From March 1 to March 4, 1936, Curran led a strike aboard California, then docked in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California. Curran and the crew of California went on what was essentially a sitdown strike[4] at sailing time, refusing to cast off the lines unless wages were increased and overtime paid.[5][6][7]
United States Secretary of LaborFrances Perkins personally intervened to resolve the strike. Speaking to the crew by telephone, Perkins agreed to arrange a grievance hearing once the ship docked at its destination in New York City, and that there would be no reprisals by the company or government against Curran and the strikers.[5][6][7]
On California's return trip, Panama Pacific Line raised wages by $5 a month to $60 per month.[4] However, United States Secretary of CommerceDaniel Roper and the Panama Pacific Line declared Curran and the strikers mutineers. Curran and other top strike leaders were fined two days' pay, fired and blacklisted, but Perkins was able to keep the strikers from being prosecuted for mutiny.[5][6][7]
Seamen all along the East Coast struck to protest the treatment of the California's crew. Curran became a leader of the 10-week strike, eventually forming a supportive association known as the Seamen's Defense Committee. In October 1936, Curran called a second strike, the 1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike, in part to improve working conditions and in part to embarrass the ISU. The four-month strike idled 50,000 seamen and 300 ships along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.[4][6][8]
Believing it was time to abandon the conservative International Seamen's Union, Curran began to sign up members for a new, rival union. The level of organizing was so intense that hundreds of ships delayed their sailing time as seamen listened to organizers and signed union cards.[9] One of the co-founders of the organization was the later civil rights activist James Peck.[10]
In May 1937, Curran and other leaders of his Seamen's Defense Committee reconstituted the group as the National Maritime Union. (CPUSA co-founder Boleslaw Gerbert may have helped form this union.[11] It held its first convention in July, and 30,000 seamen left the ISU to join the NMU. Curran was elected president of the new organization. The black, Jamaican-born Ferdinand Smith was elected as the union's secretary-treasurer.[4][5][6] Within a year, the NMU had more than 50,000 members, and most American shippers were under contract.[4][9]
This building at Seventh Avenue between 12th Street and 13th Street, designed by Albert C. Ledner, was built in 1964 as the union's headquarters. The hiring halls were in the glass blocks on the ground floor. The union sold it to St. Vincent's Hospital in 1973, and it later became Lenox Health Greenwich Village.The Joseph Curran Annex (left) and Plaza (right), on Ninth Avenue between West 16th and 17th Streets, were built in 1966, also designed by Ledner. The Ninth Avenue building on the right is currently the Maritime Hotel, while the 17th Street building (left) is being converted into the Dream Downtown Hotel.
Immediately after the NMU's founding convention in July 1937, Curran and other seamen's union leaders were invited by John L. Lewis to come to Washington, D.C., to form a major organizing drive among ship and port workers. The unions comprised by the CIO had been ejected by the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in November 1936, and now Lewis wanted to launch a maritime union. His goal was to create a union as large and influential as the Steel Workers Organizing Committee out of the nation's 300,000 maritime workers. Although Lewis favored Harry Bridges, president of the Pacific Coast District of the International Longshoremen's Association, to lead the new maritime industrial union, the other union leaders balked. Curran agreed to affiliate with the CIO, but refused to let Bridges or anyone else take over his union. His views were reflected among those of the other union leaders, and the CIO's maritime industrial union never got off the ground.[9]
By 1946, the NMU had 46 branches, a staff of 500, and 73,000 members.[8]
In 1948, Lee Pressman joined Joseph Forer, a Washington-based attorney, in representing Ferdinand C. Smith, secretary of the National Maritime Union along with Gerhard Eisler, supposedly the top Soviet intelligence agent in the US, Irving Potash, vice president of the Fur and Leather Workers Union; Charles A. Doyle of the Gas, Coke and Chemical Workers Union, and John Williamson, labor secretary of the CPUSA). On May 5, 1946, Pressman and Forer received a preliminary injunction so their defendants might have hearings with examiners unconnected with the investigations and prosecutions by examiners of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.[13]
Expansion
In 1958 the union decided on an aggressive building program, and hired New Orleans-based architect Albert C. Ledner to design some unique buildings for them, including a headquarters building at Seventh Avenue between 12th Street and 13th Street, completed in 1964, a block-through service annex at 346 West 17th Street and a plaza and "pizza-box"-shaped companion building next to it on Ninth Avenue, both built in 1966 and both named for Joseph Curran.[12] The Curran buildings held offices for the union and its pension fund, medical and training facilities, dormitory rooms for seaman, a gymnasium, swimming pool and 900-seat auditorium.[14][15]
In 1973, with the union's fortunes fading with the decreased activity in the Port of New York, the headquarters building was sold to St. Vincent's Hospital. The 17th Street and Ninth Avenue buildings were sold in 1987 to Covenant House, a drug rehabilitation program, for use as a runaway shelter and educational facility.[12]
In 1988 the NMU agreed to merge with the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association (MEBA) to form District 1, MEBA-NMU. The merger did not last. MEBA members charged that the merger referendum was rigged by MEBA president C. E. "Gene" DeFries. The accusations were serious enough that the United States Department of Justice began an investigation. Union members were even more outraged when they learned DeFries and five other union officers paid themselves more than $2 million in severance payments. During the course of their findings, a group of MEBA members (Led by Alex Shandrowsky, Jesse Calhoon, and Don Keefe) peacefully occupied MEBA's Headquarters in Washington, DC after DeFries refused to disclose information to union members. DeFries and others were later indicted for crimes relating to their manipulation of union elections and misuse of union offices. US versus DeFries (et al.) became the first successful criminal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) prosecution of the governing body of a labor organization, which resulted in the conviction of 18 officials of MEBA), for RICO, RICO conspiracy, embezzlement, extortion, and mail fraud. NMU disaffiliated from the Marine Engineers in 1993.
