In saying what it was not, the T.U.E.L. offers an excellent description of what it was. A statement from the League’s second conference later published as a leaflet.

‘Trade Union Educational League Not a Dual Union’ from Labor Herald. Vol. 2 No. 8. October, 1923.

The National Committee submitted further recommendations of various phases of the League’s principles and problems, as follows:

IN various unions throughout the labor movement the reactionary officials are denouncing the Trade Union Educational League as a dual union and, with this flimsy excuse, are expelling militants from the organizations. Now the plain fact of the matter is that these workers are being victimized simply because the reactionaries are unable to face in fair debate the propositions of amalgamation, independent working-class political action, shop delegate system, revolutionary idealism, and other planks of the League’s platform. Therefore, they proceed to the violent method of expulsion, with the pretext, which they themselves know to be perfectly empty, that the League is a dual union. It is vitally essential to our work that we explode this absurd charge. To do this we must meet it in detail, by pointing out definitely and concisely the functions and methods of a trade union and showing how totally different are those of the League. We must nail the labor fakers hard and fast on this charge of dual unionism. Let us, therefore, analyse the work of a trade union and compare it with that of the League.

The fundamental purpose for which a trade union comes into existence is to deal with the employers on the question of hours, wages, and working conditions, and to force them, through the use of its economic power, to grant the demands of the workers. This is the very essence of trade unionism. No organization can be a labor union unless it carries on this work. Does the Trade Union Educational League exercise this function? Of course not. It makes no demands directly upon the employers, it carries on no negotiations with them, it signs no agreements with them. Everybody knows this. Hence, by no stretch of the imagination can it be called a trade union at all, much less a dual union. Its work is of an entirely different kind. It is strictly educational in character. In an organized manner, it teaches the workers certain progressive and revolutionary principles. It develops them into militants and encourages them to take an evermore active part and leadership in every phase of the life of the union. In view of the fundamentally different functions of the League from those of a trade union, to condemn the former as a dual union is on the face of it a lie and a subterfuge.

As the League differs completely in its purpose from a trade union, so it does in its method. The great distinctive weapon of a trade union is the strike. Now, whoever heard of the Trade Union Educational League calling a strike? Such a proposition is entirely outside of its scope. Its part in strikes is simply to help the unions that are conducting them by simulating, organizing, and educating the membership as to the real issues involved. The method of the League is organized, militant education.

Another thing that goes to the heart of trade unionism is that a trade union must of necessity claim jurisdiction over the class of workers upon whose behalf it undertakes to speak. Any other body which disputes this claim and tries to absorb these workers is to that extent a dual union. Now it will be seen immediately that the Trade Union Educational League makes no such jurisdictional claims. It in no way sets itself up in rivalry to any union. It does not try to steal the members of any union, such as a dual union would be bound to do. On the contrary, its aim is to bring the great unorganized masses into the existing unions. Trade unions are mass organizations; the League is not. It is merely a loose grouping of militants. The League is not a rival to the trade unions, but an auxiliary of them.

Still another feature of trade unionism, and this also is vital, is that all unions have definitely established memberships. The members operate under an elaborate constitution. They pay compulsory dues and carry union cards. They have chartered local unions which are affiliated together nationally. Now there is absolutely nothing of this character in the Trade Union Educational League. It has no membership cards or dues, depending for its revenue entirely upon voluntary donations. It issues no charters; it collects no per capita tax; it accepts no affiliations, direct or indirect, from any labor organization, nor is it itself affiliated to any union whatsoever. How, then, in the name of common sense, can the League, with this loose and indefinite educational structure, be called a trade union at all, much less a dual union? The charge is nonsense.

Finally, as fighting organizations, trade unions must exercise strong control over their members in those matters proper to and essential for the successful carrying on of the industrial struggle. They must have discipline. When the majority speaks the minority must obey, even though they may not agree with the course outlined. Otherwise an effective fight would be impossible. Any organization, be it industrial, political, educational, religious, patriotic, or whatnot, which challenges the authority of a union by instructing its members therein to disobey the union’s democratically arrived at decisions in legitimate trade union matters, is to that extent a dual organization. The Trade Union Educational League not only subscribes to this principle of discipline 100 per cent, but also spends great effort to bring home its truth and importance to the broad rank and file. As a matter of profound principle, the participants in the League loyally support union decisions properly arrived at. If the union says they shall strike, they strike without further ado. If it says they shall pay certain dues or assessments, they pay them. If it says they shall work under such and such a contract, they do it. For the League on its own responsibility to call off a strike, to instruct its members to pay only so much dues or assessments, or to submit an agreement of their own to the employers, is absolutely unheard of. The League supporters always subscribe to the discipline of the union. Never do they disregard its mandates. They are the first to demand the punishment of anyone so doing. No union members have a higher sense of discipline than they.

