapauteen ("Road to Freedom"). Also of note was the Finnish IWW educational institute, the
Work People's College in Duluth, and the
Finnish Labour Temple in
Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, which served as the IWW Canadian administration for several years. Further, many Swedish immigrants, particularly those blacklisted after the 1909 Swedish
General Strike, joined the IWW and set up similar cultural institutions around the Scandinavian Socialist Clubs. This in turn exerted a political influence on the Swedish labor movement's left, that in 1910 formed the Syndicalist union SAC which soon contained a minority seeking to mimick the tactics and strategies of the IWW.
Organization The IWW first attracted attention in
Goldfield,
Nevada, in 1906 and during the
Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909. By 1912, the organization had around 25,000 members.
Geography In its first decades, the IWW created more than 900 unions located in more than 350 cities and towns in 38 states and territories of the United States and five Canadian provinces. Throughout the country, there were 90 newspapers and periodicals affiliated with the IWW, published in 19 different languages. Cartoons were a major part of IWW publications. Produced by unpaid rank and file members they satirised the union's opponents and helped spread its messages in various forms, including 'stickerettes'. The most well-known IWW cartoon character, Mr Block, was created by Ernest Riebe and was made the subject of a Joe Hill song. Members of the IWW were active throughout the country and were involved in the
Seattle General Strike of 1919, were arrested or killed in the
Everett Massacre, organized among Mexican workers in the Southwest, and became a large and powerful longshoremen's union in Philadelphia.
IWW versus AFL Carpenters, Goldfield, Nevada, 1906-1907 Resisting IWW domination in the gold mining boom town of
Goldfield, Nevada was the AFL-affiliated Carpenters Union. In March 1907, the IWW demanded that the mines deny employment to AFL Carpenters, which led mine owners to challenge the IWW. The mine owners banded together and pledged not to employ any IWW members. The mine and business owners of Goldfield staged a lockout, vowing to remain shut until they had broken the power of the IWW. The lockout prompted a split within the Goldfield workforce, between conservative and radical union members.
Haywood trial and Western Federation of Miners exit Leaders of the Western Federation of Miners such as
Bill Haywood and Vincent St. John were instrumental in forming the IWW, and the WFM affiliated with the new union organization shortly after the IWW was formed. The WFM became the IWW's "mining section". Many in the rank and file of the WFM were uncomfortable with the open radicalism of the IWW and wanted the WFM to maintain its independence. Schisms between the WFM and IWW had emerged at the annual IWW convention in 1906, when a majority of WFM delegates walked out. Bill Haywood for a time remained a member of both organizations. His murder trial had made Haywood a celebrity, and he was in demand as a speaker for the WFM. His increasingly radical speeches became more at odds with the WFM, and in April 1908, the WFM announced that the union had ended Haywood's role as a union representative. Haywood left the WFM and devoted all his time to organizing for the IWW.
IWW versus the Western Federation of Miners The Western Federation of Miners left the IWW in 1907, but the IWW wanted the WFM back. The WFM had made up about a third of the IWW membership, and the western miners were tough union men, and good allies in a labor dispute. In 1908, Vincent St. John tried to organize a stealth takeover of the WFM. He wrote to WFM organizer Albert Ryan, encouraging him to find reliable IWW sympathizers at each WFM local, and have them appointed delegates to the annual convention by pretending to share whatever opinions of that local needed to become a delegate. Once at the convention, they could vote in a pro-IWW slate. St. Vincent promised: "once we can control the officers of the WFM for the IWW, the big bulk of the membership will go with them." But the takeover did not succeed. According to several historians, the
1913 El Paso smelters' strike marked one of the first instances of direct competition between the IWW and the WFM, as the two unions competed to organize workers on strike against the
American Smelting and Refining Company's local
smelter. In 1914, Butte, Montana, erupted into
a series of riots as miners dissatisfied with the
Western Federation of Miners local at Butte formed a new union, and demanded that all miners join the new union, or be subject to beatings or worse. Although the new rival union had no affiliation with the IWW, it was widely seen as IWW-inspired. The leadership of the new union contained many who were members of the IWW or agreed with the IWW's methods and objectives. The new union failed to supplant the WFM, and the ongoing fight between the two resulted in the copper mines of Butte, longtime union strongholds for the WFM, becoming open shops, and the mine owners recognized no union from 1914 until 1934.
