The Seafarers International Union or SIU is an organization of 12 autonomous

labor unions A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...

of mariners,

fishermen A fisher or fisherman is someone who captures fish and other animals from a body of water, or gathers shellfish. Worldwide, there are about 38 million commercial and subsistence fishers and fish farmers. Fishers may be professional or recre ...

and boatmen working aboard vessels flagged in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. Michael Sacco has been its president since 1988. The organization has an estimated 35,498 members and is the largest maritime labor organization in the United States. Organizers founded the union on October 14, 1938. The Seafarers International Union arose from a charter issued to the

Sailors Union of the Pacific The Sailors' Union of the Pacific (SUP), founded on March 6, 1885 in San Francisco, California, is an American labor union of mariners, fishermen and boatmen working aboard US flag vessels. At its fourth meeting in 1885, the fledgling organizatio ...

by the

American Federation of Labor The American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) was a national federation of labor unions in the United States that continues today as the AFL-CIO. It was founded in Columbus, Ohio, in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions eager to provide mutua ...

as a foil against loss of jobs to the

Congress of Industrial Organizations The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of ...

(CIO) and its Communist Party-aligned faction.''Brotherhood of the Sea: A History of the Sailors' Union of the Pacific'', by Stephen Schwartz. Published 1986 by Transaction Publishers. . Today the SIU represents mariners and boatmen who sail aboard U.S.-flagged vessels in deep sea, the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five la ...

, and inland waterways. Membership includes workers in the deck,

steward Steward may refer to: Positions or roles * Steward (office), a representative of a monarch * Steward (Methodism), a leader in a congregation and/or district * Steward, a person responsible for supplies of food to a college, club, or other ins ...

, and engine departments. SIU members are represented aboard a wide variety of vessels, including: military support, commercial trade,

tugboat A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, su ...

passenger ship A passenger ship is a merchant ship whose primary function is to carry passengers on the sea. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freig ...

barge Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels. ...

s, and

gaming vessel A gambling ship is a sea vessel of any kind on which gambling takes place. Historically, international waters began just from land in many countries. Gambling ships, like offshore radio stations, would usually be anchored just outside the th ...

s. Military support vessels operated by the U.S. Department of Defense's

Military Sealift Command Military Sealift Command (MSC) is an organization that controls the replenishment and military transport ships of the United States Navy. Military Sealift Command has the responsibility for providing sealift and ocean transportation for all US ...

(MSC) provide a key source of jobs for seafarers. MSC operates some 110 noncombat ships that support U.S. forces around the world. SIU membership includes eligibility for access to healthcare, retirement, and education benefits. Educational facilities include the union's Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education at Piney Point, Maryland. The training center started in Brooklyn, New York, and is named after a former SIU president, Paul Hall. The

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compu ...

opened in 1967 and has trained more than 100,000 mariners. Highly active in the political arena, the SIU states that its primary focus is to maintain safe working environments for men and women working aboard vessels, and to ensure very high standards of training among its membership.

History

The Seafarers International Union's founding on October 14, 1938, came during the turbulent times of the Great Depression, a worldwide economic slowdown, and the international rise of

communism Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society ...

. SIU's roots, however, reach back to 1892, when delegates representing unions of the West Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes gathered at a seamen’s convention in Chicago. The convention eventually gave rise to a federation of maritime unions known as the International Seamen's Union (ISU) chartered by the

(AFL). SIU's origin is portrayed by the union as an outcome of the "wreckage" of ISU. The breakup saw ISU membership plummet from more than 100,000 after

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

to less than 3,000 by the mid-1930s."Maritime unions merge," Journal of Commerce. June 5, 2001. The article notes how on-again, off-again merger talks dated back to the 1950s, while the rivalry between the two unions extended to the late 1930s. NMU affiliated with SIU in 1999 and fully merged on March 16, 2001. The revocation of ISU's charter and the loss of 30,000 seamen in July 1937 to the

' newly formed National Maritime Union (NMU) signaled ISU's death knell. Leadership of AFL, one of the first federations of labor unions, understood that the ISU was near collapse. The AFL subsequently moved to replace it by issuing a charter to the

(SUP) to organize the new Seafarers International Union. Harry Lundeberg, a SUP officer and seaman who was originally from

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

, became the Seafarers International Union's first president. The SUP remained autonomous for years within SIU. The AFL's action to form the SIU not only countered the threat of loss of seafaring jobs to the NMU but also served as a political block against the increasing Communist influence in the rival

