Joseph Curran

Joseph Curran (March 1, 1906 – August 14, 1981) was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader.

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.

It was during this time that he received his lifelong nickname "Big Joe."

Curran joined the International Seamen's Union (or ISU; the remnants of which would become the Seafarers International Union), but was not active in the union at first.

In 1936, Curran led a strike aboard the ocean liner S.S. California, then docked in San Pedro, California.

Curran and the crew of the Panama Pacific Line's California went on strike at sailing time and refused to cast off the lines unless wages were increased and overtime paid.

The strike was essentially a sitdown strike.

Curran and the crew refused to leave the ship, for the owners would have simply replaced them with strikebreakers.

The crew remained aboard and continued to do all their duties except cast off the lines.

The California remained tied up for three days.

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.

During the California's return trip, the Panama Pacific Line raised wages by $5 a month to $60 per month.

But Perkins was unable to follow through on her other promises.

United States Secretary of Commerce Daniel Roper and the Panama Pacific Line declared Curran and the strikers mutineers.

The line took out national advertising attacking Curran.

When the ship docked, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents met the ship and began an investigation into the "mutiny".

Curran and other top strike leaders were fined two days' pay, fired and blacklisted.

Perkins was able to keep the strikers from being prosecuted for mutiny, however.

Seaman 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.

The S.S. California strike was only part of a worldwide wave of unrest among American seamen.

A series of port and shipboard strikes broke out in 1936 and 1937 in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

In October 1936, Curran called the 1936 Gulf Coast maritime workers' strike, in part to improve working conditions and in part to embarrass the International Seamen's Union (ISU).

The four-month strike idled 50,000 seamen and 300 ships.

Curran, believing it was time to abandon the conservative ISU, 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.

He was founding president of the National Maritime Union (or NMU, now part of the Seafarers International Union of North America) from 1937 to 1973, and a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

Curran was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

His father died when he was two years old, and his mother boarded with another family.

He attended parochial school, but when he was 14 he was expelled during the seventh grade for truancy.

In May 1937, Curran and other leaders of his nascent movement formed the National Maritime Union (NMU).

The Seamen's Defense Committee reconstituted itself as a union.

It held its first convention in July, and 30,000 seamen switched their membership from the ISU to the NMU.

Curran was elected president of the new organization.

Elected secretary-treasurer of the union was Jamaican-born Ferdinand Smith.

Thus, from its inception NMU was racially integrated.

Within six years, nearly all racial discrimination was eliminated in hiring, wages, living accommodations and work assignments.

A hallmark of the new union was the formation of hiring halls in each port.