Marine Workers' Industrial Union of the USA | |
| Merged | International Seamen's Union |
|---|---|
| Founded | April 30, 1930 |
| Dissolved | 1935 |
| Headquarters | New York City |
| Location | |
Members | 14,000 |
Key people | Roy Hudson |
| Affiliations | TUUL |
The Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU) was a short-lived union (1930-1935), initiated by the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).
In 1927, CPUSA member George Mink traveled to the USSR, attended the fourth congress of the Profintern, and returned to the US as the Profintern's representative of a Transport Workers International Committee for Propaganda and Agitation (TWICP&A) to organize maritime workers in the US. Working with William Z. Foster's Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), he established a Marine Workers Progressive League (MWPL) by 1928. During the CPUSA's factional in-fighting 1928-1929 between followers of James P. Cannon, Jay Lovestone, and Foster, [1] Mink laid low. When Joseph Stalin appointed Foster as head of the CPUSA in 1929, Mink continued his efforts with marine workers. [2]
On April 26–27, 1930, a Marine Workers' League of New York (itself organized in 1928 by the Trade Union Unity League or "TUUL") called a convention that created the Marine Workers' Industrial Union of the USA. This national convention followed coastal conventions held during 1928–1930. The convention adopted a constitution, [3] openly supported the USSR, and elected three delegates to attend the fifth world congress of the Red International of Labor Unions or "Profintern" (itself an arm of the Communist International or "Comintern"). [4] The MWIU openly affiliated with TUUL. [4] [5] According to another source, MWIU decided against TUUL and decided instead to affiliate with the Profintern's Red International of Transport Workers [6] via an International Seamen and Harbors Workers Union (ISH), [7] based in Hamburg, Germany. [2]
During the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike, the International Seamen's Union and the Marine Transport Workers (MTW) of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) joined the strike. [8]
In 1935, Roy Hudson, a ranking MWIU official, dissolved the union (then, with 14,000 members) without a vote, and the International Seamen's Union of America succeeded to it. [5]
"Full economic, social and political equality for whites, Negroes and Asiatics!" [4]
MWIU's headquarters was at 410 Broad Street, New York City. It had US offices in Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans, Houson, San Pedro, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Seattle. It had overseas offices in London, Newcastle, Bordeaux, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bremen, Leningrad, Archangel, Vladivostok [4]
In 1963, [10] Nelson Bruce helped found the Marine Workers Historical Association, which included records of the MWIU. [11]
In 1980, George Morris (American writer) described his recollections of the MWIU during the 1934 strike in his oral history. [12]
Union 51 of the Industrial Workers of the World today bears almost the same name: Marine Workers Industrial Union 51. [13]
The Communist Party USA and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but wasn't successful either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda of fighting for socialism and full workers' control over industry, or in converting their influence in any particular union into membership gains for the Party. The CP has had only negligible influence in labor since its supporters' defeat in internal union political battles in the aftermath of World War II and the CIO's expulsion of the unions in which they held the most influence in 1950. After the expulsion of the Communists, organized labor in the United States began a steady decline.
Harry Bridges was an Australian-born American union leader, first with the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). In 1937, he led several chapters in forming a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), expanding members to workers in warehouses, and led it for the next 40 years. He was prosecuted for his labor organizing and designated as subversive by the U.S. government during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, with the goal of deportation. This was never achieved.
William Z. Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Communist politician, whose career included serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1945 to 1957. He was previously a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, leading the drive to organize packinghouse industry workers during World War I and the steel strike of 1919.
The 1934 West Coast waterfront strike lasted 83 days, and began on May 9, 1934, when longshoremen in every US West Coast port walked out. Organized by the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA), the strike peaked with the death of two workers on "Bloody Thursday" and the subsequent San Francisco General Strike, which stopped all work in the major port city for four days and led ultimately to the settlement of the West Coast Longshoremen's Strike.
