From what I understand, the whole service was started years before I got involved, when what was described to me as "some hippies" started the whole program. As I understand it, they drove around in pickup trucks picking up recycling waste. (This is my understanding; I cannot verify that.) They thought it would be cool to have a union and the IWW was the natural union of choice. However, when I got involved (around 2005 or so), it was a regular business and the workers were not leftist "Berkeley types". There were two pressures on the workers:

First was the fact that the rest of waste hauling was done by the City of Berkeley, and the workers were in the SEIU, which is obviously much larger and more powerful. At one point, SEIU had a drive for the city of Berkeley to swallow the recycling program, including taking the jobs of the recycliing haulers. We fought this, but at a cost. The cost was the following: The Ecology Center drivers were paid significantly less than were the City of Berkeley workers, including lower benefits. In effect, this amounts to a two-tier system. I had always advocated parity, but in this struggle the Ecology Center management hammered at the fact that it was a cost saving to contract out (in effect, privatize) the recycling collection. The workers themselves were willing to accept this lower pay if demanding parity meant the serious risk of losing their jobs altogether. I advocated unity between the recycling haulers and the city haulers. That received a little bit of interest from the City workers, but not much. The SEIU leadership mobilized its stewards - which is to say the base of the union bureaucracy - to cut that off at the pass. 

This gets to the second factor: The general mood within the working class as seen in this situation. All jobs have their pitfalls and problems, but seen from the general situation, the City of Berkeley workers didn't have it too bad (compared to most workers). Their pay and benefits were okay. Their hours weren't that long. Why rock the boat? was the mentality. In fact, it was similar among the Ecology Center workers, the overwhelming majority of whom were Latino. They would have looked around at fellow-workers in the Latino community and figured, "hey, it could be a hell of a lot worse. We've got health benefits and a liveable wage." From that point of view, both groups of workers were right.

This general attitude stems from the many, many decades of a drive to both lower the expectations of the U.S. working class and also to lower the consciousness, to all but eliminate the memory of militant class struggle such as what was carried out in the 1930s. In the lead of this drive is the very union leadership itself.

So, my point is this: Whether workers choose to organize into one of the establishment unions, or whether they choose to organize into an "independent" union, they cannot escape the general situation. To advance, a link has to be made with the rank and file of the wider labor movement, and for that to succeed a general shift in the mood and the consciousness will have to take place. This is not to get the union bureaucracy off the hook. They are a major obstacle in such a required shift, but that is something of a longer story.

Finally, on the IWW "organizer training": All that glitters is not gold and that training is simply something like paint by the numbers. Yes, it has some useful tips, but it largely avoids and thereby obscures the wider context in which we must operate. I never was able to find out who originated it, but I believe its syllabus came from the establishment unions, meaning the entire approach is not that different.

John Reimann
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