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Baltimore Jimmy John's Workers Announce IWW Membership

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Baltimore Jimmy John's Workers Announce IWW Membership OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER oF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD INDUSTRIALSeptember 2014 #1767 Vol. 111 No. 6 $2/ £2/ €2 WORKER Fighting Patriarchy In Lessons From A Review: Case Studies John Reed’s First The One Big Union Certified Nursing Of Worker Labor Love: The IWW 3 Assistant 6 Self-Organization 8 11 Baltimore Jimmy John’s Workers Announce IWW Membership By the IWW Jimmy John’s We need a union to secure fair pay, guar- Workers Union anteed hours, and paid sick days, because On Saturday, Aug. 9, workers at the those things are basic human rights. We Jimmy John’s franchise sandwich shop will not be taken advantage of, and we’ll in Baltimore announced their member- keep fighting for [it] as long as it takes.” ship in the IWW Jimmy John’s Workers “The owners think of us as machines. Union (JJWU) and asked management to And that’s exactly how they treat us—as recognize their union and negotiate. This machines that turn bread and lettuce into decision, prompted by the actions of Mike money for them,” said Pratt Street driver Gillett and Danny Dolch, owners of the and IWW member Brendan Camiel. “So it Jimmy John’s franchise, targeted workers shouldn’t surprise us that they don’t think for their desire to have a fairer workplace. we need wages we can live on, or even basic Workers and supporters leafleted the respect. Why should they care about the Pratt Street location and presented their money and time we spend maintaining demands, declaring their membership in our bikes and our bodies for them, or the the JJWU. emotional and physical toll our working The demands of the JJWU include conditions take on us? We, the Jimmy union recognition as well as achieving John’s Workers Union, will force them and maintaining wage parity with their to care.” landlord hotel, the Hilton. Wage parity The Baltimore fast-food workers’ move would bring drivers’ wages to $10.75 per to unionize is emblematic of mounting hour, in-shop wages to $11.34 per hour, insurgency among fast-food and other IWW Jimmy John’s workers go public in Baltimore on Aug. 9. Photo: Baltimore IWW and wages of workers in charge to $12.34 low-wage workers in the United States. and larger share of total employment. workers have gone public as the IWW per hour. In the city of Baltimore, where longtime Employment in the food service industry Jimmy John’s Workers Union—the first “We’re not people to this company,” large employers have closed up shop or is expected to grow. being in Minneapolis in 2010. said Jimmy John’s worker and IWW have moved shop for cheaper labor, the The campaign in Baltimore is the For more information, visit http:// member Isaac Dalto. “We’re labor costs. food service industry is becoming a larger second franchise in the company where www.jimmyjohnsworkers.org. Portland Canvass Workers Walk Off The Job, Demand Unpaid Wages By Shane Burley Together they formed the United Cam- When a progressive campaign cannot paign Workers (UCW) with IWW support take care of its workforce according to the and began a campaign to come back to principles it claims, they are in a great deal work with a written agreement from man- of trouble. agement offering them the $15-per-hour On June 5, a crew of nine campaign pay rate and correct overtime they had canvass workers walked off their jobs at been promised. After initially marching the Oregon Campaign for the Restoration on the boss with their demands and being and Regulation of Hemp (CRRH) and into ignored, they started what has become a the office of the Portland IWW, looking nationwide effort of supporters and union to form a union. The workers had been partners phoning the UCW headquarters refused the paychecks they were owed for to show their support for the union. their time, which only built on the several On Friday, June 13, the workers staged bounced paychecks in the past. After their a second march on the boss, this time with checks did not arrive, and management dozens of supporters from the Portland refused to discuss what had just happened, IWW, Portland Solidarity Network, Jobs the canvassers walked out collectively as With Justice, Rose City Resistance, and a unit. This action had been a long time other organizations and union members, coming for a group of workers who had and took to the streets to approach the seen a “culture of secrecy and information CRRH office. repression that make incidents like this an Upon entering the office, a spokesper- ongoing problem,” said a statement they son from the UCW tried to present their Striking CRRH workers take to the streets in Portland, June 13. Photo: Dennis Gravey released. Continued on 7 Industrial Worker Periodicals Postage Work People’s College Europe: A Huge