Trade Union Unity League

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The Trade Union Unity League (TUUL) was an industrial union umbrella organization of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) between 1929 and 1935. It was the result of the Communist International's Third Period policy, which dictated that affiliated Communist Parties pursue a strategy of dual unionism and thus abandon attempts to "bore from within" existing trade unions.

The TUUL, organized in Cleveland, Ohio, on August 31, 1929, was the American affiliate to the Red International of Labor Unions. 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.^[1]

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.

[edit] See also

• Trade Union Educational League
• Profintern
• Workers' Unity League
• Labor federation competition in the U.S.
• Dual unionism

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Devinatz, Victor G. "Trade Unions As Instruments of Social Change: Does Ideology Matter?" WorkingUSA. 10:4 (January 2007).
• Devinatz, Victor G. "A Reevaluation of the Trade Union Unity League, 1929-1934." Science & Society. 71:11 (November 2007).
• Johanningsmeier Edward P. "The Trade Union Unity League: American Communists and the Transition to Industrial Unionism: 1928-1934." Labor History. 42:2 (May 2001).
• Smethurst, James Edward. The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930-1946. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. ISBN 019512054X
• Stepan-Morris, Judith and Zeitlin, Maurice. Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0521792126