Industrial Workers of the World

SPARKS Rank & File Transport workers paper

According to the editor of Vic Rail news in Sparks - there has been a lot of interest by V-Line workers in the articles/interviews in the section - now various V-Line workers are getting involved and wanting to be interviewed for the section.

CONTRIBUTIONS: Sparks welcomes contributions in the shape of poems, cartoons, songs, articles by transport workers. Please mail to SPARKS PO Box 92, BROADWAY 2007 NSW Australia OR email rworker@chaos.apana.org.au

DISTRIBUTORS: SPARKS is always looking for people within the transport industry to distribute sparks on the shop floor. Please write or email rworker@chaos.apana.org.au for details.

http://www.fortunecity.com/banners/interstitial.html?http://www.rebelworker.org/storage/sparks/latest.pdf

What is Democratic Unionism?

Democratic unionism means grass roots controlled unionism. This is as opposed to trade unionism. We advocate all workers in one industry be in one union so as to remove artificial divisions amongst workers. Such a union must be fully organised and controlled by the membership. To achieve this we want a union organised along the following lines:-

1. That no person employed by the union can earn more than the average income of the membership;

2. That spokespeople have no executive power - all decisions are made by the membership affected;

3. Spokespeople are only to act as delegates elected. The membership to carry out decisions made by the membership;

4. That a mechanism be instituted for the instant recall of spokespeople /delegates who break the above rules.

5. That all positions within the union be held as a limited tenure, ie. two years (unless no one else stands).

6. There is no body of full time paid officials. All loss of earnings are to be paid by the union to the extent of the lost wages.

7. That a programme of decentralised decision making be implemented within the union structure, so that we won't need full time paid positions. Only in this way can we see a democratic united, fighting organisation be created which will stand up for the rights of workers and their families against all governments, political parties and all bosses.

http://www.transportworkers.org/

http://railroadworkersunited.org/weblinks