LaborHistory, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2001 TheTrade Union Unity League: American Communists and the Transitionto Industrial Unionism:1928± 1934* EDWARDP. JOHANNINGSMEIER The organization knownas the Trade UnionUnity League(TUUL) came intoformal existenceat anAugust 1929 conferenceof Communists and radical unionistsin Cleveland.The TUUL’s purposewas to create and nourish openly Communist-led unionsthat wereto be independent of the American Federation ofLabor in industries suchas mining, textile, steeland auto. When the TUUL was created, a numberof the CommunistParty’ s mostexperienced activists weresuspicious of the sectarian logic inherentin theTUUL’ s program. In Moscow,where the creation ofnew unions had beendebated by theCommunists the previous year, someAmericans— working within their establishedAFL unions—had argued furiously against its creation,loudly ac- cusingits promoters ofneedless schism. The controversyeven emerged openly for a time in theCommunist press in theUnited States. In 1934, after ve years ofaggressive butmostly unproductiveorganizing, theTUUL was formally dissolved.After the Comintern’s formal inauguration ofthe Popular Front in 1935 many ofthe same organizers whohad workedin theobscure and ephemeral TUULunions aided in the organization ofthe enduring industrial unionsof the CIO. 1 Historiansof American labor andradicalism have had difculty detectingany legitimate rationale for thefounding of theTUUL. Its ve years ofexistence during the rst years ofthe Depression have oftenbeen dismissed as an interlude of hopeless sectarianism, inspiredmore by directivesfrom Moscowthan by theneeds of American *Thanks toEricSchneider, Janet Golden,Randall Miller,and BruceNelson for their comments on earlierdrafts. 1HarveyKlehr, The Heydayof American Communism (NewYork: Basic Books, 1984),38– 48, 118– 134; TheodoreDraper, “TheCommunists and the Miners,” Dissent (1972), 373; Communist,April 1928, 197–198; ibid.,July 1928,404– 405; Fraser Ottanelli, The Communist Partyof the United States: Fromthe Depression to WorldWar II (NewBrunswick: RutgersUniversity Press, 1991), 17– 48; James Matlesand James Higgins, Themand Us: Struggles ofa Rank andFile Union (EnglewoodCliffs: PrenticeHall, 1974), 29–36. The CP-led unions that werealready in existencebefore the TUULconference were: the National MinersUnion, the National TextileWorkers Industrial Union, the NeedleTrades Workers Industrial Union, and the Auto WorkersUnion. Theunions that wereformed under TUUL auspices after the conferencewere the MarineWorkers Industrial Union, the AgriculturalWorkers Industrial League (later the Cannery and AgriculturalWorkers Industrial Union), the PackinghouseWorkers Industrial Union (in some areascalled the Food and PackinghouseWorkers Industrial Union), the TobaccoWorkers Industrial Union, the Shoe and LeatherWorkers Industrial Union, the Laundry WorkersIndustrial Union, the Metal WorkersIndustrial League, the TobaccoWorkers Industrial Union, and the SharecroppersUnion. Total membership levelsclaimed by the Communists forthe TUULvary from57,000 (claimed at founding, 1929)and 40,000(William Fosterestimate, 1932);(see Ottanelli, 27,Bert Cochran, Labor and Communism:The Con¯ict that ShapedAmerican Unions (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1977), 357–358). ISSN0023-656X print/ ISSN1469-9702 online/ 01/020159–20 Ó 2001Taylor & Francis Ltd onbehalfof The Tamiment Institute DOI: 10.1080/00236560120047743 160 E.P.Johanningsmeier workersand unionists. After all, theTUUL was founded only onemonth after the TenthPlenum ofthe Executive Committee of the Communist International in Moscow,where the leader ofthe Red International ofLabor Unions,Alekandr Lozovsky,proclaimed that existing trade unionsin theUnited States were mere “schoolsof capitalism” that couldnever achieve arevolutionary purpose.The period 1928–1934 wasone of relentless leftward pressurein theComintern and its afliated bodies,as Josef Stalin consolidatedhis powerin theSoviet apparatus andruthlessly purged the“ right”opposition to his domesticpolicies. The Comintern’s policies during this so-called“ Third Period”created dif culties for Communistunion activities not only in theUnited States, but also in GreatBritain, Czechloslovakia, Spain and Germany.2 Occasionally, it has beenpossible to glimpse evidencefor adifferentinterpretation of theimportance ofthe TUUL and the new “ red”unions that wereformed during the Third Period in theUnited States. Few could credibly denythat many key unionsin theAFL during thelate 1920s weremoribund or ineffective,unable to contest the termsof employment for industrial workersin any signicant way. The Communists andthe TUUL, in their brave manifestoes,promised totake upthe task of“organizing theunorganized” in basic industries,an undertaking at which theAFL had failed miserably. Working outsideof the AFL, Communists