In 1927, CPUSA member George Mink traveled to the USSR, attended the fourth congress of the Profintern, and returned to the US as the Profintern's representative of a Transport Workers International Committee for Propaganda and Agitation (TWICP&A) to organize maritime workers in the US.
During the CPUSA's factional in-fighting 1928-1929 between followers of James P. Cannon, Jay Lovestone, and Foster,[1] Mink laid low.
When Joseph Stalin appointed Foster as head of the CPUSA in 1929, Mink continued his efforts with marine workers.
It had overseas offices in London, Newcastle, Bordeaux, Copenhagen, Antwerp, Hamburg, Bremen, Leningrad, Archangel, Vladivostok[4] In 1963,[10] Nelson Bruce helped found the Marine Workers Historical Association, which included records of the MWIU.
[11] In 1980, George Morris (American writer) described his recollections of the MWIU during the 1934 strike in his oral history.