The ILWU has always been “Stalinist” until recently. Harry Bridges, both an Australian Communist Party member and a Communist Party USA Central Committee member (1934, hattip to John Haynes and Harvey Klehr, “Labor History”, Summer 1994, Col. 35, BNo. 3, “Communists and the CIO: From the Soviet Archives”, pp. 442-446, specifically 444-446), was the Soviet asset running the ILWU until he retired in the 1980’s or so. He was followed by another Stalinist Jim Herman, and a few others.
Today’s ILWU leaders (re the past 15-20 years) are still militants but it is hard to find any CPUSA affiliation information on them other than supporting various protests by the CPUSA, WWP, etc.
On the other hand, the AFL-CIO was loaded with Marxists after George Meany retired and the Left under John Sweeney (an avowed socialist/marxist) took over, eliminated the anti-communist clause in its Constitution, and hired reds by the bushel (including Karen Nussbaum (9 to 5, Venceremos Brigade; Karen Ackerman, VB, DuBois Clubs, and reportedly the CPUSA’s later youth arm, the Young Workers Liberation League (YWLL), worked for the CPUSA created and dominated Local 1199 Drug & Hospital Workers Union, before becoming the Political Director of the AFLCIO).
The leader of the AFLCIO during the past 10-20 years in George Trumka, former head of the United Mineworkers Union, and a hardcore communist. Interestingly, he had a lot of affiliations with the Trotskyite “Socialist Workers Party” (SWP), from the 1970’s till it broke apart in the 1980’s.
I’m sure that he then switched to supporting fronts of the Trotskyite-turned-Stalinist “Workers World Party” (WWP), in their protests over Gulf War I, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Afghanistan, among other causes.
Trumka is a megalomaniac and a veteran union thug (physical and otherwise). His weakness is that he pisses off both friend and foe alike. Perhaps the Left Coast guys are going to give him a run for the red money (i.e., control of the organized labor union movement in the US).
Let’s hope they destroy each other.
Correct: The head of the AFL-CIO is RICHARD TRUMKA, not George.
Labor Notes is a leftwing publication along the lines of the old CPUSA newspaper “ Labor Today”. Lots of SEIU types writing for it. Suspect if you scratched deep enough, you’d find DSAers in it. Some names ring a red bell in my memory.
Thank you for this info.
You nailed Trumka perfectly. He comes from the UMW, which has always had a tradition of violence in their strikes. Coal miners are hard men doing a hard job, and they’ve used hard tactics to get their way in the past (on both sides). There’s been a fair bit of blood shed in the PA/WV/VA/KY coalfields under Trumka’s watch from 1982 to 1995.
}:-)4