WORLD WORLDWIDE US USA - news journal UPDATE - (en) US, BRRN: Anarchists in the Labor Movement #6 - Restaurants (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 This is the sixth installment in our Anarchists in the Labor Movement

series. Click through the links to read installment #1 with an education
worker, #2 with healthcare workers, #3 with a metal worker, #4 with a
public librarian, and #5 with a public school teacher. ---- In this
interview we speak to GK, a restaurant worker in Michigan. -- As the
title suggests, this series engages with anarchists who are active in
workplace organizing. Some of those we speak to in this series are
buildng a militant minority within the rank-and-file of their existing
union, others are organizing the unorganized through new union
campaigns, while others still are finding ways to build the capacity to
win shop floor fights in contexts where union support is not available.
In part, our aim with these interviews is simply to shine a light on the
presence of anarchist militants in the U.S. labor movement. More
substantively, we ask participants to critically reflect on their
experiences, including both successes and failures, to draw out
generalizable lessons.

Some, but not all of those interviewed in this series are members of
Black Rose / Rosa Negra.

Answers have been edited for clarity and length.

GK - Restaurant Worker
BRRN: How would you summarize your politics in one sentence?

GK: I am an anarchist or libertarian socialist. I believe that working
class power can and should be built by self-directed committees of
workers both on the job and throughout their industries.

BRRN: Are you working with an established union or going independent?
GK:  I am a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). I first
heard of the IWW in the early 2000s, when public campaigns at Starbucks
and Jimmy John's were happening. Detroit is known for being the home to
large auto unions, but I was always told that unions were for workers in
manufacturing-type jobs and not for industries like mine. Hearing about
these campaigns in the IWW made me want to learn more, so I took an
organizer training in 2012 and have been a member ever since. The IWW's
organizing model (Solidarity Unionism) is especially relevant to the
restaurant industry because we tend to work in small workplaces with
very high turnover. We eventually want to recruit every worker in the
shop into the union, but there are still actions that a small committee
of workers can pull off successfully as we build toward that goal. We
might not ever get 100% of the staff on board, but we are developing
more workers into organizers in the process.

BRRN: How do you see your anarchist politics relating to organizing for
power with coworkers?
GK:  In the IWW we use the phrase "building the new world in the shell
of the old." What this basically means is that we are not waiting until
after the revolution to prepare workers to run the economy: we are
building toward that as we organize. When we collect dues from our
coworkers and have meetings to decide how those dues will be spent, we
are learning how to collectively manage resources and practice direct
democracy. And by learning how to plan and execute small direct actions
on the job around smaller demands, we are preparing ourselves to take on
bigger actions around bigger demands down the road.

BRRN: Do you ever talk about your own politics with coworkers? Do you
talk 'politics' (world events, local power structures) with your
coworkers at all?
GK:  When signing up coworkers to the IWW, I would show them our
Preamble. The Preamble lays out the IWW's politics around industrial
organizing, abolishing capitalism and seizing the means of production.
Those can sound like pretty ambitious tasks, but if you boil it down to
how those politics manifest in the workplace, it can be easier to have
those conversations. For example, the Preamble starts by saying "The
working class and the employing class have nothing in common..." This
sort of language might sound abstract or confusing, but if you boil it
down to workplace dynamics, it will make more sense: we as workers want
a safe work environment where we can earn a living and feel like our
jobs have importance. Our boss on the other hand needs to make a profit
and will sacrifice our health, safety and well being in order to keep
making money and having control over the workplace.

BRRN: Does organizing in unions fit into your vision for transforming
society or for revolution? (walk us through your vision of Step 1, Step
2, Step 3, where Step 1 is organizing on the shopfloor and Step 4 is a
future libertarian-socialist society.)
GK:
Step 1: Build committees across various workplaces. In the process of
committee building, workers begin to learn tools for collective decision
making, resource management and strategic planning.
Step 2: Committees begin to network and collaborate among themselves.
Local branches and national organizing departments help with
coordination and administration. This sets the stage for industry-wide
organization.
Step 3: Industrial bodies coordinate further organization, direct
actions and resource management across workplaces. They have the
capacity to execute actions throughout supply chains and across various
job sites at once.

Step 4: General strikes and other revolutionary tactics are deployed to
seize the economy from the capitalist class.

https://www.blackrosefed.org/anarchists-in-the-labor-movement-6/
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