In June 1905, a gathering of about two hundred radical unionists, socialists, and anarchists held a convention in Chicago where they organized the Industrial Workers of the World.
Wobblies fought labor struggles across the country. Wobblies took on free speech fights by soapboxing, getting arrested, packing the jails, and singing Wobbly songs until the city had to let them go.
By 1912 the union had 50,000 members spanning many industries. These workers were involved in around 150 strikes, like the famous Lawrence textile strike in Massachusetts. The IWW organized members of many nationalities, in their own languages, forging solidarity and continued organizing through the first “Red Scare,” when the federal government tried and failed to crush the IWW, raiding union halls and imprisoning and deporting members.
Wobblies faced further repression in the McCarthy era, during the second “Red Scare,” and controversy over whether to sign a required “loyalty oath” divided members. Membership waned, but it gained new energy during the Sixties and the Civil Rights Movement.
Beginning in the 1990s, IWW membership increased as organizing picked up. Wobblies in California and Oregon organized workplaces and workers in various industries–nonprofits, trucking, Starbucks, railroad, fast food, incarcerated workers, canvassers, and more.
The IWW has been uniquely effective at organizing low wage, high turnover, and non-traditional industries almost completely ignored by other unions. Direct action on the shop floor empowers workers to gain material success as well as the dignity, respect, and class consciousness necessary to build a new world in the ashes of the old.
The IWW continues to carry on the important legacy of militant working class in the US in the spirit of internationalism and class struggle.
