INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD
EDMONTON GENERAL MEMBERSHIP BRANCH
Box 1075, Edmonton, Alberta Canada T5J 2M1
Answering machine & messages: 780-988-3022
email: iww-edm@iww.ca
Web Page: https://iww.ca/
POSITION PAPER PROLOGUE
The IWW has had a long and eventful history in Canada since it’s founding in 1905.
A branch had existed in Edmonton in the early 1970’s when the IWW across North America was revived during the student/anti-war radicalization of that period. A Canadian section of the IWW came into existence then but was to dissolve over disputes about Canadian nationalism.
The IWW in Edmonton was revived in 1998-1999 after a two decade absence. In this short period the newly revived Edmonton branch has grown to be over thirty members ranging in age from people in their twenties to those in their sixties.
The branch consists of those new to unionism, especially syndicalism and revolutionary unionism, as well as those active in the existing trade union movement.
The members reflect a wide assortment of left political traditions including anarchist and Marxist, and rank and file unionism (syndicalism). There are a growing number of women members, as well as mix of full time and part-time workers and students. The branch meets twice monthly; for a business meeting and a general informal discussion meeting.
The branch began an ambitious union information drive at the beginning of 1999, aimed at young workers on Whyte Avenue (also known as Old Strathcona). This area of the city is a high density trendy neighbourhood that relies on young people as workers and consumers. It is the heart of the theatre arts district in the city, where the worlds largest Fringe festival is held, and has been zoned to retain its ‘small town’ appeal.
The Provincial Government MLA for the area is Raj Pannu a social democrat, one of only two New Democratic MLA’s recently elected to the legislature after the ND’s were completely wiped out in the 1993 election. The only openly gay city councillor also represents this area. Ironically the Federal government MP for the area is a member of the Reform Party, a right wing populist party.
Politically Edmonton is known as ‘Redmonton’, since it consistently votes against the current ruling Progressive Conservative provincial government, and is seen as the centre of opposition politics to that government.
As the capital city for the province, the Alberta Federation of Labour (AFL), and most of the unions have their headquarters here.
The Edmonton District Labour Council (EDLC)has been active in sponsoring an annual Labour Day BBQ for the poor and unemployed in the city’s inner core. As well over the past four years the EDLC and local labour, community and arts activists have organized May Week in celebration of May Day. The IWW has been an active part of this, especially this year when we celebrated the 80th Anniversary of the 1919 General Strike.
THE IWW IN CANADA AND ALBERTA
The revival of the IWW in Canada and the United States has centered in part on the need to organize the unorganized, the need to develop rank and file solidarity with striking workers, and the need to create a militant rank and file movement in the unions to respond to capitalism’s expansion and attacks on workers.
Rank and file workers in Edmonton and Calgary ( many who now form the base of the local IWW branch) as well as across Canada in recent years have organized Solidarity Tours in Canada and the U.S. for the Liverpool Dockworkers and the Detroit Newspaper Workers, and an Indonesian Nike factory worker.
In Alberta we were able to hold public meetings with the support of the EDLC and local unions, bring the touring workers to picket lines, and have them attend the AFL/CLC annual week long school, AFL Convention and the CUPE Alberta Annual Convention.
Because of our members connections to the existing labour movement in the province the revival of the IWW is given a great deal of credibility.
This year for the first time ever the IWW was able to set up an information and literature table at the AFL annual convention.
Our branch members belong to various unions including CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees), AUPE (Alberta Union of Provincial Employees), Labourers International Union, OPEIU(Office Professional and Employees International Union) and UTU (United Transportation Union).
We have made contacts with interested students and workers as well as isolated and lapsed members in Calgary, Fort McMurray and even Vancouver, B.C.
We have had interest from staff members of the AFL as well as Executive members of AUPE in joining. We have signed up two of three members of the Workers Health Centre, a workers advocacy agency funded by the labour movement.
This is not unusual. During the past twenty years many trade union activists in Canada joined the IWW, partly as a link to the past and because of an innate need to be part of a rank and file revolutionary alternative to trade unionism. The current executive assistant to the President of the CLC (Canadian Labour Congress) was a member at one time.
