Progressive Mine Workers - Reorganization and Dissolution

Reorganization and Dissolution

The union was also torn internally. Conservative leaders resisted the efforts of radicals to expand the alternative formation of the union. Red-baiting was adopted to attack and discredit left-leaning members. When the PMA formally affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1937, radicals regarded it as a betrayal, believing the AFL a regressive organization, hostile to the interests of unskilled labor.

While the union formally continued to exist until 1999, its possibility to offer mine workers a genuine alternative dissolved decades earlier. Paired against the combined forces of the UMWA, the state and federal government, and the coal operators, the Progressives were hindered at every turn.