Conference for Progressive Labor Action

The Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) was a left wing American political organization established in May 1929 by A. J. Muste, director of Brookwood Labor College. The organization was established to promote industrial unionism and to work for reform of the American Federation of Labor. The CPLA dissolved itself in December 1933 to form the American Workers Party.

The Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) was established by a group of activists in the trade union movement at a convention held in New York City on May 25–26, 1929. Those uniting into a common organization at this founding conference included the professional staff and activists of Brookwood Labor College, a workers' education society; the editorial staff of Labor Age magazine, a radical monthly; and an array of independent trade unionists.

The primary force behind this new organization was A. J. Muste, a radical clergyman and committed pacifist. Muste had become active in the American trade union movement through belief in the social gospel and its call for the application of Christian ethics to social problems so as to ameliorate poverty and suffering in the world. Muste had come to believe that the American Federation of Labor (AF of L), an umbrella organization consisting of more than 100 independent craft and industrial unions, was "hostile to genuine workers' education" and a fetter upon the growth of the power and scope of the American labor movement.

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