Louis Parise was elected the newly independent union's president.
In 1999 the NMU became an autonomous affiliate of the Seafarers International Union of North America, and in 2001 it fully merged with that union (now called "Seafarers International Union").
Butler, John A. Sailing on Friday: The Perilous Voyage of America's Merchant Marine. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 1997. ISBN1-57488-124-8
"C.I.O. Goes to Sea." Time. July 19, 1937.
Goldberg, Joseph P. The Maritime Story: A Study in Labor-Management Relations. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958.
Herbert, Brian. The Forgotten Heroes: The Heroic Story of the United States Merchant Marine. New York: Forge Books, 2004. ISBN0-7653-0706-5
Horne, Gerald (2005). Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and Radical Black Sailors in the United States and Jamaica. New York University Press.
Kempton, Murray. Part of Our Time: Some Monuments and Ruins of the Thirties. Hardcover reprint ed. New York: Random House, 1998. (Originally published in 1955.)
The Communist Party USA and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but wasn't successful either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda of fighting for socialism and full workers' control over industry, or in converting their influence in any particular union into membership gains for the Party. The CP has had only negligible influence in labor since its supporters' defeat in internal union political battles in the aftermath of World War II and the CIO's expulsion of the unions in which they held the most influence in 1950. After the expulsion of the Communists, organized labor in the United States began a steady decline.
Harry Bridges was an Australian-born American union leader, first with the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA). In 1937, he led several chapters in forming a new union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), expanding members to workers in warehouses, and led it for the next 40 years. He was prosecuted for his labor organizing and designated as subversive by the U.S. government during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, with the goal of deportation. This was never achieved.
The International Organization of Masters, Mates & Pilots or MM&P is a United States labor union representing licensed mariners.
The Seafarers International Union or SIU is an organization of 12 autonomous labor unions of mariners, fishermen and boatmen working aboard vessels flagged in the United States or Canada. Michael Sacco was its president from 1988 until 2023. The organization has an estimated 35,498 members and is the largest maritime labor organization in the United States. Organizers founded the union on October 14, 1938. The Seafarers International Union arose from a charter issued to the Sailors Union of the Pacific by the American Federation of Labor as a foil against loss of jobs to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and its Communist Party-aligned faction.
Joseph Curran was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. He was founding president of the National Maritime Union from 1937 to 1973, and a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
American Maritime Officers (AMO) is a national labor union affiliated with the Seafarers International Union of North America. With an active membership of approximately 4,000, AMO represents licensed mariners working in the United States Merchant Marine aboard U.S.-flagged merchant and military sealift vessels. AMO holds a unique presence in the international energy transportation trades.
Shannon J. Wall was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader. He was president of the National Maritime Union from 1973 to 1990. His father and mother ran a small dry cleaning company.
The SS California strike was a strike aboard the ocean liner SS California from 1 to 4 March 1936 as the ship lay docked in San Pedro, California. The strike led to the demise of the International Seamen's Union and the creation of the National Maritime Union.
Paul Hall was an American labor leader from Inglenook in Jefferson County, Alabama. He was a founding member and president of the Seafarers International Union (SIU) from 1957 to 1980. He was the senior vice president of the AFL–CIO at the time of his death.
Harrald Olaf Lundeberg was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader.
The International Seamen's Union (ISU) was an American maritime trade union which operated from 1892 until 1937. In its last few years, the union effectively split into the National Maritime Union and Seafarer's International Union.
The maritime history of the United States is a broad theme within the history of the United States. As an academic subject, it crosses the boundaries of standard disciplines, focusing on understanding the United States' relationship with the oceans, seas, and major waterways of the globe. The focus is on merchant shipping, and the financing and manning of the ships. A merchant marine owned at home is not essential to an extensive foreign commerce. In fact, it may be cheaper to hire other nations to handle the carrying trade than to participate in it directly. On the other hand, there are certain advantages, particularly during time of war, which may warrant an aggressive government encouragement to the maintenance of a merchant marine.
The Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association (MEBA) is the oldest maritime trade union in the United States still currently in existence, established in 1875. MEBA primarily represents licensed mariners, especially deck and engine officers working in the United States Merchant Marine aboard US-flagged vessels. It is a member union of the AFL–CIO.
The maritime history of the United States (1800–1899) saw an expansion of naval activity.
The United States merchant marine forces matured during the maritime history of the United States (1900–1999).
The 1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike was a labor action of the splinter union "Maritime Federation of the Gulf Coast" lasting from October 31, 1936 to January 21, 1937. The strike's main effects were felt in Houston and Galveston.
Ferdinand Smith was a Jamaican-born Communist labor activist. A prominent activist in the United States and the West Indies, Smith co-founded the National Maritime Union with Joseph Curran and M. Hedley Stone. By 1948 he was wanted by the U.S. Immigration Service for deportation, and is remembered as one of the most powerful black labor leaders in U.S. history.
The Marine Workers Industrial Union (MWIU) was a short-lived union (1930-1935), initiated by the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA).
Roy Hudson, also known as Roy B. Hudson, served on the national executive board of the Communist Party USA and national trade union director and trade union expert.
The 1936 Pacific Coast maritime workers' strike was a 99-day strike of sailors and longshore workers from October 1936 to February 1937 located on the West Coast of the United States. The strike involved over 37,000 workers and paralyzed the entire Pacific Coast shipping industry.
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