Workers Alliance of America

rdf:langString Workers Alliance of America

rdf:langString The Workers Alliance of America (WAA) was a Popular Front era political organization established in March 1935 in the United States which united several efforts to mobilize unemployed workers under a single banner. Founded by the Socialist Party of America (SPA), the Workers Alliance was later joined by the Unemployed Councils of the USA, a mass organization of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), and by the originating with A.J. Muste's Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) and successor organizations. The WAA was initially headed by Socialist David Lasser, but the organization gradually came to be dominated by the CPUSA, which had superior size and organizational discipline compared to its partners. Originally resembling a trade union for relief workers employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA), in its later incarnation it came to resemble a political pressure group focused upon winning additional funding of the WPA by a budget-conscious Congress. The organization rapidly atrophied after 1939, in the wake of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the eruption of World War II in Europe and was terminated in 1941.