Today in Labor History April 24, 1916: The Easter rising began in Dublin. Irish rebels, led by James Connolly and Patrick Pearce, attempted to end British rule and create an independent Ireland. The armed uprising lasted six days. Men and women participated. 485 people died in the fighting, including 143 British soldiers and cops. The rest were mostly Irish civilians. The British ultimately prevailed. They took 3,500 prisoners and sent 1,800 to internment camps. They also executed sixteen of the Rising’s leaders, sparking outrage among the Irish public.

James Connolly was an Irish republican, socialist and union leader. Prior to the Easter Rising, he lived in Scotland and participated in Scottish socialist organizations. After that, he emigrated to the U.S., where he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and founded the Irish Socialist Federation in New York. In Ireland, he was a leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union and participated in the Dublin lock-out, one of the largest and most severe labor disputes in Irish history.

Today in Labor History April 22, 2011: Songwriter, musician and activist Hazel Dickens died at age 75. Dickens was well known, not only for her protest songs, but for her activism, too. According to blogger John Pietaro, "Dickens didn’t just sing the anthems of labor, she lived them and her place on many a picket line, staring down gunfire and goon squads, embedded her into the cause." She was born in West Virginia in 1925. After her family moved to Baltimore in the 1940s, she met Mike Seeger. Together, the two became active in the Baltimore folk music and protest scenes. She wrote “They’ll Never Keep Us Down,” and “Working Girl Blues.” She made appearances in the Oscar-winning documentary Harlan County, USA, about the struggle of coalminers and contributed four songs to the film's soundtrack. She was also in the films Matewan and Songcatcher. And she recorded an album called, Don’t Mourn, Organize! covering the songs of IWW singer and organizer, Joe Hill.

In the accompanying Youtube video, she performs Fire in the Hole, from Matewan. https://youtu.be/1pb2bDA7Kd0

Agitate Educate Organize

“Why is the labor movement so dependent on the government in the first place? Can we afford to be in a situation where one orange man can suspend the union process? The moment has opened our imaginations to what labor organizing would be like without the NLRB.”

No #NLRB? No problem. Via @industrialwrkr

#IWW #UnionStrong #1u #labor

https://industrialworker.org/no-nlrb-no-problem/

#FCC: "DELETE DELETE DELETE"
Aka, the reason we need an #IWW style #amateurradio union, which bases itself on the fact that the operating class and the regulatory class have nothing in common. The #ARRL is too cozy with these ghouls and accepts the premise that the spectrum belongs to the state in the first place.

Today in Labor History April 19, 1913: Modestino Valentino, a bystander, was shot and killed by company detectives during a conflict between IWW strikers and scabs in Patterson, N.J., during the infamous Silk Strike, which the workers ultimately lost on July 28, 1913. During the strike, 1,850 workers were arrested, including Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big Bill Haywood.

Today in Labor History April 18, 1914: IWW workers in Taft, California, continued their strike against Standard Oil. It was the first strike ever against the company. The workers demanded an eight-hour day and a 50-cents raise.

#UKpol
#Trans
#IWW
https://iww.org.uk/news/bigoted-bourgeoisie-courts-never-cared-about-workers-whether-cis-or-trans/

Livre JOE HILL - BREAD, ROSES AND SONGS 22€
Dispo ici: https://www.la-petroleuse.com/fr/livres-luttes-sociales/4849-livre-joe-hill-et-les-iww.html
Plus que la biographie de référence de Joe Hill, militant révolutionnaire et songwriter des IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), ce (gros) livre (600 pages quand même) de Franklin Rosemont nous cause de l'histoire de la contreculture ouvrière américaine du 20e siècle. Préface de Fred Alpi.

Eilen oli Hoopon elämän mysteerit -albumin levynjulkkarikeikka. Yli sata vuotta vanhoja biisejä ja niin ajankohtaisia!
Video ketjussa
#keikat #paleface #IWW

Servants in the Shadows: The Revolution Will Not Be 9-5
Posted on April 4, 2025 by x423752

https://industrialworker.org/servants-in-the-shadows-the-revolution-will-not-be-9-5/

#Capitalism #labormovement #organize
#shiftworkers #solidarity #unions #iww

California's senator Scott Wiener proposed a bill that would've let wildfire victims sue the oil companies for causing the climate crisis.

Guess who teamed up with the Big Oil execs to defeat the bill?

