Keller joined the Industrial Workers of the World ( known as the IWW or the Wobblies ) in 1912, saying that parliamentary socialism was " sinking in the political bog ".

The IWW was shaped in part by the industrial unionism philosophy of Big Bill Haywood, and in 1910 Haywood was exposed to sabotage while touring Europe:

The IWW was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States ( mainly the Western Federation of Miners ) who were opposed to the policies of the American Federation of Labor ( AFL ).

The convention, which took place on June 24, 1905, was then referred to as the " Industrial Congress " or the " Industrial Union Convention "— it would later be known as the First Annual Convention of the IWW.

" In particular, the IWW was organized because of the belief among many unionists, socialists, anarchists and radicals that the AFL not only had failed to effectively organize the U. S. working class, as only about 5 % of all workers belonged to unions in 1905, but also was organizing according to narrow craft principles which divided groups of workers.

" The Finnish-language newspaper of the IWW, Industrialisti, published out of Duluth, Minnesota, was the union's only daily paper.

Also of note was the Finnish IWW educational institute, the Work People's College in Duluth, and the Finnish Labour Temple in Port Arthur, Ontario which served as the IWW Canadian administration for several years.

The IWW was condemned by politicians and the press, who saw them as a threat to the market systems as well as an effort to monopolize labor at a time when efforts to monopolize industries were being fought as anti-market.

The SLP's " Yellow IWW " eventually took the name Workers ' International Industrial Union, which was disbanded in 1924.

The IWW was involved in over 150 strikes, including the Lawrence textile strike ( 1912 ), the Paterson silk strike ( 1913 ) and the Mesabi range ( 1916 ).

A statement was issued that denounced the war, but IWW members were advised to channel their opposition through the legal mechanisms of conscription.

In Centralia, Washington on November 11, 1919, IWW member and army veteran Wesley Everest was turned over to the lynch mob by jail guards and lynched.

In 1955, the IWW was listed by the US government as one of many Communist-led groups.

Australian historian David McKnight wrote that the IWW was controlled by the Comintern.

University of Michigan students, was for several years the largest organized IWW shop with about 100 workers.

In the 1990s, the IWW was involved in many labor struggles and free speech fights, including Redwood Summer, and the picketing of the Neptune Jade in the port of Oakland in late 1997.

In 2004, an IWW union was organized in a New York City Starbucks.

In 2006, the IWW moved its headquarters to Cincinnati, Ohio, and in 2010, headquarters was moved back to Chicago, Illinois.

The 1908 split between the Chicago and Detroit factions in the United States was echoed by internal unrest in the Australian IWW from late 1908, resulting in the formation of a pro-Chicago local in Adelaide in May 1911 and another in Sydney six months later.

By mid 1913 the " Chicago " IWW was flourishing and the SLP-associated pro-Detroit IWW Club in decline.

The IWW was well known for opposing the First World War from 1914 onwards, and in many ways was at the front of the anti-conscription fight.

The IWW also had a presence among waterfront workers in Boston, New York City, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Eureka, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Vancouver as well as in ports in the Caribbean, Mexico, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and other nations.

The IWW founded the Anti-Conscription League ( ACL ) in which IWW members worked with the broader labour and peace movement, and also carried on an aggressive propaganda campaign in its own name ; leading to the imprisonment of Tom Barker ( 1887 – 1970 ) the editor of the IWW paper Direct Action, sentenced to twelve months in March 1916.

Released unbowed from prison in August 1920 he would soon break with the IWW over its anti-political stand, standing for the NSW Parliament for the Industrial Socialist Labour Party unsuccessfully in 1922 and then in 1925 for the mainstream Australian Labor Party ( ALP ) also unsuccessfully.

Both Centralia and the neighboring town of Chehalis had a large number of World War I veterans, with robust chapters of the Legion, as well as a large number of IWW members, some also war veterans.

Joe Hill, born Joel Emmanuel Hägglund in Gävle, Sweden, and also known as Joseph Hillström ( October 7, 1879 – November 19, 1915 ) was a Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW, also known as the " Wobblies ").

The AFL unions strongly encouraged their young men to enlist in the military, and fiercely opposed efforts to reduce recruiting and slow war production by the anti-war labor union called the Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ) and also left-wing Socialists.

Hagerty also produced a circular graphic commonly known as " Hagerty's Wheel ," which depicted the various industrial unions comprising the IWW as interrelated spokes.

But factional differences the following year between the " revolutionists " and " reformists " within the IWW, which also divided the leadership of the WFM, led to the departure of the WFM from the IWW in 1907.

An outgrowth of the struggles of the Western Federation of Miners ( WFM ), the IWW also adopted the WFM's description of the AFL as the " American Separation of Labor.

The IWW sought to unite the entire working class into One Big Union which would struggle for improved working conditions and wages in the short term, while working to ultimately overthrow capitalism through a general strike, after which the members of the union would manage production ( also see anarcho-syndicalism which has some similarities ...)

Travis played an active role in the Flint Sit-Down Strike, aided by some veteran CP autoworkers inside Fisher Body Plant # 1 – but also by other radical workers, some belonging to Trotskyist parties, the Socialist Party or the IWW.

In the 1911 pamphlet " One Big Union ", IWW supporters Father Thomas J. Hagerty and William Trautmann enumerated two goals: One Big Union needed to " combine the wage-workers in such a way that it can most successfully fight the battles and protect the interests of the workers of today in their struggles for fewer hours of toil, more wages and better conditions ," and it also " must offer a final solution of the labor problem — an emancipation from strikes, injunctions, bull-pens, and scabbing of one against the other.

Australian trade union officials, aided in part by the Communist Party, succeeded in changing the character of the OBU from that envisioned by the IWW, and also by the Workers ' International Industrial Union ( WIIU ), a group that had split off from the IWW, and was active in Australia.

In a surprise turn of events, the defendants, who included the union's most visible leader, one-eyed Big Bill Haywood, also a founder of the new Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ), were acquitted by the jury.

It began on October 6, and was influenced by the organization Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW, also known as the " Wobblies "), a militant group that had been organizing unions in the region, particularly in the northern Mesabi Iron Range.

The IWW also welcomed immigrant workers, minorities and women as equals.

The Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ) had also been organizing for five years among workers in Lawrence, but also had only a few hundred actual members.

Foster also tempered his politics at this time: he not only did not publicly oppose the United States ' entry into the war, as Eugene V. Debs, Victor Berger and figures associated with the IWW had done, but helped sell war bonds in 1918.

More recently, IWW members were involved in the Liverpool dockers ' strike that took place between 1995 and 1998, and numerous other events and struggles throughout the 1990s and 2000s ( decade ), including the successful unionising of several workplaces, such as support workers for the Scottish Socialist Party.

Hall's parents were Finnish immigrants from the Lapua region, and were politically radical: they were involved in the Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW ) and were early members of the Communist Party USA ( CPUSA ) in 1919.

As a young man in Chicago, Rexroth was heavily involved with the anarchist movement ( and was active in the IWW ), attending and participating in politically charged readings and lectures.

Some IWW members had been involved in violent labor disputes and bomb plots against U. S. businessmen and government officials.