Through the 1960s and 70s, a wave of new revolutionary organizations were formed in the United States in what came to be known as the New Communist Movement. These parties and organizations held a plethora of different lines and ideologies. Through the theoretical and practical work these organizations engaged in surged an explosion of theories and strategies regarding the labor question. Certain organizations completely liquidated the labor question or stated it was of secondary importance while others rehashed the same strategies the Communist Party USA employed in the early 1920s and late 1930s. A select few organizations such as the League of Revolutionary Black Workers pushed for a genuinely revolutionary trade union movement in the United States to be formed.

The Communist Workers’ Party (CWP) was formed in 1979 by members of the Workers’ Viewpoint Organization (WVO). The party was publicly founded on Mao Zedong Thought but internally vacillated on the question of the Dengist coup in China, and in 1981 suddenly changed its line, becoming supporters of Deng Xiaoping. This incorrect ideological centrism was clearly reflected in their political and organizational interventions within the working class movement at the time. The party is most known for the Greensboro Massacre, when in 1979 five of its members were murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party during a rally organized in opposition to the Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina.

For a five-year period around 1976 to 1981, the party heavily emphasized organizing workers within the workplace. It correctly saw that the parties and organizations that were attempting to work within the established unions and peacefully vote out their sell-out leadership, more often than not, tailed and capitulated to the same union bureaucracy they claimed to oppose. However, the CWP’s reason for why this continually occurred every time this strategy was implemented was not that the state unions themselves are a de facto apparatus of the ruling class that cannot be reformed, but that the parties and organizations who were employing this strategy did so incorrectly. The CWP established what it called the “Fighting Steward System,” which was their twist on William Z. Foster’s boring-from-within strategy. The party was so loyal to Foster’s strategies that they even founded their own version of the Trade Union Educational League, inspired by the organization of the same name that Foster led in the 1920s. Though in contrast to many organizations that employ the boring-from-within strategy, the CWP did unsuccessfully attempt to organize independent unions through the NLRB on multiple occasions.

In the mid-1970s, a small group of members of the WVO began to get jobs at the National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) shipyard in San Diego. This was part of a deliberate effort of proletarianization conducted by the WVO; the organization was sending petit bourgeois student radicals away from college campuses and into the industrial proletariat in an effort to integrate with the masses and organize workers at the point of production.

The NASSCO shipyard in San Diego was the largest shipbuilding location on the West Coast and at the time employed over 7,500 workers. To this day, it plays a large role in the maintenance and expansion of US imperialism; the shipyard is a key manufacturer of ships used by the US Navy. Conditions at the shipyard were miserable, with workers being forced to constantly breathe in chemicals, work around heavy equipment with little safety regulations, and work inside ships that often reached 120 degrees. There were multiple unions represented in the yard, the largest of which was the Ironworkers Local 627, which had 3,000 of the 5,000 wage workers at the shipyard. Simultaneously, there was the CWP and several other “Communist” organizations attempting to organize at the shipyard and within the Ironworkers local.

CWP organizers were able to distinguish themselves in the yard due to the energy and enthusiasm they showed. CWP members were vocal in union meetings, active on the shop floor, and put out quick and professional propaganda that appealed to ship workers. Tom McCammon, a former Ironworkers steward, stated that CWP members “worked day and night; they would spare no effort in what they were trying to accomplish.” This was in contrast to both the union and other NCM organizations such as the Communist Labor Party, which were slow to agitate on issues and struggled to connect with rank-and-file workers. The CWP unit at the shipyard was led by Miguel Salas, a former college student turned trade union organizer who was skilled at agitation, advocated for collective action and was also bilingual, being able to present the demands of Spanish-speaking workers.

From its successes, the CWP was able to get several of its organizers into steward positions within the Ironworkers union and won over other more progressive stewards to the CWP’s tactics. On April 1st, 1980, led by CWP members, 900 workers participated in a sick-out demanding cost of living adjustments (COLA) in response to rising inflation. NASSCO had responded to the growth of the CWP on the yard by launching an offensive against it and other more combative union leaders. Hiring a union-busting law firm along with sending all supervisors to courses intended to teach them how to undermine shop floor activity. On July 30th, NASSCO suspended Steve Crain, a union steward, for claimed insubordinate language after he cursed out a company foreman. In response, several days later, as NASSCO and the US Navy attempted to unveil a new ship at a launch party, over 200 workers took over the event, seizing the microphone, airing out grievances and chanting. Seventeen union stewards and workers were fired for disrupting the ship launching.

