Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or 'Wobblies'

Oct 10, 2024

Image purporting to show various branches of the IWW from IWW.org [archive here].

The IWW is the Industrial Workers of the World, reportedly founded in 19051, commonly called the Wobblies2,

is a worker-run union dedicated to direct action, industrial democracy, and unrelenting class struggle

according to what is apparently their X account. Read more below.

According to the IWW .org website, the IWW

is a labor union representing nearly 9000 workers across North America. Established in 1905, the IWW is known for its high standards of democracy, transparency, multinationalism, and active use of the right to strike.

The IWW is a general union that is open to workers from all industries and companies, rather than just one organization or particular sector.

The IWW promotes the creation of “One Big Union” and contends that all workers should be united as a social class to supplant capitalism and wage labor with industrial democracy

Notice that they speak of the IWW in the present tense. The Oregon Encyclopedia claims that they were crushed long ago and never recovered. In the Oregon Encyclopedia section, “Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)”3, author Adam Hodges writes,

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), founded in 1905 and crushed for its opposition to World War I in 1917-1918, was the most active and most actively opposed revolutionary union of its time.

He also writes,

The IWW never recovered and Communist groups eclipsed it after the war

However, it seems they reformed. In the very least, people use their name and symbols today.

Image from the Oregon Encyclopedia, captioned, “George Pettibone, William Haywood, and Charles Moyer. The men were accused of blowing up Bunker Hill Mine and murdering Gov. Steunenberg; they were defended by Clarence Darrow. Courtesy Oregon Hist. Soc. Research Lib., Org Lot 945 f1”

At any rate, I first heard about them when I was a kid in the 80s. I was handed an IWW pamphlet at some punk show. I wasn’t exactly sympathetic the IWW’s goals because I had recently had my first experience with a union so I knew better. I had a summer job pushing shopping carts from a supermarket parking lot back to the supermarket. After 2 weeks, I received my first paycheck. I was given a fraction of what I had earned. I went to talk to the payroll people. They told me they deducted union dues. I told them I was not in a union. They told me I had no choice but to let them take my money or to quit. I asked them what the union did for me other than take y money. They told me they provided job protection. I went home for a few hours then I went back to clock out. The next morning I clocked in, went home, and 8 hours later I went back and clocked out. I calculated things so that I knew how many hours of my labor I was cheated out of and then I made sure I was paid at least the same amount of hours while I relaxed at home. Eventually they fired me as I laughed at them. Anyway, I wasn’t exactly sympathetic the IWW’s goals so I threw it away. Now I wish I had kept it so I could include scans of it here. Oh well.

Image from Oregon Encyclopedia. Caption: “IWW poster. Courtesy Oregon Hist. Soc. Research Lib., Orhi77728IWW.”

Notice the headline; “ARRESTS AWAIT I.W.W. GANGS HEADED THIS WAY” Source: Oregon Encyclopedia. Caption: “Portland Evening Telegram front page, July 16, 1913. Courtesy Oregon Hist. Soc. Research Lib., Orhi77733”

Source: Oregon Encyclopedia. Caption: “An early issue of the Spirit of the Times, an IWW publication First pages., Courtesy Oregon Hist. Soc. Research Lib., Pam331 886142i.”

IWW and antifa overlap each other. See the prominently displayed antifa flags at the rally shown in the video uploaded by IWW titled “Preamble to the IWW Constitution” (see below).

At 2:57 in the video “At an Antifa House - Antifa Attacks the Hand that Offers an Olive Branch” on my Justin Trouble Youtube channel, one can see an example of IWW flag being flown along with antifa flags.

Also see the Iron Arrows tattoo at 2:10 in the following video, “The IWW is coming - Join the One Big Union” uploaded by IWW.

You may have noticed some of the many versions of their symbol (see above and below) sported by antifas.

Now for some history regarding the IWW, at least in Oregon. In the “Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)”4 section of the Oregon Encyclopedia, author Adam Hodges writes,

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or "Wobblies"), founded in 1905 and crushed for its opposition to World War I in 1917-1918, was the most active and most actively opposed revolutionary union of its time. In Oregon, the IWW was rooted in lumber camps and mills in the western part of the state and among field hands in eastern agricultural areas. Working conditions were poor in those industries, and employers strenuously fought unionization, particularly by the IWW, which refused to make agreements with capitalists and advocated sabotage on the job.
The IWW first appeared in Oregon in early 1907, when the union led a Portland parade of its members in protest against the trial of IWW leader William D. Haywood, who had been falsely charged with the 1905 murder of Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg. Portland remained the center of IWW activity in Oregon, and members spoke on street corners to organize rural laborers who came to the city in the off-season or to find work from employers’ agents. The mainstream Portland unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) quickly distanced themselves from the IWW and its largely unskilled and itinerant constituency.
The IWW had its Oregon headquarters in Portland’s North End, a neighborhood near downtown that was densely populated with poor men and home to much of the city’s vice. The union and its members became associated with crime and raucous immorality by the sensationalist attention paid to the neighborhood in the local press. The itinerant workers who sometimes called the North End home did much to build IWW culture in Oregon, and that culture shared the neighborhood's fate. Political pressure swept the brothels out of the North End in 1913 and closed the saloons in 1916. Finally, the IWW lost its meeting hall after the state passed a criminal syndicalism law in 1919 that made revolutionary organizing illegal.
By conducting most of its organizing on the streets, in contrast to the shop-floor campaigns of the AFL, the IWW gained a deserved reputation for being disruptive. In 1912, for example, IWW activists heckled Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts, while he spoke to a large and otherwise admiring crowd in Portland. During a cannery strike in the summer of 1913, the city government and its police force repeatedly jailed IWW members in order to halt public protests. The protests were one of the “free speech fights” the union organized in the region, when they would call in outside reinforcements to fill a town’s jail until authorities gave up and allowed them to speak publicly.
In the summer of 1917, during the first months of the nation’s mobilization for World War I, the federal government became alarmed by the growing unrest in Pacific Northwest lumber camps and sawmills led by the IWW. The region's logging then came under the control of the U.S. Army. Workers joined the Loyal Legion of Loggers and Lumbermen, a compulsory paramilitary union. Wartime sedition laws and their enforcement by the FBI, Military Intelligence, and police “red squads” also left the IWW much diminished.
The IWW never recovered and Communist groups eclipsed it after the war, but the organization still left a profound legacy in Oregon. Its members were among the first activists in the state to practice civil disobedience and to willingly endure repeated jail terms in defense of their civil liberties. The union still has a small national membership today, with branches in Eugene and Portland.

This section of the Oregon Encyclopedia also includes the following.