Demands

[WIIU]

Fellow workers,

I would like to change the front page of the website and I thought a
good thing to put there would be a list of demands. I think we have
discussed this before so here is a starting list:

1) Guarantee workers� right to organize into unions free from coercion
or other threats.
2) Immediate repeal of all anti union legislation.

3) Democracy in the Workplace- all workers should have voice and vote
while on the job concerning all matters which affect them.
4) Company funded health and retirement benefits, regardless of position
or type of work.
5) Company funded child care for all workers.
6) An end to layoffs, downsizing or outsourcing of jobs.
7) Safe and healthy work environments for all workers stringently enforced.
8) Wages no longer determined by labor markets, but based on rates of
compensation that will allow a comfortable living for all workers based
on cost of living, training or education, and difficult or dangerous work.
9) Removal of all ballot access laws which prevent working class parties
from adequately fielding candidates for local or national office.
Right to access to electronic and print media in order to educate the
public on working class issues and causes and to promote worker
candidates for public office.

This is just a basic starting point. We can add or remove those that fit
or don't.

Carl

[ddon...@comcast.net]

Before I take this issue under consideration, I would like to know what brought the matter up.

 

Don

---

From: "WIIU" <wiiu@wiiu.org>
To: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, February 7, 2012 10:40:09 AM
Subject: Demands

Fellow workers,

I would like to change the front page of the website and I thought a
good thing to put there would be a list of demands. I think we have
discussed this before so here is a starting list:

1)        Guarantee workers’ right to organize into unions free from coercion

[Andrew Gunderman]

Well, I think its a mother of implementation. You would expect say, a guarantee against coercion. Cite your constitutional rights. Can we follow up with establishing democracy in the workplace? We don't even have a democracy in our government. Benefits that are given by the federal government, should they be eliminated so that companies have to provide them?
 
Should you take your children to work? And ending layoffs and downsizing, would you also end upsizing and hiring - might as well, tit for tat. Basically, can a system be created that eliminated the affect of any market, that would be worker-dominated-No. So how can this be a realistic set of demands? Some of them are feasible, not all.
 
Then what is the blueprint for enforcing any of the demands? With due process maybe for some of them, but this all is just un-doable by direct action, camping in parks or jumping next to a roadside sign. I tell you the closer we can get to establishing ways to implement any of these ideas, the better off we will all be for it.
 
We don't need a post-industrial Lenin, Stalin, or Trotsky! Who would trust them?
 
 

> Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 10:40:09 -0600
> From: wi...@wiiu.org
> To: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Demands

>
> Fellow workers,
>
> I would like to change the front page of the website and I thought a
> good thing to put there would be a list of demands. I think we have
> discussed this before so here is a starting list:
>

> 1) Guarantee workers’ right to organize into unions free from coercion

[WIIU]

I don't recall Don, but we have discussed this before. I just thought it
might be a good thing to talk over. If no one thinks demands are a good
idea then we won't have any. But, if everyone has read the preamble to
the WIIU constitution you will remember it clearly states,

"These sad conditions must be changed, the interests of the working
class upheld, and while the capitalist rule still prevails, all possible
relief for the workers must be secured."

While we are not strong enough yet to overthrow the capitalist wage
system, we can put out some points that people can rally around. If the
demands I listed are unsatisfactory then let's come up with some that
work for us.

Failing this I need some ideas for our homepage. The site has been
neglected lately due to my personal matters so I want to try to spruce
it up a bit.

By the way, I posted the statement on OWS and I also posted a couple of
other older articles to the IU News section on the website.

Fraternally,
Carl

ddon...@comcast.net wrote:
> Before I take this issue under consideration, I would like to know what
> brought the matter up.
>
> Don
>

> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From: *"WIIU" <wi...@wiiu.org>
> *To: *workers-internation...@googlegroups.com
> *Sent: *Tuesday, February 7, 2012 10:40:09 AM
> *Subject: *Demands

[WIIU]

Hi Andrew,

I agree with the gist of your last post. But, did you see anything in
the list I posted (which is not set in stone by the way) that you would
like to see come to fruition? Is there anything in that list which you
would be willing to at least try to struggle for?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions then you see why we
post demands. Impossible though they seem, they inspire people. Now,
don't get me wrong, I am no reformer, but we can make these demands with
the understanding that they will not solve the problems and
contradictions inherent in the capitalist system. Only a socialist
revolution led by the class-conscious workers can solve that problem.

