Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (I. U. M. S. W. A.), by David Palmer



Download 25.72 Kb.
Date15.03.2018
Size25.72 Kb.
#43128
Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (I.U.M.S.W.A.), by David Palmer - in Eric Arnesen, ed., Encyclopedia of U.S.Labor and Working Class History (Routledge, 2006)
Origins and early years at New York Shipbuilding.
The Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of America (I.U.M.S.W.A.) was founded on October 3, 1933 at New York Shipbuilding Corporation, Camden, New Jersey. Initially, its only members were workers at the Camden yard. The union had an industrial rather than craft form of organization, which was inclusive of all production workers and was independent of the American Federation of Labor (A.F.L.) and its craft unions that previously had members in numerous shipyards during World War I.
Capable leaders were crucial to the I.U.M.S.W.A.’s early organizing success, with John Green the most important. He had worked in Scottish Clydeside shipyards since 1916 where he was active in the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron and Steel Shipbuilders. In 1923 he immigrated from Clydebank to Philadelphia, working in a number of manufacturing jobs, before starting as a sheet metal worker in New York Ship in 1933.
Green also joined the Socialist Party, where he met Moshe (“M.H.”) Goldstein, who served as the I.U.M.S.W.A.’s chief legal counsel from the early 1930s through the 1960s, and Phil Van Gelder, who helped lead the New York Shipbuilding I.U.M.S.W.A. strike of 1934. Van Gelder had a degree from Brown University, but during the Depression he became involved in union organizing, including with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (A.C.W.). Van Gelder never worked in a shipyard, but his organizing abilities and his connections to industrial unionists such as Sidney Hillman, and later John L. Lewis, greatly advanced the I.U.M.S.W.A. in its early, tenuous years. Green and Van Gelder led the I.U.M.S.W.A. during its first decade as national president and national secretary-treasurer respectively. Thomas Gallagher, who worked as a rigger at the New York Shipyard, was another central figure during the I.U.M.S.W.A.’s first decade and served as the main leader of New York Shipbuilding’s I.U.M.S.W.A. Local 1 after Green, later becoming the national union’s first Organizing Director. In contrast to Green and Van Gelder, Gallagher identified with the Democratic Party, which had a strong base in Camden.
In the early 1930s, the largest private shipyards in the northeast were New York Shipbuilding; Fore River Shipyard (owned by Bethlehem Shipbuilding, in Quincy, Massachusetts); and Newport News Shipyard, Virginia. These major yards continued to receive minimal naval contracts, as well as merchant, tanker, and passenger ship contracts, during the 1920s and early 1930s when shipbuilding production reached a low point. When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President in early 1933, his administration substantially increased naval production and shipbuilding employment through National Industrial Recovery (N.I.R.A.) contracts to these big yards and also smaller but significant private builders including Federal Shipbuilding (Kearny, New Jersey); Electric Boat (New London, Connecticut); Sun Shipbuilding (Chester, Pennsylvania); and Bath Iron Works (Bath, Maine).
The increase in production and jobs at New York Shipbuilding also was accompanied by restrictions on weekly working hours mandated under the new National Recovery Act (N.R.A.) and a resultant pay cut that was deeply resented by the yard’s workers. The company had installed a weak company union to prevent independent union organizing but failed to stop internal organizing. By Fall 1933 workers voted 1,819 to 142 for the new I.U.M.S.W.A. and against the company union, in a worker-sponsored poll.
The I.U.M.S.W.A. sought a charter from the A.F.L. a few months later but was refused because it threatened existing jurisdiction claims by A.F.L. metal trades unions. When John L. Lewis established the independence of the Committee of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.) in November 1936, he brought two independent unions into the new organization – the I.U.M.S.W.A. and the United Electrical Workers (U.E.) – which effectively ensured the permanent split between the A.F.L. and the C.I.O.
