Industrial Workers of the World

Workers Initiative as a target of employers' and state's assault http://www.ozzip.pl/english/20-latest-news/589-workers-initiative-as-a-target-of-employers-and-states-assault T

oday At present the Workers' Initiative acts in the following cities: Poznan, Lodz, Szczecin, Gorzow, Kostrzyn, Zielona Gora, the Upper Silesia (Tarnowskie Gory, Miasteczko Slaskie, Bielsko-Biala, Raciborz, Rybnik), Warsaw, Gdansk, Cracow, Bydgoszcz. At four first cities IP offices are functioning. Smaller groups and IP sympathizers are active also in other cities. The union bimonthly publishes the "Workers' Initiative" newsletter and irregularly "Silesian Syndicalist" newspaper.

We cooperate with radical trade unions from several countries of Europe, among others: IWU from Ireland, CGT from Spain, FAU from Germany, SAC from Sweden, CNT from France, ESE from Greece, IWW from Great Britain. As part of international campaigns IP among others has joined a boycott of the Coca-Cola corporation, which is responsible for murders of trade unionists in Colombia.

The general rules of IP:

1 | internal The Workers' Initiative Trade Union is a voluntary organization, where my fate depends on your commitment and vice versa. None of the law articles are more effective than interpersonal solidarity and mutual friendship between us, both in the work and private life. We appreciate own initiative, communication skills, cooperation, assistance and direct criticism. IP is therefore a type of union that demand. We do not accept spying and dominance born out of lack of knowledge of others comrades, lack of skills or others' mistakes. Here is no place for passivity and trust that others will do the job for me.

In Workers' Initiative everyone is equal, regardless of functions we are performing, education and earnings. We understand trade union functions as a duty for the other man, not as a reason for the contempt and humiliation of others, or the possibility of sitting in the comfortable armchair under the wing of the management. We are independent of employers in our actions. A lot of IP local committies decided to not to use so-called trade union privileges, because they often became a reason for enslaving trade unions.

We don't want trade union jobs, offices, phones, faxes from employers. We try to collect donations ourselves. We do not spend social funds on organizing holiday for workers. Trade unions working that way are too often actless. Their activists are getting used to comfort and it is hard for them to resign when are they bacame not interested in defending workers anymore. Our principles give us the advantage over bureaucratic unions, as employers do not know how many we are and who is involved in. They cannot reach us, cannot corrupt us, because we want nothing from bosses. The IP of course use the Labour Code, but treats it as the weapon, especially when employers victimise workers and trade unionists.

2 | external Workers today are often unorganized, divided, have no contact with each other, are being intimidated and deprived of their faith in their own strength. Trade unions are losing their importance. Such a situation is beneficial for employers, who without any restrictions exploit workers, using the protection of the state administration and state coercive measures.

Alliance (often of corruption character) between the political and economical power is aimed against all workers. Its purpose is to maintain social divisions. Rich, privileged in every respect minority has the property, the power and means of indoctrination, and is thriving and accumulating its wealth through the work of the majority. Such a hierarchical social structure is the cause of most problems experienced in daily life by workers around the world, affected by massive unemployment, reduction of wages, return to the slave labour, child labour, poverty and hunger. The interest of bosses, of both transnational corporations and small enterprises, is to strengthen the existing order, which gives them freedom to exploit workers and local communities.

The real change can come only when workers no longer believe that their employers, multicorporation owners and managers act in the interest of society. We are struggling for regaining the control over our life, both in the places we work and live. We are struggling for a completely different world, because we are convinced that capitalism, like state socialism, can not be reformed. Deep social, economic and political changes are needed.

Our movement is also a response to extremely political corrupted and politically-oriented trade unions. We must reject the need for the leaders existence - too often they have betrayed the cause that they initially were fighting for. We are for grass-roots, direct democracy from below as a form of organising workers' protest.

The goal of Workers' Initiative (IP) is not to supervise the struggle of workers but only to motivate them/us to independent struggle for the improvement of living conditions and liberation from oppression of any power. We declare against political action and using workers' movement for political goals and current interests of political parties. We support involvement of workers' movement in local struggles aiming at restoring authentic self-governance. We regard essential the international solidarity of union and worker movement.

We are in favour of direct action, especially demonstrations, strikes and boycotts as the most effective, but not the only weapon in the fight for labour rights and radical democratic society. We see that there is a great need to restore also the cultural autonomy of labor, as a counterbalance for mass-culture and a consumer lifestyle offered by it.

The Workers' Initiative is an alliance of all for whom workers' matters are close. We are a standing up for workers' rights, reffering in our activity and ideas directly to the tradition of anarcho-syndicalist movement. Those organized in IP undertake efforts to create the workers' movement based on the grass-roots and voluntary autonomy - the movement that would be able to go beyond the divisions between workers and be able to successfully struggle for their/our rights and for a full control of work places.

By active involvement in protest campaigns, cooperation and by suppor for strikes we try to bring solidarity help and actively present our ideas. IP is functioning on the principles of federation, i.e. voluntary organization of persons in which every participant has equal right to decide about affairs concerning him/her. Anyone who accepts the statements above can be an IP participant.

http://www.ozzip.pl/about-wi

Virtual Museum of Political Art - Totalitarian Art http://members.telering.at/pat/tot.htm

the Qarmatian movement which was a revolutionary movement which swept through the Muslim world from the 9th to the 12th centuries AD. This movement organised itself on the bases of a system of communism into which initiation was necessary. They challenged the power of the caliph of Baghdad. In 931 AD the Qarmatians sacked Mecca and took the Black Stone of the Ka'ba to Mu'aminiyah for thirty years. Their only mistake was not to have destroyed it. http://geocities.com/cordobakaf/misery_of_islam.html “

Not only has universal anarchy broken out among the reformers, but also every individual must admit to himself that he has no precise idea about what ought to happen. However, this very defect turns to the advantage of the new movement, for it means that we do not anticipate the world with our dogmas but instead attempt to discover the new world through the critique of the old.”

letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge, Kreuzenach, September 1843.