The firing of workers and stewards lit a fuse. On Tuesday, August 5th, led by Miguel Salas, close to 7,000 NASSCO shipyard workers launched a spontaneous wildcat strike, nearly completely shutting down production. The strike was met with almost immediate police repression, as one hundred police attempted to break a picket of five hundred workers outside the gates of the yard. The police pushed the strikers back before being pushed back themselves in a cycle which repeated itself over the next two days. Twenty workers were arrested over the course of the strike. Despite the success in launching the strike, strike leaders soon felt that the strike was doomed to fail due to the spontaneous nature with which it was organized, leaving no room for preparation or organization. In the face of police and company repression on the third day, strike leaders decided to end the strike, sending the rank and file back to work. The quick liquidation of the strike left strikers vulnerable and Miguel Salas was fired by NASSCO.

Upon returning to work, the slogan “take the war inside” was raised and attempts to continue to disrupt production went on. Spontaneous acts of sabotage occurred and rallies were organized in the shipyard during lunch breaks. Outside the gate, fired workers led chants on megaphones and a group of 150-200 workers kicked an effigy of the NASSCO president around. A few workers put up graffiti on the company’s wall reading “F—-NASSCO.” However, with the strike over, momentum soon began to fall off. The final blow occurred on September 16th, when one CWP member and two NASSCO workers were arrested by the FBI for allegedly plotting to plant a pipe bomb at the NASSCO shipyard.

Following this, attention was turned to the upcoming union elections in December, in which the different factions operating at the NASSCO yard all planned to run slates. The CWP slate, named the Strongback ticket, was headed by Miguel Salas. The August wildcat strike became the primary point of struggle within the election, with the Strongback ticket supporting the strike and the Committee for a Democratic Union, backed by the union bureaucracy, opposing it. Throughout the election, various attempts at red-baiting the Strongback slate occurred both by other supposed “Communists” who were supporting other slates and the existing union bureaucracy. They were joined by the FBI, who put an informant on the local news to warn about Miguel Salas’s affiliation with the CWP. Despite this, Salas and other top CWP candidates of Strongback won the election with 37% of the vote in the largest election turnout in union history at the time.

For a moment, it appeared that the CWP had successfully bored from within to win leadership over the Ironworkers local. However, on January 7th, one day before Salas and others would take office, the Ironworkers International, with support from local bureaucrats, placed Local 627 in trusteeship. This ensured the International’s direct control over all the affairs of the local and prevented Salas and other CWP members from taking positions in the union. In one swoop, it exposed the mistaken idea that somehow Communists can peacefully and democratically be elected to leadership within the state unions. In response, the CWP began to campaign to form the United Shipyard Workers Union, intended to replace the Ironworkers and be an independent union at the shipyard. On July 8, six months and a day since trusteeship was imposed, NASSCO workers filed for a representation election with the National Labor Relations Board.

In an almost exact repeat of what occurred during the December elections, an immense campaign of red-baiting and lies was conducted against the United Shipyard Workers Union organizers. Cesar Chavez and other prominent anti-Communist state union leaders sent letters in support of the Ironworkers International Union. On the day of the election, 1,423 workers voted for the International Ironworkers Union, and 760 voted for the United Shipyard Workers Union. Despite organizing over 750 workers for the formation of an independent union at the shipyard, the CWP decided not to form a new organization without NLRB recognition or even a rank-and-file group within the Ironworkers out of fears of dual-unionism and betraying the boring-from-within strategy. They simply accepted the results of the election, vowed not to let the Ironworkers union bureaucrats be comfortable, and returned to business as usual. The CWP was never able to regain the momentum or support at the shipyard it had during this period, and within a few years, the party itself was liquidated.

The history of the CWP at the NASSCO shipyard is one in a long line of failed efforts by US Communists to bore from within the state unions. The class-collaborationist leadership of Ironworkers International demonstrated it was more than willing to conduct a forceful takeover to prevent Communists from assuming leadership of merely one local. Not only is state unionism a dead end for all involved except the capitalists and those at the top, but the CWP demonstrates that no matter how energetic and vigorous you are, if you have incorrect politics in command your revolutionary efforts will amount to nothing in the end. The only way to truly build class-conscious and combative trade unionism in the United States is through revolutionary workers breaking with the trend largely responsible for labor’s decline in the first place: state unionism.