Initially, New York Shipbuilding management refused to recognize the I.U.M.S.W.A., precipitating a seven week long strike in 1934. New York Shipbuilding management’s refusal to bargain in 1935 led to a second strike that lasted from March to August. The I.U.M.S.W.A. set up mass picket lines, and gained extensive support from the community and unions such as the United Mine Workers (U.M.W.), A.C.W., and locals of regional A.F.L. unions. Congressional hearings were conducted to investigate the causes of the strike, and the U.S. Department of Labor, including Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, intervened in efforts to mediate.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt finally broke the deadlock when he responded to Secretary Perkins’ pleas and told the U.S. Navy and shipyard management that they had to negotiate with and recognize the I.U.M.S.W.A. or else it would lose existing Naval contracts. Management and the union then agreed to the establishment of a special arbitration board, ending the 11 week strike. The final settlement guaranteed full union recognition and a reasonable wage increase. Although I.U.M.S.W.A. Local 1 did not win the union shop, extensive internal organization enabled the I.U.M.S.W.A. to maintain relatively full membership throughout the yard. This stable membership base allowed the I.U.M.S.W.A. to begin organizing beyond Camden.
Organizing expansion in the 1930s.
Throughout its existence, the I.U.M.S.W.A. was unable to organize in government yards, due to A.F.L. dominance. The A.F.L. also dominated all West Coast yards, except small repair yards in the Los Angeles region where the I.U.M.S.W.A. gained a small membership. As a result, the I.U.M.S.W.A. was mainly concentrated in private Northeast port shipyards from the 1930s and later decades.
In its early years the I.U.M.S.W.A., Van Gelder’s efforts to direct organizing drives at Fore River, Newport News, Sun Ship, and Bath Iron Works failed in the 1930s largely because of these yards’ well organized company unions. The I.U.M.S.W.A. never won a union election at Newport News and lost elections at Bath Iron Works numerous times until 1955. The I.U.M.S.W.A. did win a victory at Fore River in mid-1945 (then the largest C.I.O. victory to date in New England) after a disastrous loss in 1941, and at Sun Ship in 1944, both led by organizer Lou Kaplan.
The I.U.M.S.W.A. made its first national breakthrough in New York port region in 1936 at United’s Staten Island Shipyard. Within a year, the I.U.M.S.W.A. had locals chartered at a majority of the port region’s repair yards, including those in New Jersey bordering New York City. However, recognition came only after a bitter repair yard strike in mid-1937 that led to some gains but also losses of some yards.
Federal Shipyard (a subsidiary of U.S. Steel Corporation) was the most important early gain outside Camden. In Spring 1937, inside I.U.M.S.W.A. organizers, directed by staff organizer Mike Smith (originally from New York Ship), won a majority on the company union, then voted it out of existence and replaced it with the I.U.M.S.W.A.. Following a massive strike of several days, management agreed to recognize the I.U.M.S.W.A. and signed a first contract. Full recognition and adherence to the grievance procedure by management did not occur until a March 1940 N.L.R.B. election that the I.U.M.S.W.A. won by a landslide.
World War II and shipyard organizing.
By 1941, the Federal Shipbuilding gains and a series of N.L.R.B. election victories in other New York port region yards gave the New York port region an equal membership strength to that of the I.U.M.S.W.A.’s original base in the Camden-Philadelphia-Delaware River region. This new membership concentration created factional rivalry within the union between the ports of Philadelphia and New York, but also between shipyard union locals, especially those in the largest yards, and the national officers directing union policy and organizing.
In the case of Federal Shipyard, the local had completely failed to sustain dues collections of members between 1940 and 1942, leading to bitter fights within the local and suspension of the local’s autonomy by the national office. In August 1941, Federal Shipyard workers briefly went on strike demanding enforcement of the National Defense Mediation Board (N.D.M.B.) decision calling for a maintenance-of-membership provision. The I.U.M.S.W.A. wanted a union shop with membership a condition of employment, but this N.D.M.B. alternative requiring continuous membership once signed up, for the life of the contract, gained the union’s support. As a result of the strike and management’s refusal to agree to the N.D.M.B. order, the U.S. Navy temporarily took over the yard, but the issue remained unresolved even after ownership returned to private management. Sustaining shipbuilding employment stability had become a major national defense production problem, especially after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the urgency of rapidly increasing the American naval fleet. The I.U.M.S.W.A. was one of the first C.I.O. unions to agree to the no-strike pledge in support for war production, but workers – including those at Federal Shipyard – conducted numerous “wildcat” (unauthorized) strikes when their demands were not met.
President Roosevelt finally met with I.U.M.S.W.A. representatives, management, and government officials (including the Navy) in the White House in the spring of 1942 where he reiterated his unequivocal support for the N.D.M.B., now the National War Labor Board (N.W.L.B.) decision endorsing the maintenance-of-membership provision on union security. U.S. Steel’s management capitulated, and the provision became standard throughout the defense industry, although failure to fully enforce the provision precipitated wildcat strikes at Federal until management agreed to government requirements.
