Trade Union Educational League

The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was established by William Z. Foster in 1920 as a means of uniting radicals within various trade unions for a common plan of action. The group was subsidized by the Communist International via the Workers (Communist) Party of America from 1922. The organization did not collect membership dues but instead ostensibly sought to both fund itself and to spread its ideas through the sale of pamphlets and circulation of a monthly magazine.

After several years of initial success, the group was marginalized by the unions of the American Federation of Labor, which objected to its strategy of "boring from within" existing unions in order to depose sitting union leaderships. In 1929 the organization was transformed into the Trade Union Unity League (TUUL), which sought to establish radical dual unions in competition with existing labor organizations.

The Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) was founded in Chicago in November 1920 by William Foster and a handful of close associates hailing from the radical movement. The group was very nearly stillborn, counting only about two dozen active members at its outset, including left wing Socialists, Communists, and former Wobblies. Shortly after the tiny group was called into being, Foster departed for Soviet Russia, ostensibly as a correspondent for the Federated Press news service, but actually to attend the Founding Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions (RILU), best known by its contracted Russian name, "Profintern."

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