Industrial Workers of the world iww.org.uk

The IWW is a union with a structure designed to unite us in ways that will bring the best results.

Industrial Unions
As soon as there is you and someone else where you work - then you have the beginnings of real change. This where it makes the difference to your everyday working life, where you can work in imaginative ways to improve things. The more of you who can organise together the bigger the gains you can make! What is important here is that it doesn't matter what job we do in that workplace. Whether a cleaner or an officer worker we all work for the same boss and need to stand together. In the IWW this is known as a Job Branch.

Because workers need greater power and influence across different workplaces and even between different employers we organize all the Job Branches in an area, in the same industry, into an Industrial Union Branch. We must always work to prevent isolation and encourage solidarity.

But we know we don't live in an ideal world, yet. We live in a world dominated by international capitalism which is powerful and well organized. The only way that we can change that is to create greater power than they have. To do that we join industrial union branches together in larger units - always starting from the base until we have enough power to challenge them. It can sound like some utopia - but the way we get there is to win countless smaller victories on the way.

The IWW has a structure of Industrial Unions. This is not to force us into certain categories but to help us organise together in the most effective way possible.

Jobs
There are some benefits in workers doing the same job even if in different areas sharing encouragement and ideas. For example a cleaner working in a school is in a different industry to a cleaner working in a factory to one working in a hospital but there may be things in common with which they can help each other with. Use this website to start developing groups and networks to help yourselves.