1979 Union Organizing Doc ‘The Wobblies’ Re-Released, Just As Labor Movement In America Comes Back To Life
deadline.comFew films released over 40 years ago can claim to be as relevant today as when they first came out. The Wobblies is one of them.The 1979 documentary, directed by Stewart Bird and Deborah Shaffer, recounts in oral history form the story of the Industrial Workers of the World union, otherwise known as the Wobblies.
The labor organization, founded in 1905, espoused the brash idea that workers should share in company profits, get medical care if they were injured on the job, and work an 8-hour day.The IWW stood apart for other reasons—it was a general union (as opposed to a craft union) that welcomed men and women, regardless of race or ethnic background.
And it represented the great mass of unskilled workers, the kind of laborers who toiled in factories for long hours, for low wages, typically in dangerous conditions.“They were opening up to everyone–anyone who earned a wage as a worker was eligible,” Bird explains. “And that was pretty radical at the time.
Might be pretty radical today.”The IWW focused on organizing miners, textile mill workers, longshoremen, loggers and agricultural laborers, among others.
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