Carl

> > 1) Guarantee workers� right to organize into unions free from coercion

[Scott Wallace]

I intend to offer more suggestions in time, but one thing, maybe we could get more specific about anti union legislation. Perhaps we could call for the repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. --- On Tue, 2/7/12, WIIU <wi...@wiiu.org> wrote:

[ps...@comcast.net]

FW's,

In a sense, the Union could call for the repeal of the National Labor Relations Act, as it grants hegemony to the business unions and yokes them to the state; but I do support the form of the tactical demands put forward by the General Secretary.
-PS




http://www.antiwar.com

[ddon...@comcast.net]

In the OWS statement drafted by Scott, and I resume adopted by WIIU, there are 2 points put forth in the extracts of the statement listed below. 1) Immediate demands and the "gut feeling" (instinctive) that a major change is critically necessary. 2) We must "go beyond the demands of this or that reform," by bringing "clarity of thought to that gut feeling." That is capped by the last sentence of the statement.

Our problem is how best to juxtapose the 2 points.

For my part, they are clearly defined in the statement. We recognize and empathize with the "gut felling" and "subliminal realization," while at the same time declaring that we are the voice of practicality. The OWS statement should be a guide in attempting to improve our list of immediate demands. To address all the various demands in that OWS crowd would be a load and a half.

Extracts of the OWS statement:

we will attempt to bring clarity of thought to that gut feeling, resolutely declaring that there is no solution under capitalism, and the only sane alternative to capitalism is industrial democracy.

Certainly there is a subliminal realization For within this movement that capitalism is the problem.and in a revolutionary moment, those who put forth a program for industrial democracy, are the voice of practicality.

It is imperative that the occupy movement go beyond the demands for this or that reform, and begin the process of organizing to put the means of production of goods and services under social ownership and democratic control.

Don

----- Original Message -----
From: WIIU <wiiu@wiiu.org>
To: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, 08 Feb 2012 04:41:01 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: Demands

I don't recall Don, but we have discussed this before. I just thought it
might be a good thing to talk over. If no one thinks demands are a good
idea then we won't have any. But, if everyone has read the preamble to
the WIIU constitution you will remember it clearly states,

"These sad conditions must be changed, the interests of the working
class upheld, and while the capitalist rule still prevails, all possible
relief for the workers must be secured."

While we are not strong enough yet to overthrow the capitalist wage
system, we can put out some points that people can rally around. If the
demands I listed are unsatisfactory then let's come up with some that
work for us.

Failing this I need some ideas for our homepage. The site has been
neglected lately due to my personal matters so I want to try to spruce
it up a bit.

By the way, I posted the statement on OWS and I also posted a couple of
other older articles to the IU News section on the website.

Fraternally,
Carl

ddonaker@comcast.net wrote:
> Before I take this issue under consideration, I would like to know what
> brought the matter up.
>
> Don
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> *From: *"WIIU"

[Andrew Gunderman]

Maybe post it as a News Item. From http://politicalaffairs.net/make-the-pullman-strike-an-historical-monument/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Paeditorsblog+%28PA+Editors+Blog%29
 
Pullman, Illinois was a late 19th century example of the dictatorship of capital over labor in a nation where workers had democratic rights. At the Pullman factory were workers who built the Pullman sleeping cars for the railroads. 

They lived in a "company town" where they as a condition of their employment had to live in overpriced company housing and shop in overpriced company stores. When the Pullman company forced a wage cuts on them in 1894 (the country was in the midst of a depression) they petitioned the American Railway Union, an industrial union of a railroad workers led by Eugene Debs, for membership.  

The ARU accepted them and launched a railroad strike in their behalf. Then US AG, Richard Olney, formerly the chief attorney for the railroad owners General Managers Association, proceeded to place federal mails on trains with Pullman cars as a pretext to use force to break the strike. After significant violence, the strike was broken, Eugene Debs imprisoned, and the ARU destroyed. 

To add insult to injury, Debs imprisonment was later upheld by an anti-labor Supreme Court using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act i.e. national industrial unions were "combinations in restraint of trade.  This struggle led Debs, who was an industrial unionist but not a socialist at the time, to turn to the study of socialism and embrace it as for him, the only logical alternative to capitalist concentration, exploitation, and control of governments. When a unified Socialist Party of America was formed at the turn of the 20th century, Debs emerged as its most important national leader and was its presidential candidate in four elections.. the last as a prisoner in the federal prision at Atlanta in 1920 because of his opposition to World War I.

Labor History is American History. Pullman should be a National Historic Site.
 
https://www.popvox.com/bills/us/112/hr3894

 

---

Date: Tue, 7 Feb 2012 19:03:39 +0000
From: ddon...@comcast.net
To: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Demands