Shipyard employment levels had a major influence on union organizing success. Only 33,000 worked in private yards in 1933, but naval contracts boosted numbers to 48,700 in 1934 and by 1936 matched pre-Depression levels with over 60,000. As jobs became more secure, the demand better wages increased. By 1941, private and government shipyards employed over half a million workers, with half of these in the North Atlantic region where the I.U.M.S.W.A. had its main membership. Peak World War II shipbuilding employment for all yards was 1,686,600 workers in 1943, with 1,400,000 in private yards. North Atlantic yards employed a majority of all shipyard workers, followed by the Pacific Coast region, and the remainder in Virginia, the Gulf Coast, and the Great Lakes. I.U.M.S.W.A. membership reached 208,000 in 1943, the highest number attained over the union’s 55 year history.
Almost one-fourth of this wartime membership was concentrated in a single yard, Camden’s New York Ship, reaching some 50,000 at its peak. Management had difficulty running the yard with its own staff and turned to the union for assistance. Skilled shipyard workers who were I.U.M.S.W.A. members moved into foremen and subforemen positions, and organized a subforemen’s division within Local 1. The union also assumed much of the responsibility for hiring and training new workers.
In New York Shipbuilding, Federal Shipbuilding, and the huge Bethlehem yards at Fore River and Sparrow’s Point (Baltimore) these new workers included women and black workers, but these workers were generally concentrated in auxiliary yards that lasted only for the duration of the war. At Sun Ship, management created a separate yard with black employees only. This racial division among workers became an organizing target for the I.U.M.S.W.A. in two wartime election campaigns, the second led by organizer Lou Kaplan, which ended this employment segregation. In Southern yards, particularly Mobile, Alabama, efforts to break down racial barriers were less successful, with I.U.M.S.W.A. organizers bowing to the tradition of segregation and discriminatory practices to secure union membership among white workers.
During World War II the federal government regulated wages and hours through various agencies, including the tripartite Shipbuilding Stabilization Committee, but also through mediation efforts involving regional “zone conferences” of union and management representatives. The I.U.M.S.W.A. held sole representation only on the Atlantic conference; shared representation positions with the A.F.L. metal trades unions on the Gulf and Great Lakes conferences; and had no position on the Pacific conference dominated by the A.F.L. Delays in implementing wage increases, which required approval from the N.W.L.B., led to numerous wildcat strikes in most shipyards that were opposed by the I.U.M.S.W.A. national leadership.
Dissension also occurred at the local and national levels of I.U.M.S.W.A. over the presence of Communist Party activists, particularly those elected to union office. At the 1941 I.U.M.S.W.A. convention, delegates approved an anti-communist clause that later led to the expulsion of national G.E.B. member Irving Velson. Others who were not in the Communist Party but who advocated a broad left coalition, including Secretary Treasurer Van Gelder, later were targeted by I.U.M.S.W.A. president John Green. By the 1940s Green served as a C.I.O. vice president and increasingly played a major role in attacking Communists within the C.I.O.
Postwar dissension and the collapse of American shipbuilding.
At the I.U.M.S.W.A.’s January 1946 convention an open split emerged between left and right factions in the national union. Van Gelder, recently returned from Army service in Europe, challenged Ross Blood for his old position of Secretary Treasurer and had substantial support from a Federal Shipbuilding delegation led by Lou Kaplan, but Green forces seated only a rightwing slate despite delegate election challenges. Other opposition came from New York Shipbuilding, led by Local 1 president Andy Reeder. After the defeat of the left at the January convention, Green called another convention in September to consolidate his forces. Van Gelder, Reeder and others again tried to challenge the national leadership, but failed. New York Shipbuilding Local 1 members remained alienated from the national leadership, but by the late 1940s with Reeder’s failure and departure came under the rightwing opposition leadership of Tommy “Driftpin” Saul.
Shipyard employment collapsed at the end of the war, with all auxiliary yards closing, and even Federal Shipbuilding shutting down by 1948. Strikes in shipbuilding in 1947 and 1948 gave workers some wage gains, but employment security remained precarious.