Unions.

Specifically the unions representing oil industry workers. In other words, the workers collaborated with their class enemies: their bosses.

I'm not opposed to unions. I've been a union organizer for decades. But goddamn, these blockheads are acting just like Mr. Block (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Block). They somehow forgot the first rule of labor: the boss is NOT your friend. Be suspicious. Don't trust them. And sure as hell don't collaborate with them to help enrich them even further, especially not on your backs, nor in ways that further destroy the planet.

"The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.... Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organise as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth."
-- preamble to the constitution of the IWW

That last line, added to the original 1905 preamble to the IWW constitution in the late 1980s, might sound a bit vague and "crunchy." But it was an attempt to acknowledge that some types of work simply shouldn't exist. That's not to say those who currently work in those industries (e.g. Fossil fuel extraction) should be thrown under the bus. Everyone should be allowed to do something productive that they enjoy. And everyone should have all the material necessities to live a safe secure and meaningful existence. But saving the planet from climate collapse will certainly require many changes in the types of work that are available. Coal mining, for example, has been on the decline for years because there is so little left in many regions that it's not profitable for the bosses to continue paying miners to mine ît anymore.

In a sane and compassionate world, we'd provide these workers with free Healthcare housing, UBI, and retraining so they could transition to some other productive endeavor. And union leaders would recognize that the interests of their members are much more closely aligned with, and linked to, those of the rest of the working class. (Continued burning of oil will contribute to more climate disasters, more wild fires, and possible the loss of their own members' lives or homes).

https://calmatters.org/politics/2025/04/california-oil-union-climate-bill/

In the annals of "complying in advance", the US-Canada part of the #IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) is doing a paperwork attack on the part of itself that organizes prisoners. The stated reasons are a jumble of concerns about proper receipts, with some part of leadership stating that good recordkeeping will make the union less of a target for fascists. But mostly it's that union leadership doesn't like prisoner organization or really anything that people look to the IWW for.

https://www.onebigunion.ie/post/that-s-entertainment-musicians-urged-to-unionise

Today in Labor History April 14, 1917: IWW sailors went on strike in Philadelphia and won a ten dollar per month raise. Ben Fletcher, an African-American IWW organizer, was instrumental in organizing the Philadelphia waterfront. Fletcher was born in Philly in 1890. He joined the Wobblies (IWW) in 1912, became secretary of the IWW District Council in 1913. He also co-founded the interracial Local 8 in 1913.

In 1913, Fletcher led 10,000 IWW Philly dockworkers on a strike. Within two weeks, they won a 10-hr day, overtime pay, & created one of the most successful antiracist, anticapitalist union locals in the U.S. At the time, roughly one-third of the dockers on the Philadelphia waterfront were black. Another 33% were Irish. And about 33% were Polish and Lithuanian. Prior to the IWW organizing drive, the employers routinely pitted black workers against white, and Polish against Irish. The IWW was one of the only unions of the era that organized workers into the same locals, regardless of race or ethnicity. And its main leader in Philadelphia was an African American, Ben Fletcher.

By 1916, thanks in large part to Fletcher’s organizing skill, all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were controlled by the IWW. And the union maintained control of the Philly waterfront for about a decade. At that time, roughly 10% of the IWW’s 1 million members were African American. Most had been rejected from other unions because of their skin color.

Fletcher also traveled up and down the east coast organizing dockers. However, he was nearly lynched in Norfolk, Virginia in 1917. And in 1918, the state arrested him, sentencing him to ten years for the crime of organizing workers during wartime. He served three years.

You can read my full biography of Ben Fletcher here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2021/05/13/ben-fletcher-and-the-iww-dockers/

Today in Labor History April 13, 1894: The Great Northern rail strike began in Helena, Montana. It quickly spread to St. Paul. The strike was led Eugene V. Debs, president of the American Railway Union. Workers succeeded in shutting down most of the critical rail links. Consequently, the owners gave in to nearly all of the union’s demands. The successful strike led to thousands of rail workers joining the new union. Debs would go on to lead numerous other strikes, run for president of the U.S. several times, including from his prison cell, and to cofound the revolutionary union IWW, along with Mother Jones, Big Bill Haywood, Lucy Parsons, and others.

We’re discussing Mr. Block today. More relevant than ever.
#mrblock #iww
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Block?wprov=sfti1