Forming a new GMB

hey there, just so you know most wobblies i believe have left these forums. a better place to ask your question might be over at wobforum.org

i don't check libcom more than a few times a year at this point, so it may take me a bit if you reply. thanks!

I wouldn't say sectarian necessarily though it can be that way. It's just discussions tend to be from a pretty wide ranging crowd and as such discussions on concrete wob organising tend to get sidetracked into a constant debate over the value of the group. This discussion is worth having though, at least in my opinion and it's not really fair to expect otherwise from a board that is intended to be for a large range of views.

You're not obligated to sign them up.

In fact i'd suggest that you don't.

Is there a section of the constitution mandating that a delegate must sign up any person who requests membership? Please quote it.

In fact the branches or GEB are supposed to review applications for membership, although this almost never happens.

Which branches actually review their membership and have mechanisms to keep out hopeful-entryists or just wacktivists? Cause I think this would be really healthy for any branch that tried, and that the problem now is that any crazy person can join and do a bunch of damage before they are asked to leave.

BTW Some of the Trotskyists that folks tried to keep out of the IWW, encouraging them not to join, etc - wound up being very principled IWWs, who've done much for the public activities of the branches here.

I wouldn't argue that all trotskyists should be kept out. One of the more principled and capable members in the Bay Area is a trotskyist who joined individually.

I do think we should be capable of preventing entryism, somehow. I think if we're ever successful various groups will attempt it. For example Todd Chretien, the lenin of the ISO and Bay Area politician, proposed to an ex-IWW that young ISO members could be used by the IWW as salts for various campaigns. Of course, I'm sure there would have been quite a number of hidden catches.

Basically I think that if you're a worker joining cause you're trying to improve your workplace, you should have fast-track membership (ideally joining through a job branch), and if you're joining through a GMB cause you like the IWW, we should get to ask a few questions first. Not questions like how could the Spanish anarchists have done better, more like what kind of agreements do you think are acceptable to sign with bosses (and under what circumstances), would you ever accept a job working for a business union, etc.

edited to add: also i think online sign-ups, and sign-ups through delegates with no branch oversight, are ridiculous. The CNT only allow joining through a branch and not only are they many times larger i think this also allows them to have a much more functioning organization.

I think something that IWW people must realise is that if it ever started to really grow, lots of leftist groups would start to join, and of course would try to use it as a front group.

Devrim

When the Portland IWW was a really growing concern (1996- 2005) - I'm talking 300 members and supporters, etc - there was no "infiltration" by Leninists because we were doing union, not political activity. It just wasn't of interest to the Leninists.

I can see the ISO offering up their younger members to the IWW for salts because they could get workplace organizing experience, the ISO doesn't have much experience in workplaces.

We held mandatory new member trainings - which SF and Chicago base theirs off of. These were a front line for explaining organizational principles as well as the revolutionary goals of the IWW.

The IWW did hold forums were all the various political groupings plus IWW held debate/discussion on particular subjects.

Oh hell yes. the more the better. It's much more efective than reinventing the wheel...

I used to like to go to trainings (hard these days) because you always learn more, people exchange ideas, experiences, etc.

I spoke to someone in No Sweat who knows a lot of AWL members (well you would.... )

He'd never come across Gentle Revolutionary.

In terms of concrete things I do, the AWL are the Trot group I run into most often. Perhaps that says more about me than them.....

Regards,

Martin

I hate certain people. Those assholes suck.

thanks. I just wonder what sort of places offer that kind of training...

I think that a lot of the leftist parties made a turn away from the working class in the nineties. I think that they are currently trying to turn back to it. If any radical union grows significantly*, they will join it.

Devrim

*300 members/supporters is a large amount at the moment for a political group in a small city, but is very small for a general union.

The question is, how to stave off Bolshevik infiltration?

Devrim -- 300 is nothing to turn your nose up at if you believe you are literally re-building the labour movement from the bottom up. 300 revolutionary union members is worth 30000 business union members. This is what was also being pointed out on the IWA thread.