Workers Solidarity Alliance

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Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) was created in 1984. It published the journal Ideas and Action from 1984 to 1997 (prior to 1984, Canadian affinity groups had contributed to the journal and to the STRIKE! newspaper).

Originally a network of anarcho-syndicalistsand class struggle anti-authoritarians in the early 1980s. The network included the magazine "ideas & action", began in 1981, and the Libertarian Workers Group organized in New York City in the 1970s.

It was flexible in its approach to workplace organizing, which was integrated into the WSA when it was founded in New York City in November 1984. Identifying with the syndicalist tradition, the WSA affiliated with the International Workers Association in 1984 - until recently. However, the WSA continues to be sympathetic to the traditions and Principles of the IWA.

Although the WSA's main strategic focus is on the labor movement, the WSA also believes that a working class-based movement needs to be broadly based in working class communities, not just in the workplaces, and that the movement needs to be anti-racist, anti-sexist, and internationalist in character. These concerns are expressed in the WSA's "Where We Stand" statement developed in the 1980s.

Surely the WSA can not claim credit for the adaptation by other workers' organizations to alternative approaches to workplace and community organizing. On the other hand, we have seen others draw similar conclusions as we have in developing a variety of alternative and self-managed movements and ideas. Many very similar to the ideas we envision and have been advocating for. Examples of this can be seen in the growth of workers centers; the concept of "solidarity unionism"; "flying picket squads"; independent organizing against sweatshop conditions and other forms of workers themselves organizing on their own and in their own name.

[edit] External Links

• Workers Solidarity Alliance - Official website.