Joseph Curran (March 1, 1906 – August 14, 1981) was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader.
[1] He worked as a caddie and factory worker before finding employment in 1922 in the United States Merchant Marine.
He worked as an able seaman and boatswain, washing dishes in restaurants when not at sea and sleeping on a Battery Park bench at night.
[2] Finally, United States Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins personally intervened in the California 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 or the strikers.
United States Secretary of Commerce 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.
Curran became a leader of the 10-week strike, eventually forming a supportive association known as the Seamen's Defense Committee.
[1][2] Curran, believing it was time to abandon the conservative ISU, began to sign up members for a new, rival union.
[3] In May 1937, Curran and other leaders of his nascent movement formed the National Maritime Union (NMU).
Within six years, nearly all racial discrimination was eliminated in hiring, wages, living accommodations and work assignments.
[2] 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.
[3] During the next 36 years, Joseph Curran worked to make American merchant seamen the best-paid maritime workers in the world.
NMU established a 40-hour work week, overtime, paid vacations, pension and health benefits, tuition reimbursement, and standards for shipboard food and living quarters.
When Joseph P. Kennedy advocated legislation to outlaw maritime strikes and make arbitration of labor disputes compulsory, Curran called him a "union wrecker".
In August 1940, he urged unions in the New York City area to support an "emergency peace mobilization" opposing U.S. entry into the war in Europe.
CIO president Philip Murray appointed a three-member board in October 1940 to forestall the House investigation.
Curran denied that he was a communist before both the CIO executive board and the Joint Commerce Committee of the U.S. Congress.
After World War II, he purged thousands of members and elected leaders he suspected of harboring communist sympathies.
He cajoled the union's executive board into building a massive, Art Deco headquarters in Manhattan, and had the edifice named after himself.
In 1966, with the surreptitious help of NMU staffers, union member James B. Morrissey challenged the results of Curran's 1966 re-election as fraudulent.