Critics of the IWW often point to our lack of contracts and NLRB-certified bargaining units as proof that we don’t make lasting gains. But let’s be clear: their definition of gains is shaped by eighty-five years of state-managed unionism. When “success” means sitting across the table from the boss and the government, the question of what kind of power workers are building gets lost.
The IWW has never existed to secure “labor peace.” We exist to wage class war. That means we measure gains differently. Concessions from the boss—whether a pizza party or a pay raise—aren’t the end point: They’re tactics in an ongoing struggle. Bosses give up what they have to when workers organize. But concessions fade. Contracts expire. The only lasting gains are the structures, militancy, and confidence we build in the process.
That’s why our focus has to be on workers, not employers. Business unions chase contracts. We build worker committees, organizer trainings, and infrastructure that grows stronger with every fight. We turn shop-floor activists into long-term militants who carry lessons, skills, and solidarity from workplace to workplace. We’re not just bargaining over the scraps of today—we’re preparing to organize production tomorrow, post-capitalism and post-revolution.
It wasn’t always like this. When I joined the IWW in 2012, the union was still finding its footing after the campaigns at Starbucks and Jimmy John’s. Much of the union’s activity looked more like solidarity activism than solidarity unionism. But a decade later, we’ve got organizing happening across industries and across continents, under the IWW banner. That shift is a gain. It shows that we’ve grown into a union that not only trains workers to fight the boss, but also trains them to build the world we want in the shell of the old.
This doesn’t mean we don’t have debates. We do—and we should. But let’s keep framing in mind. The question isn’t whether workers are “doing it wrong.” It’s about what kind of unionism we’re building. Is it militant liberalism, or revolutionary unionism? Does it build worker power that can one day overthrow capitalism, or does it just help manage it?
Critics are right about one thing: the IWW doesn’t make gains the way business unions do. We make them differently. We make them by prefiguring the society we want—through democratic decision-making, mutual aid, and direct action. We make them by developing militants, not managers. We make them by building infrastructure that outlasts any single campaign.
Our critics count gains in contracts. We count them in militants developed, workers organized, and power built. By that measure, our gains are real, growing, and revolutionary.
Take the campaign at Bobcat Bonnie’s. The restaurant shut down shortly after workers began presenting demands to management, but the story didn’t end there—and neither did the gains. Through marches on the boss and coordinated pickets, workers forced management to concede severance pay, a win rarely seen in the service industry. That alone would mark a successful fight. But the deeper victory was in what came next.
During the campaign, workers attended organizer trainings and got plugged into broader IWW infrastructure. Many are still organizing today in new shops, carrying with them the skills, confidence, and relationships forged in struggle. They aren’t just past campaign veterans—they’re current and future organizers, building the foundation for industry-wide power. Some had been Wobblies even before the campaign, and others became them in the thick of the fight. Now, they’re part of a growing network of militants working toward long-term, revolutionary change.
This is how we win—not always in headlines or contracts, but in organizers made and infrastructure built. Each campaign is a school for struggle. Each shop floor battle lays another brick in the road to a new world. That’s the kind of unionism the IWW exists to build—and the kind that capitalism can’t survive.
This article originally appeared in the 2025 Autumn print edition of Industrial Worker.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not purport to represent that of the IWW or Industrial Worker as a whole.