Timeline of the IWW

A timeline of the Industrial Workers of the World from its formation in 1905 to the present day.

1900s

• 1905: The IWW is founded at a socialist congress in Chicago, USA by 200 anarchist, socialist and communist activists. Big Bill Haywood, James Connolly, Daniel De Leon, Eugene V. Debs, Thomas Hagerty, Lucy Parsons, Mother Jones, Frank Bohn, William Trautmann, Vincent Saint John, Ralph Chaplin, and many others.
• 1906: IWW affiliated miners with the WFM work together to strike in Goldfield, Nevada, USA over wages, resulting in a conflict between the unions and US soldiers.
• 1908: The IWW begins organizing workers' councils with meat industry workers in Queensland, Australia.
• 1909: The IWW battles police for wage increases during the McKees Rocks Strike.

1910s

• 1910: The IWW is first organized in South Africa.
• 1912: The IWW organizes the Bread and Roses Strike, fighting police as they try and achieve a 54-hour workweek and 15% wage increase for immigrant workers.
• 1912: The IWW organizes the first hospitality workers strike, with 6000 hospitality workers in New York City, USA going out on strike, resulting in 117,000 lost working days for the city.
• 1913: The IWW helps organize the unsuccessful Paterson Silk Strike.
• 1915: The IWW helps form the Agricultural Workers' Organization (AWO) to organize farmers.
• 1915: The IWW helps organize two strikes at the Bayonne Refinery in New Jersey, USA.
• 1917: The IWW peaks in membership in August, with 150,000 members.
• 1917: The US government illegally kidnaps and deports 1,300 striking miners, many of whom are affiliated with the IWW.
• 1917: The IWW is blamed for the anti-conscription Green Corn Rebellion despite the IWW having no role in the incident.
• 1917: The police secretly agree to allow white supremacists in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA to kidnap IWW members.
• 1919: IWW workers help organize the Seattle Uprising.
• 1919: IWW-affiliated timber workers are murdered during the Centralia Tragedy.
• 1919: The Battle of Brewery Gulch occurs as the IWW assists many of the black veterans in the battle.

1920s

• 1920: IWW-affiliated miners are murdered during a strike at Anaconda Road.
• 1923: The IWW battles police and the Ku Klux Klan during the Liberty Hill Strike

1930s

• 1933: The Congdon Orchards Battle sees IWW members fight police as the IWW tries to end child labour and gain an eight-hour workday alongside wage increases in Yakima Valley, Washington, USA.
• 1937: The IWW and AWO fight against farm owners in the Spinach Riot.

1940s

• 1946: The IWW participates in a strike at the Schrimer-Dornbirer in Cleveland, Ohio, USA and wins 45 cent/hour pay boost in Cleveland.
• 1949: The IWW is placed on the US Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations.

1950s

• 1950: Cleveland branches of the IWW withdraw after an IWW referendum refuses to sign the Taft-Hartley Act.
• 1955: The IWW turns 50 and is nearing extinction.
• 1959: Organizing campaign among restaurant workers and greenhouse workers in New York City.

1960s

• 1964: IWW members assist in organizing the Mount Isa Mines Strike.
• 1967: IWW referendum votes to allow students to join IWW as members of Educational Workers.

1970s

• 1971: MTW branch established among dockworkers in Malmo, Sweden.
• 1977: The IWW organizes bus drivers and washers in Santa Cruz, California, USA and wins higher wages, health and dental benefits, safer working conditions, grievance procedures, legal insurance, paid holidays and vacations, 32 hours' work for 40 hours' pay, retirement benefits, profit sharing, and the elimination of sexual, racial and other forms of discrimination due to 100% of workers signing up.

1990s

• 1995: San Francisco and Santa Cruz IWW members establish the iww.org server and website. The IWW is only the second labor union in the world (the first was an Israeli teacher's union local) with a website and the first international union to have one.
• 1997: 3,240 gold miners in Sierra Leone work with the IWW, but the civil war forced many to flee to neighbouring Guinea, where plans were made to organize metal workers, the current state of these workers is unknown.
• 1997: Anarcho-syndicalist group Solidaarsuus affiliates with IWW and launches campaign for 6-hour day to fight unemployment. Includes a 400-person demonstration in Finland.

2000s

• 2004: The IWW organizes the Starbucks Workers Union, largely active in the USA and Canada.
• 2006: The German Language Membership Regional Organizing Committee (GLAMROC) is founded in Cologne, Germany to organize workers in Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Austria.

2010s

• 2011: The IWW begins (with the assistance of the French CNT) to prepare for a general strike across the American Midwest in response to the 2011 Wisconsin Protests.
• 2012: The Ugandan Regional Organizing Committee (ROC) is formed to organize workers across Uganda, but was eventually dissolved after it violated its own constitution by allowing employers to join.
• 2014: The Incarcerated Workers' Organizing Committee (IWOC) is formed to fight US prison-industrial complex.
• 2015: The Iceland Regional Organizing Committee (IceROC) is the first branch of the IWW to form in Iceland and mainly focus on organizing sex workers for protection against repression by the police.
• 2015: GLAMROC is reported as having over 200 members in good standing as well as having branches in 16 cities.
• 2016: The IWW organizes the first fast food workers union in US history, the Burgerville Workers Union.
• 2018: The IWOC organizes a second general strike across US prisons, demanding an end to prison slavery, massive expansion of prisoner rights and welfare, an end to racism in US prisons and the granting of voting rights to prisoners.
• 2018: The IWW Couriers' Network is formed in the UK to organise drivers with UberEats and Deliveroo.
• 2019: IWW Australia reaches 100 members.
• 2019: IWW organises the TEFL Workers' Union for teachers in the UK.