In the city of its birth, and 101 years later, the Industrial Workers of the World is still trying to strike a blow for the working class.

Just ahead of Labor Day, baristas at the Starbucks in Logan Square told management that they wanted to be represented by the IWW. A veteran of battles that once made the union movement a major force in American life, the IWW has been largely moribund recently.

Starbucks' management was ready for the faceoff, which occurred during a periodic meeting of employees and managers at the giant coffee merchant's store at 2759 W. Logan Blvd., some workers reported. Corporate honchos would not accept employee demands and handed out copies of the preamble to the IWW's constitution in an effort to discredit the union.

"We thanked them for saving us the printing costs," said Joe Tessone, 21, a barista and IWW organizer.

The preamble reads: "There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life."

The match of cheery Starbucks baristas and one of the nation's oldest fire-breathing labor organizations may seem curious. Certainly a century ago, when the union held its inaugural meeting on June 27, 1905, no one could imagine that the nation's economy would be dominated by McDonald's, Home Depot and other giant chains.

But a line of continuity joins the vision of the original "Wobblies," as they were known to friend and foe, and their latter-day disciples in Logan Square. The IWW set out to organize the unorganized--low-paid, often itinerant workers in the mines, mills and lumber camps that were the backbone of the nation's economy.

Times change, smokestack industries vanish, but the lot of those at the bottom of the food chain remains much the same, Tessone said. He said beginning baristas at the Starbucks where he works make $7.50 an hour. He and fellow organizer and barista Christine Morin think the employees should make a minimum of $10 an hour, likening their fight to the big-box ordinance passed by the Chicago City Council.

"We work very hard for a very profitable company and deserve a living wage," Tessone said.

Officials at Starbucks' headquarters in Seattle could not be reached for comment.

Midway through an interview with Morin and Tessone on the patio of the Logan Square Starbucks, another worker sheepishly said she had been sent to tell a reporter and photographer that the conversation had to be taken off company premises.

Old-time Wobblies would be tickled by a dustup over who could say what and where.

"They carried the original fight for free speech," said Les Orear, 95, president of the Illinois Labor History Society and a union organizer in the 1930s. "They'd get up on a soapbox and preach the right of men and women to organize, knowing the sheriff would show up and throw them in jail."

Currently, a war of words is being fought on bulletin boards and over the counters of the Logan Square Starbucks. Morin said management has posted memos warning employees that the IWW is a radical organization, outside the mainstream of the union movement.

Morin said she and Tessone devised a counterattack. At Starbucks, employees are known as "partners."

"But we've started greeting each other as `fellow worker,'" said Morin, 21.

Store patrons have taken up the linguistic battle.

"One customer came in singing: `There once was a union maid, she never was afraid, of goons and ginks and company finks,'" Tessone said.

The lyrics are in "The Little Red Song Book," a collection of union songs still published by the IWW.

Songs and humor always were a big part of the IWW, said Franklin Rosemont, who operates Charles H. Kerr, a Chicago-based publisher of Left literature for more than a century.

"I'm glad to see humor playing a role again," said Rosemont, 62. "Starbucks, a billion-dollar operation, being taken on by the Wobblies, who never had more than $75 in their treasury."

Tessone said he was inspired to join that parade by the IWW's spirit of self-help. A friend in Joliet, where he grew up, introduced him to the organization, which also is working with Starbucks workers in New York City. Tessone was impressed by its grass-roots flavor--and price. Dues were $6 a month.

"I'm a volunteer organizer," he said. "We all are."

The IWW was formed not only to take on the factory owners, but as a challenge to the more conventional union tactics, said Clancy Sigal, a Hollywood screenwriter. Sigal recently published "A Woman of Uncertain Character," a memoir of growing up in Chicago in an Old Left household.

"The older union leaders said they wanted a bigger slice of the pie for their members," Sigal said. "The Wobblies said we want to bake a new pie."

But the IWW ranks were thinned by a backlash against communism after World War I. When the IWW held a centennial reunion in Chicago last year, its membership was estimated at 2,000 nationally, with perhaps 75 local members.

On Logan Boulevard, the struggle currently lies in the balance. Tessone and Morin said some of the 16 store workers are interested in having the IWW as their bargaining agent; others are non-committal.

"But nobody is Red-baiting us," Tessone said. "Except for the company, which keeps saying the IWW is bunch of radicals."