National Maritime Union

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National Maritime Union
Merged
AFL–CIO

The National Maritime Union (NMU) was an American

merger with a different maritime group in 1988, the union merged with the Seafarers International Union of North America
in 2001.

Early years

Seamen in hiring hall, NMU banner, New York City, December 1941. (Photograph: Arthur Rothstein)

The NMU was founded in May 1937 by

able seaman and boatswain aboard the Panama Pacific Line ocean liner SS California. He was a member of the International Seamen's Union (ISU) but was not active in the work of the union. Lawrenson later married writer Helen Lawrenson. He was forced out of the union in 1947, and according to his wife, Curran essentially wrote Lawrenson out of the union's history.[3]

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 Labor Frances 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.

Daniel 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]

St. Vincent's Hospital in 1973,[12] and it later became Lenox Health Greenwich Village
.
17th Streets, were built in 1966, also designed by Ledner.[12] 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.[when?][citation needed
]

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,

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

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

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]

Mergers

In 1988 the NMU agreed to merge with the

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
").

Presidents

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ ""Damn the Torpedoes!"".
  2. ^ JACK LAWRENSON, MARITIME LEADER; Former Vice President and a Founder of N.M.U. Dies --Had Opposed Curran, New York Times, November 2, 1957, Page 21
  3. ^ Stranger at the Party, a Memoir by Helen Lawrenson.
  4. ^
    ISBN 9780887381218
    .
  5. ^ a b c d Barbanel (August 15, 1981). "Joseph Curran, 75, Founder of National Maritime Union". The New York Times.
  6. ^ a b c d e Kempton (1998) [1955]. Part of Our Time: Some Monuments and Ruins of the Thirties.
  7. ^ a b c "Retired Union Boss Joseph Curran Dies". Associated Press. August 14, 1981.
  8. ^ a b "Politics and Pork Chops". Time. June 17, 1946.
  9. ^ a b c "C.I.O. Goes to Sea". Time. July 19, 1937.
  10. ^ Pace, Eric (13 July 1993). "James Peck, 78, Union Organizer Who Promoted Civil Rights Causes". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 April 2010.
  11. ^ Report on the American Slav Congress and Associated Organizations. USGPO. 1949. p. 48. Retrieved 19 June 2021.
  12. ^ a b c d Gray, Christopher (November 25, 2007). "Streetscapes: An Architect's Flotilla of West Side Buildings". The New York Times.
  13. ^ "Eisler, 4 Others Win New Hearings: Goldsborough Enjoins Their Deportation Pending Compliance With 1946 Law". New York Times. 6 May 1948. p. 18. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  14. ^ Kolbert, Elizabeth Airl= https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE4DE1E31F935A2575AC0A961948260&scp=2&sq=Albert%20C.%20LEdner&st=cse (September 16, 1987). "City, Seeking Space for Prisoners, Will Condemn Chelsea Building". The New York Times. {{cite news}}: External link in |first= (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ "Postings: On West 17th, a Little Bit More of West 17th". The New York Times. August 11, 1996.

Further reading

External links

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