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Photo: IWW, or Wobblies, show up to protest against the police killing of handcuffed Jamar Clark in Minneapolis in 2015.
by Preston Chipps
Last month, I listed information related to human rights, civil rights and constitutional rights to establish the foundation for organizing workers. As a Wobblie (nickname for members of IWW-Industrial Workers of the World), I believe that the working class and the employing class have nothing in common.
What happened to San Diego? We must begin this story by discussing the Original People, the Kumeyaay, who apparently enjoyed a nice lifestyle in Kumeyaay Territory (San Diego), prior to contact with Europeans. When the Spanish invaded this area, they started a tradition that endures today. They enslaved the Native people.
That’s right. Slavery is alive and well today. Amendment XIII (Abolition of slavery)states “Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
So if you get busted in America, get put in prison and are forced to build furniture for the prison to sell for profit, good luck with getting paid minimum wage. It’s real wage slavery. By the way, slavery was abolished in Mexico in 1829.
The next stage of San Diego’s labor development includes change from Spanish to Mexican rule (1824) and from Mexican to American rule (1848). Different constitutions treat workers rights differently. San Diego began to grow after 1880 when military activity increased here.
Some developers saw not only San Diego, but Baja California, as well, as playgrounds for the wealthy. Not only did the rich vacation in San Diego, but they also retired and invested here. The Navy was sought because it was mostly white, and not unionized. Workers who tended to the rich (gardeners, cooks, farm laborers, hotel cleaners, etc) lived in homogeneous neighborhoods.
Joe Hill, songwriter and icon of labor, couldn’t understand why the Industrial Workers of the World chose San Diego for a free speech fight in 1912. It was “one of those jerk-water towns of no industrial importance,” San Diego had a population of around 40,000, and “the main industry consists of catching suckers” — tourists. From an IWW point of view, said Hill, “it is not worth a whoop in Hell.” (San Diego Reader, May 23, 2012).
Today, San Diego’s income profile has been described as an “hourglass,” where high-income people and low-income people are relatively numerous compared to the middle wage earners. Part of that is related to resistance to union organizing.
The traditions of catering to the wealthy, economic dependence on the military, and low regard for workers have combined to violate basic human rights, attacking workers’ rights to organize and interfering with the “right to pursue happiness.”
Next month, I hope to offer some solutions to our labor challenges in San Diego.