Success PO Box 180195 PAID By Michael White Chicago, IL 60618, USA Chicago, IL From July 24 to and additional 27, fellow workers ISSN 0019-8870 mailing offices in the German Lan- ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED guage Area Member- ship Regional Orga- nizing Committee (GLAMROC) of the IWW hosted Work People’s College Eu- rope (WPC- Europe) in Berlin. The first WPC hosted in Eu- rope lived up to all the hype and radi- calism with which a mass IWW gathering The gates of WPC-Europe. Photo: Michael White comes. Fellow workers hailed from all Comrades from other organizations, over—Germany, Hong Kong, Romania, including the Freie Arbeiterinnen- und Iceland, France, Greece, Canada, the Arbeiter-Union (FAU), also came to United Kingdom., and the United States. Continued on 7 Page 2 • Industrial Worker • September 2014 Worker Cooperatives Do Undermine Capitalism I was dismayed to read Fellow Worker work allows us. Not all cooperatives are LeftSubscribe wing, right wing—it to all thetastes like (FW) Ogier’s article, which appeared on collectives, and there is room in many of chicken to me, but it seems a shrinking page 4 of the June 2014 Industrial Work- them for Wobbly organizing. However, factionIndustrial on the left will foreverWorker wave Karl er, titled “Worker Cooperatives: Crashing such an institution absolutely does tend to Marx’s “Capital” like Cotton Mather waved in the Same Car.” While FW Ogier raises embody our short-term goals as Wobblies. his Bible.Educate Yet we are yourself never treated and to any - a valid point that worker cooperatives, if Additionally, the IWW’s stated long- thingyour new or particularlyfellow workers exciting by those Letters Welcome! operating in competition with one another, term goal is to organize all workers into who think our anti-capitalist actions will improve withvastly from the the official writings of yet one Send your letters to: [email protected] with do not represent a complete end to capital- industry-wide unions for the purpose of more dead white European. “Letter” in the subject. ism, it disappoints me to read such con- seizing the means of production from the newspaper of the IWW. tinual underestimation (and to a certain capitalist class and ending the wage system Some of Marx’s musings are worth re- Mailing Address: extent, misunderstanding) by Wobblies of outright. It seems that a coordinated net- membering.Just My mail personal in this favorite form, is when Industrial Worker, P.O. Box 180195, radical tendencies in the worker coopera- work of collectively/horizontally-managed he said, “Ior am visit not a usMarxist,” online because at: Marx Chicago, IL 60618, United States. tive movement. worker cooperatives across a wide variety knewhttp://store.iww.org/industrial-worker.html his followers would get it wrong; indeed, no revolution which claimed to In November We Remember The IWW’s stated short-term goal is of industries is a step precisely in that to subscribe today! to improve day-to-day conditions on the direction, so why would we ever turn our follow his ideas ever attempted to abolish Send in your announcements for the the wage system. Mikhail Bakunin butted annual “In November We Remember” job for workers under capitalism. These backs on this idea? Of course, there need 10 issues for: would include higher pay, better hours, to be confrontations with and subversion heads with Marx by warning against the issue of the Industrial Worker by dangers• US $18of vanguardism for individuals. and the oxymo- Friday, October 3, 2014. Celebrate the safer conditions, and the like, and these of capitalism wherever it is found, but to • US $30 for institutions. goals are clearly embraced by the inter- decide at the drop of a hat that coopera- ronic idea of a workers’ state. In Pyotr lives of those who have struggled for Kropotkin’s• US $30 words, for internationals.Marx’s vision of how the working class with your message of national worker cooperative movement tives are worthless because they aren’t yet in general, as exemplified in FW Ogier’s all synchronized, or because capitalist to achieve socialism was antagonistic to solidarity. Send announcements to iw@ theName: strategy _______________________ of “direct economical struggle iww.org. Much appreciated donations experience with the Rainbow Grocery. businesses still also exist, doesn’t seem Address: _____________________ I, myself, am also a worker-owner in a sound to me at all. against capitalism, without interfering in for the following sizes should be sent to: State/Province: ______________ collectively-managed cooperative. Indeed, All in all, it sounds to me like FW Ogier the political parliamentary agitation.” IWW GHQ, P.O. Box 180195, the pay is higher than it was prior to 2011, needs to stop and take a deep breath be- Zip/PC________________________Marx also said that if you tell a capital- Chicago, IL 60618, United States.
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