.De La Pedraja Tomán, 1994, p. 536. NMU, a product of the economic struggles and waterfront strikes of the times, became a longtime nemesis of SIU. The two unions fiercely competed for seafaring jobs until they merged in 2001. The Seafarers International Union membership lagged behind that of the National Maritime Union during World War II. Then Paul Hall started organizing seamen on the East Coast and the Gulf. By 1948, the surge in new membership propelled Hall to the post of SIU vice president.De La Pedraja Tomán, 1994, p. 537. This consolidation helped the SIU edge out the NMU whose earlier purging of Communist Party members or those suspected of CP association had left it weakened. Moreover, Lundeberg's death in 1957 ended a long-running power struggle between Lundeberg and Hall. Heir-apparent Hall subsequently was named SIU president and, later that year president of the AFL–CIO

Maritime Trades Department Maritime may refer to: Geography * Maritime Alps, a mountain range in the southwestern part of the Alps * Maritime Region, a region in Togo * Maritime Southeast Asia * The Maritimes, the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Princ ...

. When Hall took over the Maritime Trades Department, it was a struggling organization made up of only six small unions. He built it into an active and effective political force in the trade union movement. At his death, Maritime Trades Department comprised 43 national and international unions representing nearly 8 million American workers. In 1967, Hall established the

Seafarers Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship The Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education is a merchant marine educational facility in Piney Point, Maryland, which is affiliated with the Seafarers International Union. Founded in 1967 in Brooklyn, New York as "The Seafarers' Har ...

in Piney Point, Maryland, to give young people the chance for a career at sea. Since then, the school has become one of the finest maritime training schools in the country. Thousands of SIU members have advanced their skills at the school. Moreover, the Harry Lundeberg School has also presented opportunities for generations of young people from deprived backgrounds to gain employment. The 1970s saw further strengthening of the SIU with acquisition through merger of the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards (NUMCS). After an eight-month battle with cancer, Hall died in 1980.

Controversy

In 2005, SIU and the Paul Hall Center for Maritime Training and Education were sued for age discrimination by the

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a federal agency that was established via the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to administer and enforce civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The EEOC investigates discrimination ...

. The SIU was restricting applicants based on age rather than ability, rejecting any apprentice applicants over the age of 35. In the opinion on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, "throughout this appeal, and in the proceedings before the district court, the center and the union ... maintained that age-barriers to entry are a hallmark of apprenticeships and complained that the EEOC's regulation effectively guts that employment practice by erasing its defining characteristic." In 2006 the case remanded back to the Baltimore federal district court and that court ruled in favor of the EEOC and ordered back payments in the range of $2 million to over 180 plaintiffs and further ordered that they and all future applicants to the Paul Hall maritime school be admitted regardless of age. In testimony before the Parliament of Canada in 1996, David Broadfoot of the Canadian Merchant Navy Association recalled that in 1946, "Our government imported a thug, a real heavy-duty gangster from Brooklyn (

Hal C. Banks Harold Chamberlain "Hal" Banks (February 28, 1909 – September 24, 1985) from Waterloo, Iowa was a controversial labour union leader in Canada. An American with mob connections, he came to Canada in 1949 to help bust purportedly Communist-cont ...

), to smash our union and bring in the Seafarers' International Union ... which was no different from the

Teamsters The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), also known as the Teamsters Union, is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of The Team Drivers International Union and The Teamsters National Union, the u ...

at its worst and no different from the

longshoremen A stevedore (), also called a longshoreman, a docker or a dockworker, is a waterfront manual laborer who is involved in loading and unloading ships, trucks, trains or airplanes. After the shipping container revolution of the 1960s, the number ...

's association at its best. ... They came on our ships with baseball bats and bicycle chains. That's how they introduced their union to Canada."

Presidents

* Harry Lundeberg (1938–1957) * Paul Hall (1957–1980) * Frank Drozak (1980–1988) * Michael Sacco (1988–current)

Affiliated unions

According to its 2005 report a
The Department of Labor
total membership of all 13 affiliated unions is 35,498. Information for affiliated unions follows:

Recently terminated affiliate unions

* Seafarers' Professional Security Officers Association was terminated in 2004. * Seafarers AFL–CIO Local Union 5 Chauffeurs and Industrial Workers was terminated in 2000. * Seafarers AFL–CIO Local Union 300 United Industrial Workers - Midwest was terminated in 2000. * Seafarers AFL–CIO Local Union Marine Staff Officers Pacific District was terminated in 2002.

Notes

http://maritimesecurity.blogstream.com/

References

* * *

External links

*
Maritime Workers and Their Unions
from the Waterfront Workers History Project.
Election contributions at OpenSecrets

SIU 2006 PAC Summary Data

* "

The Seafarers ''The Seafarers'' is Stanley Kubrick's fourth film and third short documentary, made for the Seafarers International Union, directed in June 1953. The film was Kubrick's first in color. There are shots of ships, machinery, a canteen, and a uni ...

(1953) documentary film by

Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...

A case study of Seatrain Shipbuilding & the Brooklyn Navy Yard