OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER oF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD INDUSTRIALApril 2013 #1754 Vol. 110 No. 3 $2/ £2/ €2 WORKER When Child Care Special: Requiem For OBU & Horizontal 100 Million Workers Workers Fought Back A Campaign Worker Cooperatives Go On General Strike 3 6-7 In Texas 11 In India 12 Wobblies Organize, Strike At Nonprofit In Minneapolis By X364359 Bobby Becker, openly supports On Monday, Feb. 25, canvass work- the union and joined the workers ers at Sisters’ Camelot, a nonprofit food on strike, although he is ineligible share organization in Minneapolis, went for IWW membership under the public as card-holding IWW members. The existing management structure. workers demanded a negotiation meeting The workers began organiz- with the management collective (of which ing about four months prior to most of the workforce are not members, going public and approached the despite claiming to be a “worker collec- IWW on their own, after years tive”) on Friday, March 1, at which they of declining workplace condi- presented their demands. The workers tions. Their grievances include also threatened to strike if the collective lack of workplace democracy, refused to negotiate. After discussing the below-standard pay, no medical demands for an hour, the bosses told the coverage for job-related injuries, workers that they would not negotiate, and and no paid vacation/sick days. the workers went on strike. Although Sisters’ Camelot claims The union has near-unanimous sup- to be a “collective” and that “there port from canvassers, most of whom have are no bosses here,” both directors signed red cards or pledged to, and a and the collective can hire and fire majority of whom took part in the “march canvassers who aren’t collective on the collective” when they went public. members. The workers’ main Sisters’ Camelot workers show off their red cards after going public as Photo: colt thundercat Additionally, one of the canvass directors, Continued on 8 IWW members on Feb. 25. Grand Rapids Call Center Workers Win Union Election tickets to customers and on any longer under these conditions. lowest pay. Although we have pointed out office workers who deal The workers in client services are on this problem over and over, he refuses to with clients such as casi- salary, which basically means there’s no make changes. nos and concert venues. cap to the amount of hours they have to We had always pictured our ideal sce- Over the last few work, and, while the workload and job nario for going public as a union at a time years, our organizing com- description of the staff in that department when we had a strong majority of support mittee has functioned as has been steadily expanding over the last in the office and could affect a big walk- the human resources de- two years, the compensation certainly has on-the-boss straight to Krasula, who is partment because our of- not. Client services representatives regu- rarely in our office. We wanted to include fice doesn’t actually have larly work 60 to 70 hours per week and everyone on the organizing committee. one. Collaboratively, we still find it impossible to finish their work, However, we realized that we couldn’t solve problems that come much less satisfy their own high standards wait any longer for that ideal scenario. The up at work, support each for the work they do. They may have paid committee held an emergency meeting and other, and affect some vic- time off, but they are too afraid to use it be- decided to file a petition with the National tories by working together cause of how much work will pile up during Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It was a without publicly using the their day off. This is an extremely unfulfill- difficult decision, but we knew Krasula title “union.” The most ing situation to be in week after week. Not and knew that he would never bargain significant victory was get- to mention it’s very hard to justify giving with us without legal force. After filing the Star Ticket Workers rally in January. Photo: Evelyn Stone ting the company to stop up all your free time and social relation- petition, three of our core members went By Evelyn Stone hiring call center workers as “independent ships just for a job that, when you do the into the office of the highest manager on After three years of careful organizing, contractors” in 2011. We’ve always been math, pays an average of about $9.50 per site, the vice president of sales, and made the IWW Star Tickets Workers Union went cautious—perhaps too cautious—with our hour. Currently, the people working in that our demands for her to pass on to Krasula. public in late January. Star Tickets is a organizing, and our decision to come out in department are miserable, and all it would These demands were for him to create two ticketing agency owned by Detroit-area January was uncharacteristically sudden take to fix is hiring a couple more people new positions—one more client services millionaire Jack Krasula with an office in because the workload and stress level in to help distribute the workload. However, position and one marketing assistant posi- Grand Rapids, Mich. The company con- the client services department had become Krasula runs Star Tickets on an austerity tion to take care of all the various market- sists of a small call center with customer unbearable. We realized that our fellow model, and he is committed to getting the ing duties that have been dumped on service representatives who sell event workers in that department could not go most work out of the fewest people for the Continued on 9 Industrial Worker Periodicals Postage SPONSOR AN INDUSTRIAL WORKER PO Box 180195 PO Box 180195 PAID Chicago, IL 60618 Chicago, IL 60618, USA Chicago, IL SUBSCRIPTION FOR A PRISONER and additional ISSN 0019-8870 mailing offices Sponsor an Industrial Worker ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED subscription for a prisoner! The IWW often has fellow workers & allies in prison who write to us requesting a subscription to the Industrial Worker, the official newspaper of the IWW. This is your chance to show solidarity! For only $18 you can buy one full year’s worth of working-class news from around the world for a fellow worker in prison. Just visit: http://store.iww.org/industrial- worker-sub-prisoner.html to order the subscription TODAY! Page 2 • Industrial Worker • April 2013 Staughton Lynd Responds To Counterpoint On “Planks” Long live free speech and comradely the very beginning the key ideas of disagreement! Rosa Luxemburg wrote (1) a management prerogatives clause from prison: “Freedom is always freedom that gave management a free hand in for the one who thinks differently.” making the big investment decisions, However, sometimes there are misun- including closing a plant and moving derstandings that can be cleared away. I capital overseas, and (2) promising Letters Welcome! think I may not have made clear my two not to strike during the duration of the Send your letters to: [email protected] with main points and that FW Miller may have contract, thus depriving workers of the “Letter” in the subject. misunderstood them in his response to my opportunity to fight back. piece, “Planks For A Platform And A Few An interesting sidebar to our Mailing Address: Words About Organizing,” titled “Counter- discussion is that in those same years Industrial Worker, P.O. Box 180195, point On ‘Planks For A Platform,’” which Lenin, in exile in Siberia, read the Chicago, IL 60618, United States. appeared on page 3 of the March IW. Webbs’ books on British trade union- Photo: washington.edu First, I am not saying that industrial ism and concluded that conventional labor mands that we know about but that fellow May Day! May Day! unions have been “corrupted.” I am saying unions, left to their own devices, would not workers don’t necessarily understand that The deadline for announcements for the that the 1905 Preamble assumes that if the seek radical structural change. I suggest we advocate. I think having such a list to annual “May Day” Industrial Worker is labor movement can reorganize on a basis that his diagnosis was correct but his rem- pass on to fellow workers might elicit the April 5, 2013. Celebrate the real labor of industrial rather than craft unionism, edy, the vanguard party, was a disaster. response, “Well, yeah, I agree with that. day with a message of solidarity! Send the new industrial unions will practice My second main point was that Wobs What else do you stand for?” announcements to [email protected]. Much solidarity, and that history has shown this might help their fellow workers to un- Finally, be fair. I didn’t and don’t ask appreciated donations for the following assumption to be mistaken. derstand what the IWW was up to if anyone to define themselves as an “accom- sizes should be sent to: I offer the United Mine Workers as there were a list of particular practices panyingist.” I said that the labor move- an example of an industrial union that and demands that the IWW advocated. ment might accomplish more if, instead IWW GHQ, P.O. Box 180195, was in many ways top-down and anything Brother Miller agrees with most of them, of trying to “organize” people we sought to Chicago, IL 60618, United States. but radical in 1905, and became even less but comments repeatedly “nothing new “accompany” them, that is, to walk beside radical in the 1920s when John L.