30 Facts About Joseph Curran

Joseph Curran was a merchant seaman and an American labor leader.

Joseph Curran was founding president of the National Maritime Union from 1937 to 1973, and a vice president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

Joseph Curran's father died when he was two years old, and his mother boarded with another family.

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

Joseph Curran worked as a caddie and factory worker before finding employment in 1922 in the United States Merchant Marine.

Joseph Curran worked as an able seaman and boatswain, washing dishes in restaurants when not at sea and sleeping on a Battery Park bench at night.

Joseph Curran became a leader of the 10-week strike, eventually forming a supportive association known as the Seamen's Defense Committee.

In October 1936, Joseph 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.

Joseph Curran, believing it was time to abandon the conservative ISU, began to sign up members for a new, rival union.

Joseph Curran's goal was to create, out of the 300,000 maritime industry's workers, a union as large and influential as the Steel Workers Organizing Committee.

Joseph Curran agreed to affiliate with the CIO, but refused to let Bridges or anyone else take over his union.

Joseph Curran's views were reflected among those of the other union leaders, and the CIO's maritime industrial union never got off the ground.

Joseph Curran even built a union-run school to retrain union members, and won large employer donations through collective bargaining to build the school.

When Kennedy was under consideration as executive director of the United Seamen's Service, Joseph Curran successfully opposed the multi-millionaire's candidacy.

Joseph Curran put such pressure on Kennedy that on February 18,1938, Kennedy resigned as chair of the United States Maritime Commission.

In 1940, Joseph Curran was elected a vice president of the CIO.

Joseph Curran was elected president of the Greater New York Industrial Union.

At the organization's founding convention on July 24,1940, Joseph Curran was elected president of GNYIU.

The board members reported to Murray that Joseph Curran, Kills and the GNYIU executive board had been advocating pro-communist policies.

Joseph Curran denied that he was a communist before both the CIO executive board and the Joint Commerce Committee of the US Congress.

Joseph Curran served on a number of other committees, boards and positions with other organizations.

Joseph Curran was co-chair of the Labor-Management Maritime Committee, a body established by AFL-CIO maritime unions and US shipping companies to discuss and resolve labor issues.

Joseph Curran was vice chairman of the Seafarer's Section of the International Transportworkers Federation, an international confederation of maritime unions.

Joseph Curran suffered a heart attack in 1953 which left him somewhat less physically able than before.

Joseph Curran enjoyed an unlimited expense account, and traveled by chartered jet and private limousine.

Joseph Curran cajoled the union's executive board into building a massive, Art Deco headquarters in Manhattan, and had the edifice named after himself.

In 1973, shortly after Joseph Curran won re-election for a thirteenth term as union president, Morrissey sued Joseph Curran and charged him with misappropriating union funds.

Morrissey's barrage of lawsuits against Joseph Curran led him to retire suddenly on March 5,1973.

Joseph Curran died there of cancer on August 14,1981.

Joseph Curran married Retta Toble, a former cruise ship waitress, in 1939.