Organizing Your Workplace
What Is Organizing?
The IWW is all about organizing workers. But what does that mean and what does that look like?
We will try to give you an overview of organizing and provide some examples of organizing going on right here in Portland, Oregon.
So what is workplace organizing? In the IWW context, organizing means having enough solid communication and organization among workers so that together you can identify things that need to be changed at your job, make a plan to make those changes, and put that plan into action.
This may sound pretty vague, but that is ok because organizing will look very different depending on your workplace, your grievances and your co-workers. Though teachers at a small private school and construction workers for a large company may both need pay raises, the tools they have at their disposal and the way they want to go about getting those will likely look different.
It might sound simple, but it takes a lot of work and a lot of groundwork to make these sorts of actions successful. That is where the IWW comes in. We provide trainings to help you learn the skills of talking to your co-workers about problems on the job in a way that protects your job and doesn’t alienate your co-workers. We can pair you with a more experienced organizer to help walk you through the process. If the solidarity of your own co-workers isn’t enough we have a whole organization of people that we can call in to support you. We are strong believers in learning from our mistakes as well as our successes, and we have a good history of both here in the Portland branch, as well as internationally.
What are some real examples of organizing?
Here in Portland we have active organizing campaigns in the social services sector. Portland Women’s Crisis Line, Streetlight and Porchlight Youth Shelters and Harry’s Mother Runaway Services are all public IWW shops. Learn more by visiting Social Service and Health Care Industrial Organizing
Retail (660), Restaurant (640), and Food Production and Distribution (460) are also active areas in Portland. Union workers in these industries meet twice a month to support the individuals organizing their own workplaces as well as reaching out to other workers in these industries. Learn more about this campaign by visiting Food and Retail Workers United.
Nationally and internationally there is the Starbucks Workers Union (SWU) which is affiliated with the IWW and doing amazing things for baristas at Starbucks. http://www.starbucksunion.org
More recently, a Jimmy John’s Workers Union has emerged primarily out of the Twin Cities which is making gains for workers in this fast food sandwich shop. http://jimmyjohnsworkers.org
New York has an ongoing campaign with bike couriers. The Bay Area has a strong campaign at a recycling center. But there are many industries where good work is going on including education, construction, and trucking.
The beauty of the IWW is that we will organize workers in any industry so we could be organizing at your bank, daycare, grocery store, coffee shop, car mechanic, bike mechanic, or doctors office.