Currently our relation to sections of the existing trade union movement in English Canada can be described as cordial and it is this relation that has in part determined the position we hold on our organizing perspective, including our Whyte Avenue Campaign.
SOCIAL UNIONISM IN CANADA
Unlike the union movement in the United States, the Canadian labour movement has created social unions, in opposition to business and international unions. The foundation of this form of unionism was the Industrial union movement of 1919. The Winnipeg General Strike of that year, which spread across Western Canada, saw the creation of the One Big Union (OBU).
As the IWW lapsed, due to red baiting and government sedition acts in Canada, the OBU was formed and continued to act as a Canadian industrial union alternative to the American Federation of Labour craft and trades unions until the 1950’s. Wobbly organizers like Slim Evans carried membership in both the IWW and OBU.
The OBU activists were not only Wobblies but founding members of the Canadian anarchist-syndicalist movement, the Socialist Party of Canada, the Communist Party of Canada (CPC) and later the Trotskyist movement in Canada, and even the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) the social democratic party that was the predecessor to the New Democratic Party (NDP).
The OBU and the CCF were formed in Calgary, Alberta in 1919. Between then and the late 1930’s Alberta was a hot bed of radicalism. In the 1930’s the Edmonton municipal government was run by the Edmonton Trades and Labour Council (now known as the Edmonton District Labour Council). The Communist Party had picked up the wobbly tradition of organizing the unorganized, especially unemployed workers, and organized mass hunger marches against the government in the 1930’s that culminated in the On To Ottawa Trek of 1935/1936.
The IWW was the training ground, as was the CPC, for many activists that developed industrial and social unions. The Committee of Industrial Organizing (CIO) in Canada in the late 1930’s through the 1950’s was independent of its American counter part, and many independent industrial unions were formed at this time by former wobbly/OBU activists in the CPC.
Pat Lenihan from Calgary was a founding member of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). He was a former wobblie a member of the CPC, and a Canadian CIO organizer. It was these lessons in ‘industrial unionism’ that gave Pat the vision to form CUPE as the first national public service union, applying industrial unionism to the public sector (Federal, provincial and municipal government employees) was unheard of and created a new form of ‘left’ unionism in Canada which is now called social unionism.
In the 1970’s workers in Canada faced wage and price controls, and the militant social unions forced the CLC to call a General Strike in 1973, which became watered down to a National Day of Protest. It was at this time that governments began to attack workers rights, withdrawing the right to strike from public sector workers such as nurses, police, fire fighters etc.
Social Unionism in Canada gained real strength in the labour movement in the 1970’s. CUPE became the largest public sector union in Canada. The militancy of Postal Workers (the merger of the letter carriers union and inside workers union into the Canadian Union of Postal Workers [CUPW])saw them challenge the Canadian state, for which their leader Jean Claude Parrot went to jail. And finally with the creation of the national independent autoworkers union; Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) in defiance of the UAW.
The 1970’s saw the growth of new independent Canadian industrial unions which were helped by the revival of the IWW in Canada. Independent Industrial unions in B.C. and Ontario such as the Paperworkers and the feminist union SORWUC, became the basis of the newly formed Canadian Confederation of Unions (CCU) which still exists today. At the same time the notorious business unions in the Building Trades split with the CLC over the increasing power that the social unions were exerting in the national organization, a drive that these unions identified as socialist and left wing.
Canada has seen increasing union membership due to these developments, while the U.S. has seen a decline in union membership.
Facing de-industrialization and the change from production to service based industries the union movement in Canada is focusing on organizing young people, part time workers, and moving beyond the traditional industrial core into the service industry.
It is this focus that parallels our current Whyte Avenue campaign.
THE IWW AND THE EXISTING LABOUR MOVEMENT IN CANADA
Situating ourselves within the Canadian labour movement is a challenge for the IWW if it is to be relevant to workers and not just a club for a small circle of friends.
We currently do not belong to the ‘house of labour’ the CLC or its affiliates. We are, in many cases, not registered with the state as a trade union, or accredited bargaining agent for ‘employees’.
The question is should we be?
The Edmonton branch has developed our Whyte Avenue campaign as a strategy to inform young workers of their rights and need for a union. In many ways it is an agit-prop campaign and the ensuing media coverage has probably had more impact than our postering (which has been very visible and effective in its own right).
