To workers everywhere:
The global attacks on working people’s living standards are undiminished.
Despite protest after protest, the multinational corporations and the states which serve them continue to lower our wages, eliminate our health care and despoil our environment. They attack our unions, our organisations and our freedom to speak out against their actions.
We must draw a conclusion - protest is not enough - it is a beginning, not the way. If we only protest, we will lose.
Political action has also led to dead ends. Eliminated from the elections, parties critical of the globalization process, those who attempt to speak honestly for the working people and poor, have dried up.
Likewise the extreme left parties outside of the electoral process and the guerilla armies that sometimes follow beside them are worn out as a method for change. They have been eliminated by the new conditions of global capitalism.
There is one place where working people still can assert their power in society, in the workplace. The rich are only rich because WE create wealth for THEM. Their money doesn’t create wealth, our work does. The powerful are only powerful because WE let them be, because we are not organised to take advantage of the power we already hold.
To protect our living standards, to raise them and make sure they never fall again, we need to organise as workers, at our workplaces, across all borders.
The Industrial Workers of the World says "World Labour needs a World Union".
Let’s build the One Big Union to create Economic Democracy.
May 1, 2001
IWW General Executive Board