Striking Seamen Leaders to Meet Commerce Secretary: 1937
Seamen from the rank-and-file caucus, (at the time seeking recognition as a union under the National Labor Relations Act), pose before meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Daniel C. Roper after the Midnight March of the Baltimore Brigade January 18, 1937.
The caucus struck in sympathy with West Coast port workers in the fall of 1936, but the strike was crumbling in Baltimore. Whalen organized a march from Baltimore to Washington January 17-18 to protest provisions of the Copeland Safety at Sea Act that would have permitted sea captains to blacklist sailors.
The strike ended shortly afterwards, but the strike and march cemented the rank-and-file caucus as the leaders on the waterfront. They also won wage concessions, stopped the blacklist and later supplanted the International Seamen’s Union with the newly formed National Maritime Union.
From left to right, seated: Patrick B. Whalen, Al Lannon; Joseph Curran; R.M. Jones; standing, left to right: S. M. Blinken, Ralph Emerson, Paul Rothman. Whalen was the head of the Baltimore group. Lannon had preceded him as a left-wing organizer in Baltimore. Curran was head of the nascent union that was shortly to become the National Maritime Union.
For more information and additional images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk4EH1wW
For an article on Patrick Whalen, see washingtonspark.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1683...
Photo by Harris & Ewing. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, reproduction number LC-DIG-hec-22018
Striking Seamen Leaders to Meet Commerce Secretary: 1937
Seamen from the rank-and-file caucus, (at the time seeking recognition as a union under the National Labor Relations Act), pose before meeting with U.S. Commerce Secretary Daniel C. Roper after the Midnight March of the Baltimore Brigade January 18, 1937.
The caucus struck in sympathy with West Coast port workers in the fall of 1936, but the strike was crumbling in Baltimore. Whalen organized a march from Baltimore to Washington January 17-18 to protest provisions of the Copeland Safety at Sea Act that would have permitted sea captains to blacklist sailors.
The strike ended shortly afterwards, but the strike and march cemented the rank-and-file caucus as the leaders on the waterfront. They also won wage concessions, stopped the blacklist and later supplanted the International Seamen’s Union with the newly formed National Maritime Union.
From left to right, seated: Patrick B. Whalen, Al Lannon; Joseph Curran; R.M. Jones; standing, left to right: S. M. Blinken, Ralph Emerson, Paul Rothman. Whalen was the head of the Baltimore group. Lannon had preceded him as a left-wing organizer in Baltimore. Curran was head of the nascent union that was shortly to become the National Maritime Union.
For more information and additional images, see flic.kr/s/aHsk4EH1wW
For an article on Patrick Whalen, see washingtonspark.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1683...
Photo by Harris & Ewing. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, reproduction number LC-DIG-hec-22018