David John McDonald (November 22, 1902 – August 8, 1979) was an American labor leader and president of the United Steelworkers of America from 1952 to 1965.
Mary McDonald's father had been an officer in the Sons of Vulcan, an early ironworkers' union, and both uncles on his mother's side were unionists.
In 1915, his father was severely injured when a piece of hot steel impaled his left leg, causing him to be bedridden for 10 months and leaving him with a bad limp.
McDonald instituted tight financial controls and centralized dues collection and expense payments in the national headquarters.
The AFL, the CIO, and the Railroad Brotherhoods went to Latin America to become familiar with the labor movements in other American countries at the behest of Bernardo Ibáñez Águila, secretary-general of the CATL.
In July and August, he toured Normandy as American troops broke out from their beachheads during Operation Cobra, and his group came under artillery fire several times.
Philip Murray died in November 1952, and McDonald was named acting president by the USWA executive board.
The election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president and the advent of Republican majorities in the United States Congress (at least from 1952 to 1954) made expansion of social programs unlikely even if some later occurred.
McDonald led the Steelworkers out on strike in 1956, winning substantial wage increases, unemployment benefits, and layoff rights, and improved pensions.
But industry negotiators refused to grant a wage increase unless McDonald agreed to substantially alter or eliminate Section 2(b) of national contract.
The strike was also affecting the auto industry, which was threatening to lay off tens of thousands of Walter Reuther's members due to a steel shortage.
On September 28, 1959, Eisenhower met privately with McDonald and Goldberg, and threatened to invoke the back-to-work provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act.
The steel companies, realizing they only needed to wait until Eisenhower forced union members back to work, refused to make any such concessions.
Realizing that the strike could linger despite the provisions of Taft-Hartley, management offered a three-year contract with small improvements in pay and fringe benefits and binding arbitration over Section 2(b).
Working off a plan devised by Goldberg, McDonald also proposed a nine-member committee consisting of three members from labor, management, and the public to study and resolve work-rule issues.
On October 20, the United States Department of Justice petitioned the federal district court for western Pennsylvania to an injunction ordering the steelworkers back to work.
McDonald reluctantly ordered his members back to work, but productivity slowed due to extremely poor relationships between workers and managers.
Nixon planned to run for president in 1960, and offered his services in the hopes of negotiating a settlement which might win him labor's backing.
For the first time, however, the union won an automatic cost-of-living wage adjustment as well as greatly improved pension and health benefits.
He opposed Reuther's plans to undertake a new wave of organizing and pushed for stronger support of mainstream Democrats rather than left-wing candidates.
Reuther promised to create the office of executive vice-president and appoint Haywood to the position, a move with allowed him to eke out a win, with 54 to 48 percent of the vote.
McDonald quickly demanded for John V. Riffe, a veteran organizer with several CIO unions, to be appointed in Haywood's stead.
McDonald, along with USWA general counsel Arthur J. Goldberg, played a key role in the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955.
With the death of Murray on November 9 and AFL president William Green just two weeks later, the personality differences keeping the two labor federations apart seemed to disappear.
McDonald, however, pressed Reuther for quicker action and intimated that the USWA would pull out of the CIO if the merger was not effectuated immediately.
There were no mechanisms to enforce the lofty goals, and many AFL unions continued to segregate blacks and engage in racist practices.
When Reuther expressed interest in leading the new Industrial Union Department, McDonald proposed a USWA district director.
Once more, McDonald won the day, and the Industrial Union Department, once envisioned as an organizing juggernaut, now became merely a research, publicity, and lobbying unit.
On January 13, 1961, the Steelworkers announced an agreement in which the Human Relations Committees would be empowered to negotiate on behalf of the union and the steelmakers.
Without the assistance of the new law, it is unclear that he would have won, but union officials and federal monitors eventually declared Abel the winner by a razor-thin margin of 10,142 votes out of 600,678 cast, and on May 20 McDonald declined to challenge the result.