The Seafarers International Union or SIU is an organization of 12 autonomous labor unions of mariners, fishermen and boatmen working aboard vessels flagged in the United States or Canada. Michael Sacco was its president from 1988 until 2023. The organization has an estimated 35,498 members and is the largest maritime labor organization in the United States. Organizers founded the union on October 14, 1938. The Seafarers International Union arose from a charter issued to the Sailors Union of the Pacific by the American Federation of Labor as a foil against loss of jobs to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its Communist Party-aligned faction.
Joseph Curran was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. He was founding president of the National Maritime Union from 1937 to 1973, and a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
The Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) was an industrial union umbrella organization under the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) between 1929 and 1935. The group was an American affiliate of the Red International of Labor Unions. The formation of the TUUL was the result of the Communist International's Third Period policy, which ordered affiliated Communist Parties to pursue a strategy of dual unionism and thus abandon attempts at "bore from within" existing trade unions. TUUL unions aimed to organize semi-skilled and unskilled workers, many whom had been expelled from the American Federation of Labor (AFL). According to the TUUL, the AFL was "an instrument of the capitalists for the exploitation of the workers." Thus, the TUUL was formed as an organization in opposition to the AFL."
Shannon J. Wall was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. He was president of the National Maritime Union from 1973 to 1990. His father and mother ran a small dry cleaning company.
The National Maritime Union (NMU) was an American labor union founded in May 1937. It affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in July 1937. After a failed merger with a different maritime group in 1988, the union merged with the Seafarers International Union of North America in 2001.
The International Seamen's Union (ISU) was an American maritime trade union which operated from 1892 until 1937. In its last few years, the union effectively split into the National Maritime Union and Seafarer's International Union.
William James Bailey was an Irish-American Communist Party labor activist who fought in the International Brigades of the Republican Army during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
Samuel Adams Darcy was an American political activist who was a prominent Communist leader in both New York and California. While active in the organization of New York City's unemployment march in 1930, he was perhaps most famous for his role in the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike and support for Harry Bridges.
The San Francisco Workers' School was an ideological training center of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) established in San Francisco for adult education in 1934. "It was a typical specimen of a Communist school, such as would come under investigation by federal and state authorities for decades afterward.". in the 1940, it emerged as the California Labor School.
Ferdinand Smith was a Jamaican-born Communist labor activist. A prominent activist in the United States and the West Indies, Smith co-founded the National Maritime Union with Joseph Curran and M. Hedley Stone. By 1948 he was wanted by the U.S. Immigration Service for deportation, and is remembered as one of the most powerful black labor leaders in U.S. history.
Al Lannon (1907-1969), born Albert Vetere, was an Italian-American leader in the Communist Party USA and a co-founder of the National Maritime Union (NMU), best known for organizing and activism for American labor unions on behalf of merchant mariners and stevedores (1930-1955).
George Morris (1903–1997) was an American writer and labor editor for the CPUSA Daily Worker newspaper who left a body of written work and oral history that documents militant trade unionism as part of American labor history during the first half of the 20th century – including the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike.
Roy Hudson, also known as Roy B. Hudson, served on the national executive board of the Communist Party USA and national trade union director and trade union expert.
The National Miners' Union (NMU) was a dual workers' association established in 1928 in the United States of America under the aegis of the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern), the international trade union authority of the Communist International (Comintern). The union was affiliated with the Trade Union Unity League, American counterpart of the Profintern.
The 1936 Pacific Coast maritime workers' strike was a 99-day strike of sailors and longshore workers from October 1936 to February 1937 located on the West Coast of the United States. The strike involved over 37,000 workers and paralyzed the entire Pacific Coast shipping industry.
Archie Brown (1911-1990) was an American longshore worker and union organizer for the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, active in San Francisco. An open communist, Brown was the defendant in the landmark US Supreme Court case United States v. Brown, which overturned a provision of the Landrum-Griffin Act barring communists from holding leadership positions in labor unions. The Supreme Court ruled in his favor, overturning his previous conviction.