But if trade unions develop discipline in carrying on their economic struggle, they can do it only by rigidly respecting certain fundamental principles. A few of these are: (1) they must confine their struggle to legitimate labor union purposes, (2) they must preserve inviolate the principles of democracy and majority rule in the organization, (3) they must not discriminate in favor of or against any section of their membership because of political, racial, religious, or other extraneous reasons, (4) they must guard the right of dissenting minorities within the organization to express and propagate their ideas. Where unions depart from any or all of these principles, then discord and disruption are bound to come into the organization. Where the League militants are being expelled, the last three of these vital principles are being flagrantly violated. The revolutionary minority is being discriminated against on account if its opinions, it is being denied the right of all minorities to propagate their ideals, and it is being driven from the organizations by roughshod, tyrannical methods. The effect is to turn the unions from their true purpose of broad toleration to one of narrow sectarianism and thereby to condemn them to internal strife. Against this persecution and this perversion of the unions the militants have the right to protest, and protest we will with all our vigor. We demand the right to freely advocate our program, and we maintain that trade union discipline and, solidarity is impossible where minorities are denied this right. With all legitimate means we will fight to the best of our ability for freedom of speech in the labor movement.

To condemn the Trade Union Educational League is not only a subterfuge, but ridiculous as well. The fact is that the League has done more to kill the dual union idea than any other organization that ever existed in this country. Everybody with a grain of sense knows this. When it came upon the scene the prevailing idea among the workers, conservative as well as radical, was that if a certain group among them developed a new union theory or a serious grievance against their union officials they should immediately split from their old union and start a new organization. This splitting and dualism hit the independent unions as well as those in the A.F. of L. The consequence of this unwise tactic was that in many industries there existed from three to eight different unions, all warring against each other. Naturally solidarity of the workers in such cases was entirely out of the question. The League carried on a tremendous campaign against this splitting tendency idea and has just about killed it in the United States and Canada. It has driven home to the militants and through them to the organized workers at large that despite their different opinions and quarrels they must stand together in one body, gradually improving their union in social conception, structure, and leadership as the level of the rank and file is raised, and the organization of the progressive elements achieved. The League has been the means of preventing several disastrous splits, notably among the miners and railroad workers. Yet, after all this yeoman work against dualism, the reactionary officials attempt to brand it as a dual union, they have a real job on their hands this time.

We repudiate the charge that the Trade Union Educational League is a dual union. In the foregoing paragraphs we have disproved it by pointing out the totally different purpose, methods, and structure of trade unions from those of the League. The positive proof that the League is an educational body is the splendid work it has done on behalf of amalgamation. Beyond question it has done more to wake the workers up to the necessity for industrial unionism and energetic, honest leadership, than all the previous propaganda combined.

We militants in the League insist upon the right to go ahead with our organized educational work. We will not allow the reactionaries to deprive us of that right. We will make laughing stocks of them if they seek to defeat amalgamation, the labor party, and our general revolutionary program by trying to prove that the Trade Union Educational League is a dual union.

The Labor Herald was the monthly publication of the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL), in immensely important link between the IWW of the 1910s and the CIO of the 1930s. It was begun by veteran labor organizer and Communist leader William Z. Foster in 1920 as an attempt to unite militants within various unions while continuing the industrial unionism tradition of the IWW, though it was opposed to “dual unionism” and favored the formation of a Labor Party. Although it would become financially supported by the Communist International and Communist Party of America, it remained autonomous, was a network and not a membership organization, and included many radicals outside the Communist Party. In 1924 Labor Herald was folded into Workers Monthly, an explicitly Party organ and in 1927 ‘Labor Unity’ became the organ of a now CP dominated TUEL. In 1929 and the turn towards Red Unions in the Third Period, TUEL was wound up and replaced by the Trade Union Unity League, a section of the Red International of Labor Unions (Profitern) and continued to publish Labor Unity until 1935. Labor Herald remains an important labor-orientated journal by revolutionaries in US left history and would be referenced by activists, along with TUEL, along after it’s heyday.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/laborherald/v2n08-oct-1923.pdf