Talk:Industrial unionism

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Unless I'm missing something, the new section Fifelfoo added on "revolutionary industrial unionism" is about a fundamentally different concept -- is there a reason it shouldn't be its own article? RadicalSubversiv E 01:53, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Maybe. They seem related though. The IWW slips through Industrial Unionism in the reformist wings (DeLeonist etc) through to revolutionary Industrial Unionism. And the IWW seems to be the engine pushing Industrial unionism up hill in many ways. I guess they're as related as Syndicalism and Revolutionary Syndicalism. Either Revolutionary Industrial Unionism gets its own article, or we keep them together as allied topics, and put in a redirect from Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. I'm happy either way, but the topic of RIU seemed to clarify the difference between the IWW and Anarcho-Syndicalism on that page. yours Fifelfoo 02:20, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't follow you. Anarcho-syndicalism is pretty peripheral to the industrial unionism vs. craft unionism divide, which is really characterized by the old split between the AFL and the CIO (by which point the IWW had pretty much collapsed). I've never heard the phrase "revolutionary industrial unionism" before, and your presentation makes it sound like an ideological issue, which would be unrelated to the question of organizing by industry vs. by craft (which may be specific to the U.S. -- I'm not sure). RadicalSubversiv E 03:08, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Its certainly an issue in Australian Unionism. Australia has had a dominant tradition of right-wing and left-wing trades unions, and right-wing "industrial" unions like Australia's Worst Union (Australian Workers Union). In comparision both the IWW, the CPA (with its Red Trades Unions), and various trade union movements (Amalgamation & Federations in the 70s) pushed for more revolutionary industrial unions. Organising by craft, trade or industry is part of the issue. The other part is if the industrial unionism necessary implies revolution. Similar to the Syndicalist debates about revolutionism in France. In many ways in Australia, organisation by industry implies organisation to control those industries. The early days of the CIO probably give another example (sit-ins) where the demand for industrial organisation of workers necessarily implied the demand of organisation of industry by workers. Fifelfoo 04:47, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Unless I'm missing something in the Australian context, the AWU is a union that retains significant membership in Australia whereas the IWW appears to have been something of a shortlived phenomenon that for all intents and purposes disappeared in the 1930s. I have noticed that there are various entries creeping in that are purely opinion (while not unexpected on such an emotive issue) - perhaps these more appropriate to a discussion paper than a reference work. In my submission the concept of whether a union is organised according to its industry or according to occupation are seperate issues to the political ideology of various individual participants in the labour movement. In Australia in the present day and in the past we have had examples of both craft based and industry based unions in both the left and the right wings of the union movement. This will continue to be a feature in the future. On the subject of the distinction between craft based unionism and Industry based unionism, I think this has been a distinction that is common to many countries. I would also suggest that another common trend has been the decline in craft unionism. In Australia this has been a deliberate strategy of the ACTU steming from the late 80s through the early 90s where there was a push to ammalgamate unions and organise on industry lines. This also appears to have been a feature in other countries such as Germany. I propose that "revolutionary industrial unionism" should be moved to a seperate article. Hmette 15:07, 14 July 2005 (UTC)