Tampa IWW statement of intent:

"The condition of the workers movement in the 21st century is a sorry one. With union membership on the decline, wages stagnant, and all manner of legal and extralegal methods at the disposal of the bosses, the need for organization is readily apparent. In Tampa, we find workers of many industries grasping at solutions to the persistent problems of capitalism; unemployment and the threat of it, low wages, unreliable scheduling, and so on. The same lines of division among unionists at the turn of the 20th century persist to today; now the petty fiefdoms of ‘labor statesmen’ but also the domains of many reformist political sects.

Our task, then, is to agitate for united action by workers of this or that trade, this or that union, this or that party, on the picket lines. Divided, the class fails every time. The recognition that “An injury to one is an injury to all” is not simply a moral code, but a practical necessity.

Workers will not spontaneously rise up in an organized fashion and choose socialism. In that way, it is the task of the Tampa IWW to educate the local working class about its own interests; to help determine paths for workers out of their current rut, and to directly aid in organizing workers if need be.

To organize, the working class requires union democracy. This, in turn, requires putting the tools of the struggle in the hands of the workers themselves, in the form of training, education, and planning. Our goal will be to work together with workers in Tampa who are suffering abuses from their employers, and help organize their resistance.

Dispossessed by poverty of any functional means of fighting back ‘within the system’ we workers will be driven to respond with direct action, demonstration, freedom of speech and assembly. We have nothing to lose. We have a world to gain!"