were able toachieve leadership oflarge strikesin thetextile industryat Passaic,Gastonia, and New Bedford, and in the clothing industryin NewYork City.The resulting angry confrontations,like thosethat had beenled by theIndustrial Workers ofthe World (IWW) in thepre-war period, dramatically called into questionthe AFL’ s craft-basedstructure. Moreover, during this period signicant sentiment had developedamong workersin thebituminous coal eldsof western Pennsylvania for anewunion to replace theonce-powerful UMW. The Communistsresponded by creating thedual National Miners’Union in 1928, monthsbefore the founding of the TUUL. The Communist-ledstrikes of the 1920s werebrutally if somewhatinef ciently repressed.However, in anumberof different contexts,the organizers ofthe TUUL were able todemonstrate that despitethe cautiousconservatism of Samuel Gompersand many socialist unionists,the vitally important ideal ofindustrial unionismretained a powerfulappeal toworkers in some industriesin thelate 1920s. The TUULtested the limits ofradical industrial unionism in anumberof American communitieson the eve of the Great Depression. 3 2For interpretationsemphasizing the futility ofthe TUULunions, seeKlehr, Draper, above, also Cochran, 43–81; Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years (Boston: Houghton-Mifin, 1960),12, 20– 28, 39, 140–141, 343, 379– 381, 386– 389. Kevin McDermott and JeremyAgnew, The Comintern: AHistory of International Communism (NewYork: St. Martin’s, 1977),103– 110. 3Thebest overview of the TUULis in Ottanelli, 17–48. On the activitiesof TUUL unions in particular industries,see Joshua Freeman, InTransit: The Transport WorkersUnion in New YorkCity (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1989), 51, 53, 86; Michael K. Honey, Southern Laborand Black CivilRights: Organizing MemphisWorkers (Urbana: Universityof Illinois Press,1993), 52– 58; George J. Sanchez, Becoming Mexican American:Ethnicity, Culture andIdentity in Chicano LosAngeles (NewYork: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993), 235– 238; Dorothy Healeyand MauriceIsserman, Dorothy Healey Remembers:A Lifein the American Communist Party (NewYork: OxfordUniversity Press, 1990), 42– 58; Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women/Cannery Lives (Albuquerque: Universityof New Mexico Press, 1987), 41– 57; Howard Kimmeldorf, Redsor Rackets: The Making ofRadical and Conservative Unions on the Waterfront (Berkeley: Universityof California Press,1988), 81– 88; Cletus Daniel, Bitter Harvest (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press,1981), 105– 166; Bruce Nelson, Workerson the Waterfront (Urbana: Universityof Illinois, 1988), 28–29, 86– 102, 269– 279; Gary Gerstle, Working-ClassAmericanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1989), 161– 162; Lizabeth Cohen, Making aNew Deal (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1990),296– 97; Albert Fried, Communismin America:A History in Documents (NewYork: Columbia TheTrade Union Unity League 161 The newTUUL unions and the strikes they ledattracted agreat deal ofattention among American writers andintellectuals. It wasduring theperiod ofaggressive organiz- ing by theTUUL that suchprominent cultural guresas Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos,Richard Wright, Waldo Frank, Malcolm Cowley,Edmund Wilson, and Lewis Mumford rstbecame involved in themargins ofthe Communist movement. Because of its outlawstatus, revolutionary rhetoric, andconfrontational tactics,the Communist party ofthe Third Period heldan attraction for many class-consciousintellectuals. 4 The Gastoniastrike aloneinspired six novels.A closereading ofthe proletarian novelsof the period has ledone recent critic toconclude that “thereis little basisto the common charge that theThird Period Marxist critics imposeda narrow,sectarian, or ultraleft denition ofproletarian literature uponwriters in theorbit ofthe left.” 5 The recentopening ofthe Pro ntern, CPUSA, and Comintern archives makes it possibleto explore in more detail theorigins andfate of the TUUL, with its logic of Communist-ledindustrial unionism.Evidence from thesearchives suggeststwo conclu- sions.First, although thesudden shift in “line”which resultedin thecreation ofthe TUULin 1929 wasformally promulgated by theComintern, signi cant support already existedwithin theCPUSA for this change.This supportderived from anumber ofCommunist organizers whothemselves often came outof an indigenoustradition of radical industrial unionismand who could argue persuasively for their perspectiveas a resultof the manifest failures ofCommunist trade unionpolicy during the1920s. Second,the TUUL unions represented a signicant advance over theprevious Com- munistpolicy of“boring from within”existing AFL trade unions.Although meager in membership andresults, the TUUL helped to establish anewtype andstyle of Communistunionism,