In 1999, some 2,000 union carpenters went on a wildcat strike against their own union leadership, who had signed a poor contract that the members didn’t even have the right to vote on. (See this article for a longer history of that wildcat strike.) Although the wildcat strike only lasted five days, the struggle against this contract lasted several months. In the course of this, the carpenters organized an opposition caucus called “Working Carpenters for a Stronger Union.” Here is a video with a few scenes from that strike and (mainly) some of the discussion on the program that our caucus adopted. With everything that is going on in the Carpenters today (including their trying to give away our pension in the Pacific Northwest), we thought this discussion would be useful. We are going to publish a longer video of the wildcat strike itself in the near future.
Categories: labor, rebellion, Uncategorized, videos/documentaries
Reblogged this on The Control Line and commented:
This isn’t just an amazing little bit of carpenters history, its evidence that we as working carpenters can organize in a very real way, without the permission of the union misleaders. The real union leaders are the workers that go out to other workers and organize them for their own economic and political class interests–interests that are completely opposed to the interests of the employers and the capitalist class as a whole.
So true. Stay tuned, more video of the wildcat coming.