Versus United Mine Workers, Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1916 The IWW clashed with the
United Mine Workers union in April 1916, when the IWW picketed the anthracite mines around Scranton, Pennsylvania, intending, by persuasion or force, to keep UMWA members from going to work. The IWW considered the UMWA too reactionary, because the United Mine Workers negotiated contracts with the mine owners for fixed time periods; the IWW considered that contracts hindered their revolutionary goals. In what a contemporary writer pointed out was a complete reversal of their usual policy, UMWA officials called for police to protect United Mine Workers members who wished to cross the picket lines. The Pennsylvania State Police arrived in force, prevented picket line violence, and allowed the UMWA members to peacefully pass through the IWW picket lines.
Bisbee Deportation In November 1916, the 10th convention of the IWW authorized an organizing drive in the Arizona copper mines. Copper was a vital war commodity, so mines were working day and night. During the first months of 1917, thousands joined the Metal Mine Workers' Union #800. The focus of the organizing drive was
Bisbee, Arizona, a small town near the Mexican border. Nearly 5000 miners worked in Bisbee's mines. On June 27, 1917, Bisbee's miners went on strike. The strike was effective and non-violent. Demands included the doubling of pay for surface workers, most of them recent immigrants from Mexico, as well as changes in working conditions to make the mines safer. The six-hour day was raised agitationally but held in abeyance. In the early hours of July 12, hundreds of armed vigilantes rounded up nearly two thousand strikers, of whom 1186 were deported in cattle cars and dumped in the desert of New Mexico. In the following days, hundreds more were ordered to leave. The strike was broken at gunpoint.
Other organizing drives Between 1915 and 1917, the IWW's
Agricultural Workers Organization (AWO) organized more than a hundred thousand migratory farm workers throughout the Midwest and western United States. Building on the success of the AWO, the IWW's
Lumber Workers Industrial Union (LWIU) used similar tactics to organize
lumberjacks and other timber workers, both in the deep South and the Pacific Northwest of the United States and Canada, between 1917 and 1924. The IWW lumber strike of 1917 led to the
eight-hour day and vastly improved working conditions in the Pacific Northwest. Though mid-century historians credited the US Government and "forward thinking lumber magnates" for agreeing to such reforms, an IWW strike forced these concessions. Where the IWW did win strikes, such as in Lawrence, they often found it hard to hold onto their gains. The IWW of 1912 disdained
collective bargaining agreements and preached instead the need for constant struggle against the boss on the shop floor. It proved difficult to maintain that sort of revolutionary enthusiasm against employers. In Lawrence, the IWW lost nearly all of its membership in the years after the strike, as the employers wore down their employees' resistance and eliminated many of the strongest union supporters. In 1938, the IWW voted to allow contracts with employers.
Government suppression , who had been arrested in 1912, giving a speech to barbers on strike The IWW's efforts were met with "unparalleled" resistance from Federal, state and local governments in America; On November 5, 1916, at
Everett, Washington, a group of deputized businessmen led by Sheriff Donald McRae
attacked Wobblies on the steamer
Verona, killing at least five union members (six more were never accounted for and probably were lost in
Puget Sound). Two members of the police force—one a regular officer and another a deputized citizen from the National Guard Reserve—were killed, probably by "friendly fire". At least five Everett civilians were wounded. Many IWW members opposed United States participation in
World War I. The organization passed a resolution against the war at its convention in November 1916. This echoed the view, expressed at the IWW's founding convention, that war represents struggles among capitalists in which the rich become richer, and the working poor all too often die at the hands of other workers. An IWW newspaper, the
Industrial Worker, wrote just before the U.S. declaration of war: "Capitalists of America, we will fight against you, not for you! There is not a power in the world that can make the working class fight if they refuse." Yet when a declaration of war was passed by the U.S. Congress in April 1917, the IWW's general secretary-treasurer Bill Haywood became determined that the organization should adopt a low profile in order to avoid perceived threats to its existence. The printing of anti-war stickers was discontinued, stockpiles of existing anti-war documents were put into storage, and anti-war propagandizing ceased as official union policy. After much debate on the General Executive Board, with Haywood advocating a low profile and GEB member
Frank Little championing continued agitation, Ralph Chaplin brokered a compromise agreement. A statement was issued that denounced the war, but IWW members were advised to channel their opposition through the legal mechanisms of conscription. They were advised to register for the draft, marking their claims for exemption "IWW, opposed to war." In 1917, during an incident known as the
Tulsa Outrage, a group of black-robed
Knights of Liberty tarred and feathered seventeen members of the IWW in Oklahoma. The attack was cited as revenge for the
Green Corn Rebellion, a preemptive attack caused by fear of an impending attack on the oil fields and as punishment for not supporting the war effort. The IWW members had been turned over to the Knights of Liberty by local authorities after they were beaten, arrested at their headquarters and convicted of the crime of vagrancy. Five other men who testified in defense of the Wobblies were also fined by the court and subjected to the same torture and humiliations at the hands of the Knights of Liberty. In 1919, an
Armistice Day parade by the
American Legion in
Centralia, Washington, turned into a fight between legionnaires and IWW members in which four legionnaires were shot. Which side initiated the violence of the
Centralia massacre is disputed, though there had been previous attacks on the IWW hall and businessmen's association had made threats against union members. A number of IWWs were arrested, one of whom,
Wesley Everest, was lynched by a mob that night. A bronze plaque honoring the IWW members imprisoned and lynched following the Centralia Tragedy was dedicated in the city's
George Washington Park on November 11, 2023. A request was delivered to Washington Governor Inslee requesting posthumous pardons for the eight IWW members who were convicted. A rededication was held in June 2024 after the plaque was installed on a granite block base. The color and carved style was an intentional match of the base of the American Legion memorial,
The Sentinel. The $20,000 funding for the overall project, and the labor involved, was done mostly by union organizations or workers.
Organizational schism and aftermath IWW quickly recovered from the setbacks of 1919 and 1920, with membership peaking in 1923 (58,300 estimated by dues paid per capita, though membership was likely somewhat higher as the union tolerated delinquent members). But recurring internal debates, especially between those who sought either to centralize or decentralize the organization, ultimately brought about the IWW's 1924 schism. The twenties witnessed the defection of hundreds of Wobbly leaders (including
Harrison George,
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn,
John Reed,
George Hardy,
Charles Ashleigh,
Earl Browder and, in his Soviet exile,
Bill Haywood) and, following a path recounted by
Fred Beal, thousands of Wobbly rank-and-filers to the Communists and Communist organizations. At the beginning of the 1949
Smith Act trials, FBI director
J. Edgar Hoover was disappointed when prosecutors indicted fewer CPUSA members than he had hoped, and—recalling the arrests and convictions of over one hundred IWW leaders in 1917—complained to the Justice Department, stating, "the IWW as a subversive menace was crushed and has never revived. Similar action at this time would have been as effective against the Communist Party and its subsidiary organizations."
1950–2000 Taft–Hartley Act " After the passage of the
Taft-Hartley Act in 1946 by Congress, which called for the removal of Communist union leadership, the IWW experienced a loss of membership as differences of opinion occurred over how to respond to the challenge. In 1949, US Attorney General
Tom C. Clark placed the IWW on the
Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations in the category of "organizations seeking to change the government by unconstitutional means" under
Executive Order 9835, which offered no means of appeal, and which excluded all IWW members from Federal employment and federally subsidized housing programs (this order was revoked by
Executive Order 10450 in 1953). At this time, the Cleveland local of the
Metal and Machinery Workers Industrial Union (MMWIU) was the strongest IWW branch in the United States. Leading figures such as
Frank Cedervall, who had helped build the branch up for over ten years, were concerned about the possibility of raiding from AFL-CIO unions if the IWW had its legal status as a union revoked. In 1950, Cedervall led the 1500-member MMWIU national organization to split from the IWW, as the
Lumber Workers Industrial Union had almost 30 years earlier. This act did not save the MMWIU. Despite its brief affiliation with the Congress of Industrial Organizations, it was raided by the AFL and CIO and defunct by the late 1950s, less than ten years after separating from the IWW. The loss of the MMWIU, at the time the IWW's largest industrial union, was almost a deathblow to the IWW. The union's membership fell to its lowest level in the 1950s during the
Second Red Scare, and by 1955, the union's fiftieth anniversary, it was near extinction, though it still appeared on government lists of Communist-led groups. The IWW sent representatives to
Students for a Democratic Society conventions in 1967, 1968, and 1969, and as the SDS collapsed into infighting, the IWW gained members fleeing this discord. These changes had a profound effect on the union, which by 1972 had 67% of members under the age of 30, with a total of nearly 500 members. Finally, in San Francisco, the IWW ran campaigns for radio station and food service workers. Also in 1996, the IWW began organizing at
Wherehouse Music in
El Cerrito, California. The campaign continued until 1997, when management fired two organizers and laid off over half the employees, as well as reducing the hours of known union members. This directly affected the NLRB certification vote which followed, where the IWW lost over 2:1.
2000–present In 2004, an IWW union was organized in a New York City
Starbucks. In 2006, the IWW continued efforts at Starbucks by organizing several Chicago area shops. In New York City, the IWW has organized immigrant foodstuffs workers since 2005. That summer, workers from Handyfat Trading joined the IWW, and were soon followed by workers from four more warehouses. In May 2007, the NYC warehouse workers came together with the
Starbucks Workers Union to form The Food and Allied Workers Union IU 460/640. In the summer of 2007, the IWW organized workers at two new warehouses: Flaum Appetizing, a
Kosher food distributor, and Wild Edibles, a seafood company. Over the course of 2007–08, workers at both shops were illegally terminated for their union activity. In 2008, the workers at Wild Edibles actively fought to get their jobs back and to secure overtime pay owed to them by the boss. In a workplace justice campaign called Focus on the Food Chain, carried out jointly with
Brandworkers International, the IWW workers won settlements against employers including Pur Pac, Flaum Appetizing and Wild Edibles. The Portland, Oregon General Membership Branch is one of the largest and most active branches of the IWW. The branch holds three contracts currently, two with Janus Youth Programs and one with Portland Women's Crisis Line. There has been some debate within the branch about whether or not union contracts such as this are desirable in the long run, with some members favoring
solidarity unionism as opposed to contract unionism and some members believing there is room for both strategies for organizing. The branch has successfully supported workers wrongfully fired from several different workplaces in the last two years. Due to picketing by Wobblies, these workers have received significant compensation from their former employers. Branch membership has been increasing, as has shop organizing. As of 2005, the 100th anniversary of its founding, the IWW had around 5,000 members, compared to 13 million members in the AFL-CIO.
2011 Wisconsin general strike In early 2011,
Wisconsin Governor
Scott Walker announced a budget bill which the IWW held would effectively outlaw unions for state or municipal workers. In response, there was an emergency meeting of the Midwestern IWW member organizations. IWW members presented a proposal at a meeting of South-Central Federation of Labor (SCFL) which endorsed a
general strike and create an ad hoc Committee to instruct affiliated locals in preparations for the general strike. The IWW proposal passed nearly unanimously. The Madison branch made an international appeal translating various materials concerning the strike into Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. An appeal was made to European unions (CNT – Spain, CGT – Spain and CGT – France) to send organizers to Madison who could present their experience of general strikes at union meetings and help organize the strike in other ways. The CNT (France) sent letters of solidarity to the IWW. This was considered the largest and most successful intervention in a working-class struggle that the IWW has undertaken since the 1930s. In the aftermath, the strike was said by some to be "the general strike that didn't happen" because eventually ongoing efforts at industrial action were "completely overwhelmed by the
recall effort" against the governor during the crisis.
