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). [1] According to the TUUL, the AFL was "an instrument of the capitalists for the exploitation of the workers." [2] Thus, the TUUL was formed as an organization in opposition to the AFL." [3]
The Trade Union Unity League had its roots in an earlier Communist Party foray into the trade union movement, the Trade Union Educational League (1920-1929), headed by William Z. Foster. [4] This earlier organization sought to pursue a "boring from within" tactic inside the previously existing unions, inside and outside of the American Federation of Labor — seeking to organize left wing "militants" within these unions with a view to transforming the unions themselves into revolutionary instruments. [5] The TUEL sought to build a democratic, industrial, rank and file-centered union movement by attempting to steer conservative AFL and independent unions to the left on the political spectrum. [6]
Despite his lifelong enmity towards dual unionism, Foster remained at the helm of the TUEL organization when it changed its name and tactics at its 1929 convention. [7] This change of line was externally driven, Foster explained to his associate from the United Mine Workers of America, Powers Hapgood at the time of the change, declaring "Powers, the Communist Party decided that policy. As a good Communist I just have to go along." [8]
The TUUL was founded at a convention held in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 31, 1929. The TUUL emerged out the Trade Union Education League (TUEL), which was founded by William Zebulon Foster in 1920. [9] The TUEL attempted to create an "amalgamation of the trade unions" by forging alliances, organizing unity conferences, winning control of different local unions as well as city and state labor federations. [10] The TUEL aimed to provide leadership for numerous local, as well as regional, industry-wide strikes. In 1928, the Communist International finally encouraged League members to abandon their "boring from within" strategy. In 1929, the TUEL gave way to the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) and began to establish new unions. The TUUL founded about a dozen industrial unions in various economic sectors including textiles, marine labor, mining, shoe and leather manufacturing, and agricultural labor. Soon after the founding of the TUUL, approximately 50, 000 workers were organized by TUUL affiliates. [11]
This period in the Party's history has been called its "hey day" and is notable for Communists' unyielding antagonism to more moderate organizers, who were branded "social fascists." TUUL activists attempted to organize some of the most marginal populations of the working class, such as the unemployed, women, and Blacks in the racially segregated American South. [12]
At its founding conference, the TUUL outlined that it would use three organizing strategies: forming national industrial unions along the lines of the NMU, NTWU and the NTWIU; in industries where the federation struggled to organize unions, grouping together local unions and shop committees into national industrial leagues; and organizing left-wing oppositions in the AFL unions. [13] The TUUL largely focused on building extensive industrial unions and on inter-ethnic and inter-racial organizing. [14] Specifically, the TUUL focused on promoting the rights of marginalized African American workers: "The advancement of the workers generally is inseparably bound up with the advancement of the Negroes." [15] The TUUL viewed class struggle as a unifying experience for all workers. Beginning in 1928, when the TUUL the organization helped organize between 40,000 and 60,000 workers. [16] The TUUL organized more than a dozen unions including the National Miners Union (NMU), the National Textile Workers Industrial Union, the Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, and the Agricultural Workers Industrial League (which later became the Cannery and Agricultural Workers' Industrial Union). [17]
The passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in 1933 led to increase in strike activity by the AFL and TUUL unions. [18] With the enactment of the NIRA and the inclusion of Clause 7(a), which provided many private-sector workers with a federally protected right to organize, union membership in the United States increased considerably. [19] Clause 7(a) of the NIRA was unclear regarding workers' legal right to collective-bargaining representation. Therefore, many employers established company unions in an attempt to prevent workers from joining AFL, TUUL, or independent unions. [20] Nevertheless, the TUUL benefited from the National Industrial Recovery Act through significant increases in its membership. [21] At one point, the TUUL had an estimated membership of 125,000 to 130,000 members. [22] The CPUSA referred to the NIRA as "slave legislation" and considered its character to be protofascist. [23] This was largely because the National Industrial Recovery Act promoted the regulation of prices, wages, and production through a tripartite relationship of labor, capital, and the state. [24] CPUSA leader, Earl Browder, denounced the labor provisions of the NIRA as "the American version of Mussolini's 'corporative state,' special state controlled labor unions closely tied up with and under the direction of the employers." [25] Furthermore, the CPUSA viewed the NIRA as an attempt by the state, capital, and AFL leaders to deter militancy within labor unions. [26]
While TUUL unions suffered major defeats and had difficulty organizing in heavy and mass production industries, the TUUL experienced considerable success organizing in light industries. Specifically, the TUUL organized light industries in New York City. [27] Many TUUL-led strikes were offensive in character and pushed for wage increases or improved working conditions. [28] However, many of these strikes were spontaneous, thus the unions had little opportunity to prepare sufficiently. [29] The TUUL attempted to carry out two major activities during work stoppages. The TUUL provided guidance and resources to those on strike and it sought to recruit members to affiliated unions. [30] Although many TUUL-led strikes were lost, many of them resulted in substantial gains for the workers. [31] These successes, however, did not necessarily lead to a long-term membership increases or organizational stability for the TUUL's unions. [32]
The TUUL was dismantled in 1935 when the Comintern switched to the Popular Front strategy. CPUSA organizers then joined the industrial union movement under the Congress of Industrial Organizations, where they applied skills developed during the TUUL era. In 1935, with the formation of the Committee for Industrial Organization (soon to become the Congress of Industrial Organizations), and with the shift in the Communist Party's policy to the Popular Front strategy, the TUUL came to an end. [33] Communist trade unions were ordered to enter CIO industrial unions or to work within existing AFL unions. Radical, communist unions were instructed by the CPUSA to join with the CIO and the AFL in order to promote general labor unity as well as industrial unionism. [34] With the establishment of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the end of Third Period Communism in 1935, American communist leader, William Z. Foster, returned to a "boring from within" strategy. Thus, Foster and the CPUSA worked to integrate hundreds of Communist organizers into John L. Lewis's newly established industrial union organization. [35] John L. Lewis, who had originally expelled Communist Party members from his United Miner Workers, now welcomed Communists to join the CIO. [36] Other TUUL activists became leaders in the emerging CIO unions of the late 1930s. [37] Communist leaders brought with them many of the organizational skills that they had developed in their time with the TUUL.
