The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding in June 2005. The IWW was founded by labor leaders who saw a deep crisis for workers and their unions. Union density was very low in the United States (about as low, in the private sector, as it is today). The labor movement was dominated by what the IWW’s founders derided as the “American Separation of Labor,” ideologically and structurally incapable of organizing vast numbers of workers. To the IWW’s founders, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) was controlled by a caste of officials who were increasingly aloof from their members, bereft of a broader social vision, supportive of demobilizing myths such as labor–management cooperation and economic isolationism, and guilty of wasting members’ dues on pro-employer politicians. AFL unions also tended to treat agreements with employers as sacred obligations, scab on each other’s struggles, and fight their battles alone. Workers, meanwhile, put in ten- and twelve-hour days for poverty wages.
