There are four different ways to join the IWW.  You can become a member by getting a job at an organized shop with the IWW as the recognized bargaining agent; you can sign up at an IWW meeting or by contacting a local branch or group; you can join by contacting the main office or Regional Organizing Committee office; or you can apply through this website.
         Many folks who join the IWW through this website do so as lone individuals.  Sometimes they apply through the site even though there may be a local IWW group in their community already, but most who apply through the site live in communities without IWW groups.  Well, the only way that IWW groups are formed is that one person joins and then encourages others to join.  The way this works is the first member contacts the elected General Secretary Treasurer of the IWW (currently our only paid staff member) and asks to be made a delegate.  A delegate is an IWW member who can collect dues from other members (and themselves) and sign up new members.  Then that new delegate begins signing up others.  When you have signed up enough members, you can become a branch of one sort or another.  But more about that later.
         The IWW has certainly had its share of lone members who support the organization by paying dues, and that is certainly welcome.  However, we will be most effective is every member is an organizer; and a union is all about collective solidarity.  So if you join the IWW, you will be able to be that much more effective if you can encourage others to join and you can train yourself and those others to be organizers (and then they can train others, and then so on, and so on).  There's an old Wobbly saying:  If every Wobbly signs up another new Wobbly every month, we'll have a four-hour work day in a year!  Why that hasn't happened yet is that not enough Wobblies have become organizers.  Now we are going to try and change all that.
         Perhaps there is already a group or organization working on this issue in a nearby community.  That may be, but more often than not the group, organization, local, or chapter is not located in your neighborhood, and experience has shown that movements are most effective when power and responsibility are decentralized, though concentrated at the community and / or neighborhood level.  We are not a centralist organization.  We believe that the true power lies in the hands of the rank & file members.
 

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