Industrial Workers of the World

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is a worker-run union dedicated to direct action, industrial democracy, and unrelenting class struggle.
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Founded in 1905 by revolutionary unionists, the IWW seeks to organize all workers into One Big Union.

10/23/2025

Demand Sick Days. By Jefferson Pierce. Introduction The restaurant industry stands at the frontlines of a new labor movement. A recent report reveals that the highest concentration of strikes in re…

10/23/2025

Philadelphia I.W.W. Unveils Historical Marker and Celebrates Local 8 and Ben Fletcher’s Legacy of Militant, Industrial Organizing On Saturday June 21, 2025 the Philadelphia Historical and Museum Co…

The right to speak is the foundation of organizing workers toward a better society. Frank Little understood that if work...
10/02/2025

The right to speak is the foundation of organizing workers toward a better society. Frank Little understood that if workers lost the right to free speech, they would lose the ability to organize and fight.

Frank was born in Illinois around 1878, his father’s last year of medical school before the family packed up and headed out to Oklahoma for a homesteading lifestyle. There they would face a number of struggles including drought and the 1893 economic depression which was triggered by ruling class greed.

Frank went on to live in California and Arizona working as a miner and an organizer for the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) before joining the IWW in 1905, the year it was founded.

As a Wobbly, Frank Little would organize across major industries including mining, lumber, agriculture, and oil. Frank organized among the roughest professions in hopes of combining the labor power of diverse workers across the United States. His activism didn’t stop at organizing workers; he was a major proponent of the right to free speech and a vital part of the Free Speech Fights in the early 1900s.

Frank was the embodiment of the Industrial Workers of the World and the working class. Just as many of his Fellow Workers before and after him, Frank would sacrifice his life for his speech and activism.

In the early morning of August 1, 1917, Frank Little was kidnapped from a boardinghouse in Butte, Montana by 6 masked men. He was beaten severely and tied to a car bumper before being dragged through the streets. Frank was found hanged from a railroad trestle on the edge of town, with a note pinned to his lifeless body that read “Others take notice, first and last warning”

Thousands of workers attended Frank’s funeral despite the violent threats. Bosses, thugs, and bureaucrats alike have attempted to stamp out the IWW by way of violence and intimidation for over 120 years, but we continue to organize the working class today in the spirit of Frank Little.

08/29/2025

Fellow Workers David Helm, Scott Slaba, and Mary Thurtle. Food for People Soup Kitchen, Bellingham IWW. From the IWW Materials Preservation Project. Harry Bridges once said, “The most important wor…

July 8, 2024: Peets’ Coffee workers march on the boss in Berkeley, CAThroughout history, working class people have stood...
07/01/2025

July 8, 2024: Peets’ Coffee workers march on the boss in Berkeley, CA

Throughout history, working class people have stood up and fought back against oppression and exploitation in the food system. Each month, Food Fight documents a timeline of historical labor struggles to inform and educate today’s workers on historical class struggle in the food industry. We commemorate their struggles each day of the month.

Check out July’s edition of Food Fight: https://industrialworker.org/food-fight-july-edition/

Now available for pre-order in our webstore, The Popular Wobbly brings together a wide selection of writings by T-Bone S...
06/17/2025

Now available for pre-order in our webstore, The Popular Wobbly brings together a wide selection of writings by T-Bone Slim, perhaps the most popular and talented writer belonging to the IWW. Slim wrote humorous, polemical pieces, engaging with topics like labor and class injustice, which were mostly published in IWW publications from 1920 until his death in 1942. Although relatively little is known about Slim, editors Owen Clayton and Iain McIntyre coalesce the latest research on this enigmatic character to create a vivid portrait that adds valuable context for the array of writings assembled here.

***Pre-orders will ship after June 24th, 2025***

05/31/2025

June 15, 2023. IWW picket at Kickin’ Caribou in Plymouth, UK. Picture Source: Throughout history, working class people have stood up and fought back against oppression and exploitation in the…

Fellow Worker Jay discusses the National Labor Relations Board and the flawed approach of mainstream unions in relying u...
05/25/2025

Fellow Worker Jay discusses the National Labor Relations Board and the flawed approach of mainstream unions in relying upon it as the Trump administration whittles away at its infrastructure:

“The NLRB is a body made up of presidential appointees who can be chosen and fired by the president more or less at will. As such, getting “good” people on the Board to make “favorable” rulings depends entirely on the electoral fortunes of a favored candidate or party...Over the past 90 years of the NLRA, this has conditioned the labor movement into a meek, neutered shadow of what it once was...”

https://industrialworker.org/avoiding-the-nlrb/

It seems we’ll forever be in state of mourning 🌹  Read the latest form the Industrial Worker:  Poem: Hind Rajab, The Wor...
11/29/2024

It seems we’ll forever be in state of mourning 🌹

Read the latest form the Industrial Worker: Poem: Hind Rajab, The Workers’ Muse, No. 2

https://industrialworker.org/poem-hind-rajab/

Editor’s Note: The Workers’ Muse is a new column featuring poetry by Wobblies.

Content Warning: Violence, murder, graphic descriptions of death, deaths of children in this article. Please be advised and take care of yourselves.

🌹 It is with a heavy heart that Industrial Worker shares this obituary and remembrance for Fellow Worker Dylan Brooks 🌹“...
11/11/2024

🌹 It is with a heavy heart that Industrial Worker shares this obituary and remembrance for Fellow Worker Dylan Brooks 🌹

“Fellow Worker Dylan Hamilton Brooks passed on June 21, 2024. His passing came as a shock to all of us who knew him.

Dylan took on many roles in the IWW, and was respected by many for staying steady amidst difficult times and controversy.

He was Olympia’s Branch Secretary from 2016 to 2018, chair of the organizing committee, and a founding member of the Northwest Regional Coordinating Committee.”

This article originally ran in Seattle Worker on November 1, 2024 and has been published on the Industrial Worker with permission of the authors.

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An injury to one is an injury to all. • Un daño a uno se hace un daño a todos.

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth. We find that the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands makes the trade unions unable to cope with the ever growing power of the employing class. The trade unions foster a state of affairs which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars. Moreover, the trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers. These conditions can be changed and the interest of the working class upheld only by an organization formed in such a way that all its members in any one industry, or in all industries if necessary, cease work whenever a strike or lockout is on in any department thereof, thus making an injury to one an injury to all. Instead of the conservative motto, “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work,” we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, “Abolition of the wage system.” It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown. By organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old. ✩✩✩

Preamble to the IWW Constitution

La clase obrera y la clase patronal no tienen nada en común. No puede haber paz mientras que se encuentre el hambre y la necesidad entre los millones de gente trabajadora, y los pocos, que constituyen la clase patronal, tienen todas las cosas buenas de la vida.

Entre estas dos clases una lucha debe continuar hasta que los trabajadores del mundo se organicen como una clase, tomen posesión de los medios de producción, acaben con el sistema salarial, y vivan en armonía con la Tierra.