Green decided to expand the I.U.M.S.W.A.’s jurisdiction to regain membership. In 1947, the recently created C.I.O. United Railroad Workers of America (U.R.W.A.), made up of maintenance of way and shop crafts, merged with the I.U.M.S.W.A. In early 1948 an anti-communist group of Connecticut-based locals in the International Union of Mine Mill and Smelters, known as the Progressive Metalworkers Council (P.M.C.), seceded and joined the I.U.M.S.W.A. with Green’s approval, over the strong objections of C.I.O. heads Phil Murray and Alan Haywood. By January 1948, I.U.M.S.W.A. had 78,420 members, with 42,850 employed in shipbuilding, but by June 1950, I.U.M.S.W.A. membership had plummeted to 41,858, with only 25,000 in shipbuilding.


Following the membership gains from the U.R.W.A. and the P.M.C., tensions arose between shipyard worker members and those in railroads and metal shops over national union positions and charges of national neglect by shipyard locals. As a result, New York Ship’s Local 1 led by Saul voted to disaffiliate with the I.U.M.S.W.A. in September 1948, and Sun Ship’s I.U.M.S.W.A. local disaffiliated in April 1949. In 1950 the I.U.M.S.W.A. lost an N.L.R.B. election at New York Ship in a landslide to the A.F.L.’s Boilermakers Union. This loss and the crisis over nonshipbuilding membership led Green to resign as I.U.M.S.W.A. national president in 1951, and national vice president John Grogan, who came from the Hoboken repair yard in New Jersey replaced him. Grogan reversed Green’s earlier expansion plans and returned to organizing and consolidating the union’s original base in shipbuilding. He also prosided over the departure of the U.R.W.A. and former P.M.C. metal workers locals into the United Steel Workers of America.
Final decades to 1988 merger.
Grogan remained national president of the I.U.M.S.W.A. until his death in 1968, even though he was elected to the full-time position of mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey in 1953. With the disaffiliation of the I.U.M.S.W.A.’s largest local – in Camden – and the departure of half of the union’s non-shipbuilding workers, membership in 1951 declined to 34,100, even though Bethlehem’s Atlantic Coast eight shipyards alone still employed some 31,000 workers. World War II era national officer Andrew Pettis became national president after Grogan’s death in 1968. In the 1970s Eugene McCabe became national president, and in the early 1980s Arthur Batson, Jr became the last national I.U.M.S.W.A. president.
In the early 1950s, Japan overtook the United States in shipbuilding production, with American yards moving almost exclusively into naval contracts and abandoning virtually all merchant and tanker building. Production in the United States also shifted more to Southern and Pacific Coast yards, devastating the I.U.M.S.W.A. Its membership dropped to 25,600 in 1960, where it remained until the 1980s. By this time, the combined employment at the nation’s two biggest East Coast shipyards – the USWA’s Newport News (specializing in aircraft carriers) and the A.F.L. Metal Trades’ Electric Boat (specializing in nuclear submarines) – exceeded the total national membership of the I.U.M.S.W.A.
By 1988, New York Shipbuilding had closed, and Fore River management announced their yard’s closure the following year, leaving only Maine’s Bath Iron Works as the national union’s single major yard. At only 13,000 members, the I.U.M.S.W.A. finally merged with the IAM, with 7,000 shipbuilding workers in a union mainly based in the aerospace industry, in 1989.
References:

David Palmer, Organizing the Shipyards: Union Strategy in Three Northeast Ports,

Cornell University Press, 1998.

David Palmer, “Organizing the Shipyards: Unionization at New York Ship, Federal Ship,

and Fore River, 1898-1945,” Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University, 1990.

Mergen, Thomas. “History of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers.”

Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Pennsylvania, 1968.

Gifford, Courtney D., ed. Directory of U.S. Labor Organizations: 1994-95 Edition.






Download 25.72 Kb.

Share with your friends:



The database is protected by copyright ©ininet.org 2024
send message
    Main page
united states
white house
american federation
international union