We see our position as not being the bargaining agent for many of these workers since what they wish is a ‘contract’ and union services (e.g. Grievances, WCB appeals, etc.) which we as a branch are not able to provide.
Nor would we necessarily want to.
Organizing wobblies on a job site, provides us with a militant cadre on site. On the job organizers. Workers who want to belong to a union that is not job based, and who are militant.
If workers at a job site want union representation then we believe they should be directed to the most democratic social union in their industrial area. Our job site members and the branch would then work with the accredited social union to organize the job site. This would be a real learning experience for all involved.
If the job site organizing drive failed, then we would still have wobs onsite to revive it again later. A problem often faced when existing unions fail in a drive is that they abandon the job site for long periods before bothering to organize again.
If workers at a site wildcat, our links to the existing labour movement allow us to call on our ‘friends’ to join us on the picket line.
If workers wish to bargain directly (especially in stores/sites that have three or four workers only) we may be able to look at contracts that are based on a notary agreement with the IWW as a signatory.
Our ability to service workers or sign contracts is currently limited. That is not to say it always will be so, but it gives us a unique perspective in trying to do large scale campaigns as we have undertaken.
Some will complain this is reformism. Fine. But the reality is that workers need to be organized. And first and foremost in their minds is their direct benefits from organizing which are pay increases, benefits packages, hours of work, holidays, sick time, grievance procedure etc. Only a few workers will take a more militant view that we need to over throw capitalism.
Within existing unions the IWW can be a focus for organizing rank and file campaigns for union democracy and more militant direct action.
In some unions this may have to be done on a clandestine basis, since many of these international/American/business unions are deeply suspicious and paranoid about ‘freedom and democracy’ infecting the membership. The IWW could lose a campaign early if it is too quickly identified as the leadership of a rank and file caucus in these kinds of unions, and it could be accused of ‘raiding’. Such a pejorative would then negatively affect our work with more sympathetic unions.
In the case of democratic/social unions, federations and labour councils, the need is for a left labour caucus to insure militant direct action is encouraged. Only militancy can revive an apathetic membership, and create a base for opposition to the current neo-liberal agenda of business and government. Even the most democratic union is still hindered by a leadership who sees its job as ‘getting the best deal from the bosses’ for its members even when the workers may be prepared to extend their actions to a general strike, as was the case in Alberta during the 1995 Calgary laundry workers strike.
We can, and must, do strike support work as well as critical analysis of strikes and recommend actions.
The recent failure of the Gainers workers (UFCW) to occupy their factory led to the destruction of that work place and the loss of 900 jobs, and the subsequent ugly anti-union backlash in the media and in this city. The labour left in Alberta promoted the view that the workers should have occupied the factory, and not just walked the picket line. This was expressed publicly by the executive and leadership of the Alberta Federation of Labour!!
Currently the IWW has organized some job shops in Canada but these are small lifestyle based co-ops that already are predisposed to ‘alternatives’, which the IWW is seen as. The IWW appeals to these kinds of locations, but this must not be mistaken for a broader based unionizing campaign as we are discussing.
Organizing a co-op store already managed or owned by its own workers is not the same as trying to organize a Goodwill or other voluntary sector employer. Nor is it the same as (though it is similar to)trying to organize workers in the arts or culture sector, or a bookstore with one owner and two or three employees.
These are areas where we can make organizing gains.
Again we believe that the purpose of the IWW is to Organize. Not just be a social club for anarchists or people who share a common lifestyle.
If we can organize and work with existing Canadian unions to get the best representation and service for workers then we believe that frees us to be more militant. Becoming the bargaining agent for workers limits our abilities to provide an alternative to capitalism.
Organizing, educating and agitating is what we are all about.
We believe that our strategy is realistic. The question facing wobblies in Canada is what is our goal, who are our allies, and what is our relationship to the labour movement in this country.
To alienate ourselves from our allies in the labour movement by taking the position that we are an ‘alternative’ to the existing labour movement at this moment of our rebirth would be foolish and juvenile and would ultimately lead to our premature demise.
September 3-6, 1999 IWW GA Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada