Syndicates (Re: Amazon.com Workers Begin Union Drive)

[Flint Jones <flint@mobtown.org>]

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> Haven't seen this flow across this list, so thought I'd pass this along.
> Can anyone know of other examples in the industry at hand that are
> unionized?  As a socialist, I would ultimately like to see all industries
> unionized and in all nation-states.  Maybe something like this could
> theoretically be syndicalist, where you could have people in different
> nation-states belonging to the same union.

Alright, I see by your email address "Yspilanti ARA" that  you _should_
know about the IWW... since I know when the IWW GHQ was in Yspilanti that
they joined pickets with the ARA against the Klan.

Are you a tech worker?    If so, we'd love to have our support in our own
effort in the tech industry.

http://iu560.iww.ca  (TAO, the hosts for this list, are IWW)
http://fletcher.iww.org/iu560/local-23.html
http://baltimore.iww.org/gmb/560

So far IU560 is a small effort, with only two local IUBs (San Fran and
Toronto) though we have members in Seattle, Portland, Eugene, Chicago,
Baltimore, Washington DC, Boston, New York, Edmonton, Madison,
Colorado, Australia, Italy, Finland, Ireland, etc... I'm sure I've left
out some folks.

I think we even have a mention in the Cyber Punk Fake Book. :)

The IWW was one of the first unions on the web, it maintains it's own
servers, is almost religous in it's support for free software, and is a
completely volunteer operation.

http://www.iww.org  is a good all around site for any worker.

However, IU560 is not the only game in town... we are only some of the
most radical.  Other radicals are the CNT's SII in France.
http://cnt-f.org/sii

While the IWW is revolutionary unionist (with a large number of
anarcho-syndicalists), CNT-F SII is all anarcho-syndicalist.

Some of you who read 2600 will probably notice that the "Sabotage Cat" of
anarcho-syndicalism/revolutionary unionism has made it's way into the clip
art.

Some IWW/IU560s (Wobblies/Webblies) are also dual-carding (when you belong
to one or more union) with the Communication Workers of America.

Ok...so enough talk about the radicals, now I'll mention the business
union campaigns...

CWA

http://www.cwa-union.org

The CWA is huge in the U.S. since it has most of the phone workers
organized.  It is trying to break into high-tech, but has been so far
unsuccessful.  The recent victory at Verizon though is postive.

Some of the CWA efforts more related to techies are...

Washtech (Microsoft Permatemps, amazon.com, etc...)

http://www.washtech.org

Alliance @ IBM

http://www.allianceibm.org/


RSU is organizing IBM in Italy.
http://www.lomb.cgil.it/rsuibm/home.htm

The revolution at big blue
http://www.ibmunion.com/

I should mention that the CWA also had a proto-drive on at Digital, before
it got gobbled by Compaq and appears to have been busted.


While not trying to build a union (atleast not yet)  FACE INTEL does some
important work as a watchdog.
http://www.faceintel.com


CEP is organizing tech workers in Canada
http://www.dlcwest.com/~cep911/

CEP is pretty much the Canadian equivalent of the CWA... if a bit more
progressive.


There are numerous "guilds" and other professional associations that might
oneday grow into worker-cooperatives or union hiring halls.  As the labor
market for techies becomes more flexible, we can expect to seem them
competing with the employment agenencies (headhunters, sharks, pimp,
choose your favor curse).

One problem between the rads and the business unions is on the question
of action.  Much of the business union efforts have been in the courts as
they try to have perma-temps recognized at regular employees, or win NLRB
elections.  The radicals say we should take direct action to organize
unions...

I wrote a post on here a long time ago, called "Direct Hacktion"
or something like that... where I babbled at length about micropower
radio, strikes by tech workers and the need to organize.  I can dig it up
again if folks are interested.

I try to keep track of this stuff...

Here is a list of articles
http://www.mobtown.org/hw/threads.html

That I'm converting over to a slash site (it's still under development)
http://www.hackwork.org


And the partial archives to the public iu560-l list.

http://iww.org/pipermail/iu560-l/


> And while I'm chimping away....to save bandwidth and condense something
> wanted to post last week, but either forgot/didn't get around to it was
> about the TABD.  I was in Cincinnati protesting the TABD (and capitalism)
> last week, just had a query if there were any electronic actions around
> the protests.  I remember there was quite a bit talked
> about/mentioned/discussed on this flow list a year ago during the WTO
> protests, and this is in the same issue area of corporate globalization
> and free trade.

IU560/IWW was in the house there. :)

Solid,

	Flint





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