Late 2010s In the mid-2010s, Wobblies in the United States were focused on campaigns to organize the multinational coffeehouse chain Starbucks, the franchised sandwich fast food restaurant chain
Jimmy John's, and the multinational supermarket chain
Whole Foods Market. The union had about 3,000 members. The IWW moved its headquarters to 2036 West Montrose,
Chicago, in 2012. The IWW waged an organizing campaign at Chicago-Lake Liquors in
Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2013. The store, which advertises itself as the highest-volume liquor store in Minnesota, had a wage cap of $10.50 per hour, but in the face of IWW demands for the wage cap to be lifted, store management fired five organizers. On April 6, the Twin Cities branch of the union responded with a picket around the store informing customers of the situation. This was followed by a second picket on May 4, a day which customarily had heavy business at the store. The union claimed to have made "what should have been an extremely busy Saturday into a quiet afternoon inside the store". After several months, the
National Labor Relations Board announced that it found merit in the union's unfair dismissal complaint. As a result, the union and store management agreed to a $32,000 settlement as a form of compensation to the fired workers and the campaign officially ended. Workers at the Paulo Freire Social Justice Charter School in
Holyoke, Massachusetts were organized with the IWW in 2015, hoping to address the "authoritarian leadership" of the school administration and perceived racial bias in hiring. On September 14, 2015, after a year-long organizing campaign, workers at Sound Stage Production in North Haven Connecticut declared their membership in the IWW. The IWW announced the
Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU) in April 2016, which focuses on workers at the Oregon regional fast food chain,
Burgerville. A subsidiary of the IWW, the BVWU went public on April 26 at a rally of workers and supporters outside a
Portland, Oregon Burgerville location. Upon going public, the BVWU was endorsed by a number of local Oregon community organizations, including union locals, the Portland Solidarity Network, and food and racial justice organizations. It was also endorsed by then-
Democratic presidential candidate Senator
Bernie Sanders. The union received pushback with a letter from Burgerville's CEO, Jeff Harvey, being distributed to workers discouraging them from joining the union. In June 2017, Burgerville paid a settlement of $10,000 after an investigation by the
Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, which found that the company had violated state-mandated break periods for workers. In April and May 2018 the IWW won NLRB elections in 2 Burgerville Locations. In August 2016, workers at
Ellen's Stardust Diner in
Manhattan formed Stardust Family United (SFU) under the IWW, driven by the firing of thirty employees, as well as an unpopular new scheduling system. After going public, the union accused Stardust management of retaliatory firings and posting anti-union materials in the restaurant. On September 9, 2016, the 45th anniversary of the
Attica Prison Riots, 900 incarcerated workers organized by the IWW and many other prisoners participated in the 9/9 National Prison Strike declared by the IWW's
Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. The strike affected an estimated twenty prisons in eleven states and was strongest at the
William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama. Estimates of the number of inmates affected range from 20,000, to 50,000, to as high as 72,000, with David Fathi of the
ACLU National Prison Project judging it to be the "largest prisoner strike in recent memory". Initial media coverage was slow, with strike organizers complaining of a "mainstream-media blackout", which could be attributed to the difficulty in communicating with prisoners, as many prisons went on lockdown either in response to prisoner strike activity or in anticipation of it.
COVID-19 pandemic at the
2020 Michigan graduate students' strike The IWW also organized workers during the
COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. In May 2020 the IWW established the
Voodoo Doughnut Workers Union (DWU) in
Portland. The newly formed union delivered a letter to management announcing the formation of a union and demanding higher wages, safety improvements and severance packages for employees laid off because of the coronavirus and Oregon's ongoing "
shelter-in-place" order. In February 2021, after months of organizing, DWU workers officially filed for a union certification election with the
National Labor Relations Board. The IWW also publicly announced the Second Staff (2S) workers' union in May 2020 at the Faison school, a private school serving students on the autism spectrum in
Richmond, Virginia, in response to what the union called a "reckless endangerment of staff and students" in trying to force the school to open too soon. March 2021 saw a rash of organizing with the IWW. On March 9, workers at Moe's Books, an independent used bookstore in Berkeley, California, announced that they received voluntary recognition from Moe's Books management, officially unionizing with the IWW. Shortly after, on March 13, the IWW announced that it was organizing workers at the
Socialist Rifle Association (SRA). The union was voluntarily recognized by the SRA the following day. Two days later, on March 16, staff at the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) announced their intent to unionize with the IWW, and requested voluntary recognition from management. In organizing, the OVEC workers seek to gain "a standardized pay scale, an equitable discipline policy, and the right to union representation at any meeting wherein matters affecting staff pay, hours, benefits, advancement, or layoffs may be discussed or voted on". The IWW is the first union in the United States to ratify a union contract for fast food workers. Five Oregon locations of
Burgerville are unionized, as well as one location of
Voodoo Doughnut in downtown Portland. ==Australia==