Progressive Miners of America

PROGRESSIVE MINERS OF AMERICA. The Progressive Miners of America (PMA) was founded in southern Illinois in September 1932 by coal miners dissatisfied with the more established United Mine Workers of America (UMWA). After World War I, the southern Illinois coalfield had become a seedbed of labor party and socialist activity. When union leadership sought to centralize contract negotiations in the 1920s, rank and file miners balked at the prospect. The union local, District 12, harbored a long tradition of autonomy, and rejected the plans of UMWA president John L. Lewis to implement a contract that would actually reduce their wages as part of an employer concession. The coal miners accused Lewis of cozying-up to mine bosses and taking a “backwards step.” They initiated wildcat strikes in Illinois and then 18,000 miners broke from the UMWA, creating a dual union fight in the coalfield.

Initially, as a left-wing organization, the PMA invited socialists like Norman Thomas to speak to its members, and the Socialist Party performed better in towns and counties with majority PMA representation. These coal miners, known as “Progies,” sometimes expressed opposition to capitalism, support for industrial democracy, and rooted much of the politics in shared Catholic upbringings. Within the community, many early members were involved in broader fights against evictions and for greater social supports for the elderly. The women’s auxiliary members entered leadership posts rarely open to women in other male-dominated unions.

But at its first convention in 1933, a split emerged within the new union. While some leaders were satisfied with their initial success organizing in five counties in Illinois, others wanted to grow into a national organization and pose a direct challenge to John Lewis and the UMWA. Yet fear of powerful leadership and preference for community-based unionism hampered the union’s strength in these years. The PMA cycled through chief officers and provided new leaders little opportunity to gain long-term experience. In 1933, a number of radical officials were even ousted from the organization, beginning with the editor of Progressive Miner, Gerry Allard. Although radicals regained control of the union for a short time in 1935, the PMA spent the next several years indulging in reactionary politics, including redbaiting, xenophobia, anti-Semitism.

In 1937, some radical members decided to challenge this conservative leadership and launched a nine-day sit-down strike to protest mine mechanization. The strikers purposefully timed the direct action to coincide with a meeting between the PMA and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in Chicago. They hoped to prevent the union from entering into an affiliation with AFL, which would cede local control. They were unsuccessful in that effort. After the AFL offered the PMA a national charter, it appointed a president and secretary-treasurer, effectively undermining one of the primary reasons for the establishment of the PMA in the first place: the right of district autonomy.

In 1938, the union changed its name to the Progressive Mine Workers of America (PMWA). It remained affiliated with the AFL for the next eight years, building its membership to 35,000 by the end of World War II. In 1946, the PMWA left the AFL in protest after the UMWA rejoined. As an independent union in the postwar years, the PMWA struggled to gain attention within the broader labor movement or build its membership and density.

Short lived success came in 1970s when the PMWA become the chief rival to the UMWA in the new surface mines out West. But many critics labeled it a corporate stalking horse since coal operators preferred miners to affiliate with the PMWA than its competitor, the UMWA. At the time, the PMWA claimed only a few thousand members, mostly in Illinois, Indiana, Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota. During the 1980s, union busting campaigns in the western coalfields reduced membership even further. By the end of the twentieth century, the PMWA had all but collapsed, though it retained its legacy as the longest lasting rival to the UMWA.

Cook, Ian Stewart. “The Progressive Miners of America: Roots of Dissent and Foundational Years, 1932-1940.” Ph.D. diss., West Virginia University, 2019.

Merithew, Caroline Waldron. "We Were Not Ladies": Gender, Class, and a Women's Auxiliary's Battle for Mining Unionism," Journal of Women's History, vol. 18 no. 2 (2006), pp. 63-94.

Hudson, Harriet D. The Progressive Mine Workers of America. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1952.

Oblinger, Carl D. Divided Kingdom: Work, Community, and the Mining Wars in the Central Illinois Coal Fields During the Great Depression. Springfield, IL: Illinois State Historical Society, 1991.

Tate, Ryan Driskell, “Coal Frontier: Corporate Power and the Making of the Powder River Basin.” Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 2020.