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Why the SIU was created

Seafarer's International Union was chartered to solve a problem for the American Federation of Labor (AFL). The problem is that it had a seamen's union: The International Seamen's Union, but that union was in trouble. Its main problem was that its membership had plummeted from more than 100,000 after World War I to less than 3,000 by the mid-1930s. The ISU also began to lack credibility, being characterized as "almost totally discredited... [and] bankrupt organization." Compounding these problems was the fact that the AFL's bitter enemy, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had a thriving seamen's union in the National Maritime Union (NMU).

The ISU finally self-destructed in July of 1937. In that month, it lost its charter with the AFL and it also lost 30,000 seamen to the NMU. Shortly thereafter, in August of 1937, AFL president William Green assumed control of the ISU with the goal of rebuilding it under the AFL. He assigned this task to Harry Lundeberg, who was also head of the Sailor's Union of the Pacific. On October 15 1938 at an AFL convention in Houston, Texas, Green handed Lundeberg the Seafarer's International Union charter. The new union represented 7,000 members on the East and Gulf coasts.

The new union was a strategic success. It slowed the loss of seafaring jobs to the NMU, and also served as a political block against the increasing communist influence in the rival Congress of Industrial Organizations. A natural and immediate competition developed between SIU and NMU. The two unions competed for seafaring jobs until NMU became an SIU affiliate union in 2001.

1930s

• 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 of Mexico.

1940s

• By 1948, the surge in new membership propelled Hall to the post of SIU vice president.

1950s

The 1950s saw further strengthening of the SIU with acquisition through mergers of two additional unions:

• The Marine Firemen, Oilers, Watertenders, and Wipers of the Pacific Coast (MFOWW).
• National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards (NUMCS).

This consolidation helped the SIU edge out the NMU whose earlier purging of communist members 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.

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

1960s

In 1967, Hall established the Seafarers Harry Lundeberg School of Seamanship in Piney Point, Maryland to give young people the chance for a career at sea. Since then, the school has developed into among the finest maritime training schools in the country. Thousands of SIU members have advanced their skills, and thousands of young people from deprived backgrounds have found employment through the school.

1980s

After an eight month battle with cancer, Hall passed away in 1980.

• 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 American Federation of Labor (AFL).