The Merchant Marine operated in a gray area during the war. Despite the hardships and sacrifices of the merchant seamen, they were not recognized as veterans of the war until 1988.  However, without their labor at sea, the food, fuel, equipment, and other supplies produced in the United States would have been stuck on American shores. The importance of their job and the increased dangers of the war reinforced what many merchant mariners already knew. Without the structure of an official branch of the military, the sailors, like laborers of all kinds, would have to rely on the strength of their numbers leveraged through labor unions, to protect themselves.

William Nesser’s membership card for the National Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots of America. Gift of William F. Nesser, 2012.015.053

The roots of labor unions for commercial seamen can be traced to the 1890s when several smaller regional maritime unions united under the auspices of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).  The International Seamen’s Union (ISU) was instrumental in securing some early protections for merchant sailors with the passage of the Seamen’s Act of 1915, designed to improve living conditions aboard ships ahead of what seemed like America’s likely involvement in World War I. 

By the 1930s, the stresses of the Great Depression combined with fractures between the ISU’s leadership and membership destroyed both the union’s credibility and its membership base. Despite the collapse of the ISU, the AFL recognized that it needed a robust organization for merchant sailors. To that end, the AFL approached one of the former smaller constituent unions of the ISU, the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific, to create a new union.  

On October 14, 1938,  the Seafarers International Union (SIU) received its charter with the backing of 7,000 members. The goals of the union were outlined in the preamble included in the membership book received by Nesser when he joined the union on January 18, 1939. The rights that the union strove to protect included hiring sailors through Union Halls, the right to receive fair wages and time off, the right to nutritious food while at sea, and the right to be respected by the officers of the ships they worked on.

While the SIU made it clear that they would fight for the rights outlined in the preamble, they also recognized that the sailors had duties to their employers, the vessels they sailed on, and the country itself. They agreed to uphold those duties through the diligence they put into their work and by assisting in the care for the gear and property of their employers.  One of the ultimate goals of the SIU was to develop a ready, professional, and capable body of American seamen that could be called upon by the nation.

What no one knew, was that shortly, merchant mariners would be fighting the war before any other Americans. When the SS Charles Pratt was torpedoed by U-68 off the coast of West Africa on December 21, 1940, two crewmen were killed, becoming the first American casualties of the war. While the Neutrality Acts prevented merchant ships from being armed or the Navy from escorting the ships, the SIU worked with other unions to secure increased hazard pay for the sailors that were nevertheless providing material aid to the Allied powers. 

With the official entry of the United States into the war, the role of the SIU and other unions shifted. The AFL, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (the AFL’s chief counterpart as a large confederation of labor unions), and representatives from owners in numerous industries came to an agreement brokered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt that there would be no strikes or lockouts which would interrupt critical production of war matériel for the duration of the conflict. 

What is more, the Roosevelt administration instituted price and wage ceilings, meaning that both the unions’ chief negotiating tactic and one of their principal aims would be moot points during the war. Instead, the SIU focused on operating its union halls as recruitment centers. By the end of the war, the Merchant Marine had grown to a fleet of 2,500 vessels manned by 125,000 seamen. Thanks to the union contracts that many of these mariners operated under, they received between $87 and $100 a month in wages as well as an additional $100 per month while in war zones, all while a private in the Army was paid $50 a month.

The end of the war brought new economic challenges. Millions of returning servicemen needed to find jobs now that the war was won. The Merchant Marine faced the same problem: without the demands of the war and the recovery of foreign merchant fleets, there were far fewer merchant ships requiring far smaller crews. 

By 1950, the fleet of active merchant vessels had shrunk to 1,150 ships and the number of available positions for merchant sailors contracted to just 60,000. The end of hostilities also meant that the hazard pay that the SIU and other unions had negotiated before the entry of the United States into the war ended. At the same time, the end of wartime economic policies, such as price caps, and the time required to transition back to producing consumer goods instead of weapons, meant that the cost of the few available goods ballooned.

In the face of these economic woes, unions across the country organized waves of strikes to try and ensure that their workers would be compensated fairly for their labor. In September 1946, the Masters, Mates, and Pilots of America, another AFL-aligned union that Nesser belonged to, joined with the Marine Engineers’ Beneficial Association and the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union in a work stoppage aimed at gaining greater union recognition and higher wages, leading to 1,000 landlocked ships. Nesser missed this work stoppage, however, as he had already left on a voyage aboard the SS Del Alba on August 29. 

1946 Strike Clearance Card for William Nesser from the National Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots of America. Gift of William F. Nesser, 2012.015.056

Ultimately, Nesser left the Merchant Marine in 1959 to spend more time ashore with his family. The unions he belonged to, though, continue their work today to represent the needs of their members and provide a body of capable sailors should the nation need them.