Although the TUUL was able to organize many light industries in New York City, it is unlikely that the TUUL would have achieved prominent status given the organization's difficulty to recruit members from heavy industries. [38] However, the vision of a democratic and activist trade unionism, which was bolstered by the TUUL, ultimately provided a bridge and a training ground for CPUSA trade union activists when they reentered the AFL in 1934. [39] Former TUUL members played a role in organizing the CIO unions during the 1930s. [40] The TUUL unions' struggle marks the inception of the CPUSA's commitment to building industrial unionism in the United States. [41]
National organizations(As of 1931) [42]
Others
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.
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 the packinghouse industry during World War I and the steel strike of 1919.
The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Workers (Communist) Party of America from 1922. The organization did not collect membership dues but instead ostensibly sought to both fund itself and to spread its ideas through the sale of pamphlets and circulation of a monthly magazine.
The Workers' Unity League (WUL) was established in January 1930 as a militant industrial union labour central closely related to the Communist Party of Canada on the instructions of the Communist International.
Albert Weisbord (1900–1977) was an American political activist and union organizer. He is best remembered, along his wife Vera Buch, as one of the primary union organizers of the seminal 1926 Passaic Textile Strike and as the founder of a small Trotskyist political organization of the 1930s called the Communist League of Struggle.
Dual unionism is the development of a union or political organization parallel to and within an existing labor union. In some cases, the term may refer to the situation where two unions claim the right to organize the same workers.
Labor federation competition in the United States is a history of the labor movement, considering U.S. labor organizations and federations that have been regional, national, or international in scope, and that have united organizations of disparate groups of workers. Union philosophy and ideology changed from one period to another, conflicting at times. Government actions have controlled, or legislated against particular industrial actions or labor entities, resulting in the diminishing of one labor federation entity or the advance of another.
The Lovestoneites, led by former General Secretary of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) Jay Lovestone, were a small American oppositionist communist movement of the 1930s. The organization emerged from a factional fight in the CPUSA in 1929 and unsuccessfully sought to reintegrate with that organization for several years.
Joseph Zack Kornfeder (1898–1963), sometimes surnamed "Kornfedder" in the press, was an Austro-Hungarian-born American who was a founding member and top leader of the Communist Party of America in 1919, Communist Party USA leader, and Comintern representative to South America (1930-1931) before quitting the Party in 1934. After his wife was arrested by the secret police during the Great Terror (1937-1938), Zack became a vehement Anti-Communist and testified before the Dies Committee (1939) and Canwell Committee (1948).
Alexander McWhirter Howat (1876–1945) was a Scottish-born American coal miner and trade union leader. Howat is best remembered as the chief opponent of the Kansas Court of Industrial Relations in the early 1920s and as the leader of a radical rank-and-file revolt against the officialdom of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) in 1923. Howat's activity ultimately led to his expulsion from the UMWA in 1930, forcing him into new occupations outside the organized labor movement.
Wyndham Mortimer was an American trade union organizer and functionary active in the United Auto Workers union (UAW). Mortimer is best remembered as a key union organizer in the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike. Mortimer was the First Vice President of the UAW from 1936 to 1939. A member of the Communist Party USA from about 1932, Mortimer was a critic of the efforts of the conservative American Federation of Labor to control the union and was a leader of a so-called "Unity Caucus" which led the UAW to join forces with the more aggressive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
Samuel Tellefson Hammersmark was an American book publisher, trade union organizer, political activist, and Communist Party functionary. Hammersmark is best remembered as a political lieutenant of William Z. Foster in the Chicago anarcho-syndicalist and communist movements of the 1910s through the 1930s and as a candidate of the Communist Party for public office.
The Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) was a Communist-aligned union active in California in the early 1930s. Organizers provided support to workers in California's fields and canning industry. The Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union (CAWIU) dated back to 1929 with the formation of the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL). With industrialization and the advent of the factories, labor started migrating into the urban space. An influx of immigrant workers contributed to the environment favorable to big business by increasing the supply of unskilled labor lost to the urban factories. The demand for labor spurred the growers to look to seasonal migrant workers as a viable labor source. Corporations began to look at profits and started to marginalize its workers by providing sub-par wages and working conditions to their seasonal workers. The formation of the Cannery and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union addressed and represented the civil rights of the migrant workers. Ultimately the CAWIU lost the battle, overwhelmed by the combined alliance of growers and the Mexican and state governments. The eventual abandonment of the Trade Union Unity League led to the dissolution of the CAWIU, which later emerged as the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA).
The Imperial Valley lettuce strike of 1930 was a strike of workers against lettuce growers of California's Imperial Valley
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.
From Bryan to Stalin is the first volume of political memoirs published by the American radical trade union organizer William Z. Foster (1881-–1961). The book was written by Foster during his lengthy recuperation from a heart attack and mental breakdown suffered in 1932 and 1933. The book was published in 1937 by International Publishers, a Marxist publishing house closely associated with the Communist Party, USA, an organization for which Foster ran three times as candidate for President of the United States.
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.
The Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU) was a short-lived union (1930-1935), initiated by the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).
Nat Ganley, or Nat Kaplan, was a socialist and later communist journalist who became a union organizer in the 1930s, particularly for the United Auto Workers of America. He was tried and convicted in 1954 for violating the Smith Act, but his conviction was later overturned.
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.
