Working Within Unions

What is your opinion of working through or within unions as a method for organizing a socialist movement?

Depends if we're talking about using existing unions or starting new unions, or if we're talking about trade unionism as a concept. I might be biased because of the state of syndicates, but I do not favour going through the actual uions. Here, in Québec, the biggest trade union (the FTQ) has more or less any difference with the mafia. Corruption is a cancer: "little brown envelopes", yacht trips, fun time with the criminal bikers...

Organised defense against abuses is a must to show our will for a social change, but it will have to be through fresh new organisations - grassroot of preference. Uniting theory and action is the way to go, and the best way now in the area of pragmatic defense of workers' rights is to be the alternative to the corrupted "old syndicalist guard".

Socialism through action

History has shown that trade unions have a tendency to instill an elitist attitude in the workers involved with them, and that their revolutionary potential is virtually nonexistent—with the exception of those unions headed by socialists, anarchists, or communists—so any radical involvement with them should be conducted on a tactical basis. Some trade unions additionally exhibit corrupt leadership, as Coureur des Bois mentioned, due primarily to their hierarchical organizational structure. That's not to say that we should chastise the workers who choose to join them, however.

Revolutionary industrial unions (e.g., the historic Industrial Workers of the World and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo), on the other hand, are obviously essential for the task of overthrowing the dictatorship of capital.

Celtiberian wrote:History has shown that trade unions have a tendency to instill an elitist attitude in the workers involved with them, and that their revolutionary potential is virtually nonexistent—with the exception of those unions headed by socialists, anarchists, or communists—so any radical involvement with them should be conducted on a tactical basis. Some trade unions additionally exhibit corrupt leadership, as Coureur des Bois mentioned, due primarily to their hierarchical organizational structure. That's not to say that we should chastise the workers who choose to join them, however.

Revolutionary industrial unions (e.g., the historic Industrial Workers of the World and Confederación Nacional del Trabajo), on the other hand, are obviously essential for the task of overthrowing the dictatorship of capital.

Another is the WIIU or Workers' International Industrial Union - http://www.wiiu.org/