WHEN YOU NEED A LABOR UNION
Jobs can be hard to find these days. You may have heard some smug boss lecture about how you should be glad to even have a job and you shouldn't complain about how you are treated by your employer or being poorly paid. Even if your boss acts nice, all you have to do is look around you carefully to see what they really care about is money. In most cases, the money generated by business comes solely from the workers, with little actual work from bosses or owners except to count the money. Your boss wants to keep as much money as possible from the earnings of business but, to do so they have to pay you as little as possible and spend as little as possible on the business itself.
In order to prevent the slave - like working conditions in the 19th Century America and many third world countries, labor laws were passed requiring them to pay a minimum wage, provide breaks from work for rest and lunch, and provide a safe and healthy workplace but, employers often see these as unnecessary costs to them and try to cheat their employees. Workers with problems like unpaid wage, denial of time for lunch or morning and evening breaks, an unsafe or unhealthy work place, discrimination, or sexual harassment are often afraid that there is nothing they can do about these abuses.
Those who try to fight back on the job are often subjected to harassment, disciplined without cause, or fired. If you have a problem, you may be afraid to complain. This is why labor unions were first formed. Problems which seem insurmountable for you alone are often easier to correct when you act as a part of a group of employees. When you have a group behind you, you have a lot more resources to draw upon to help you make things right. It is harder for bosses to get away with things than is it is just your word against theirs. If your work place is not currently organized, many unions will simply not want to get involved. The IWW is different.

WE FIGHT FOR WORKING PEOPLE
When you need a friend in the Labor movement, the IWW can help you with your labor problems. We provide free technical assistance, labor counseling, and legal aid assistance to help you settle your labor disputes. IWW members are all workers like you so we understand the problems of working people. Our members have a wide variety of skills and personal contacts which can be used to go after bosses and make things right for their workers.
The IWW fights to give workers control over their salaries, working conditions, workplace responsabilities, job training, health care, child care, etc. Unlike other unions, we don't view these things as "benefits" but, as the true cost of doing business which bosses should be obligated to pay.

TIRED OF WAGE SLAVERY?
The clearest example of wage slavery are the minimum wage job and sweatshops where workers submit to the most menial, humiliating, and unhealthy work conditions for a salary that won't even pay their rent. If they get sick and can't come to work, they will probably loose their job because their boss doesn't allow them sick time off or provide medical insurance. Their boss is able to get rich off workers who toil under these conditions because the work relationship is a coercive relationship. The boss can fire people at will at no cost to him or her but, people must work under the threat of going hungry or homeless or watching their family starve and get sick if they loose their job and can't find work. Bosses like unemployment and homelessness so they can tell the rest of us that we should be glad to have a job and not take notice that their profits are stolen from our labor!

ORGANIZE YOUR WORKPLACE
Labor laws give you the opportunity to complain in court but, if you really want to have a say over how you are treated at your job, you and your fellow workers need to get organized. The IWW's strength comes from its members. It is a do - it - yourself union organized by the workers themselves without any union agents or bureacrats who want to take over and tell you what to do. If you are willing to organize at your job by talking to your co - workers about the issues that matter to them, then you can count on your fellow workers in the IWW to lend their full support to your cause. Our union can provide tangible, community based resources like low cost printing, speakers, legal advice on tactics, and how to manuals. With the IWW you have friends to help you when you need it but, you are always in charge. After all, you do the work and you know what is best for yourself and your fellow workers.

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