David John McDonald (November 22, 1902 – August 8, 1979) was an American labor unionist who served as the president of the United Steelworkers of America from 1952 to 1965.
Early life McDonald was born on November 22, 1902, in Pittsburgh, to David and Mary (Kelly) McDonald, Welsh immigrants. David McDonald Sr. was a long-time union activist who had been run out of Springfield, Illinois, because of his union activity. After failing as a saloonkeeper, McDonald Sr. got a job as a guide setter at a Jones and Laughlin Steel Company rolling mill and joined the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers. Mary McDonald's father had been an officer in the Sons of Vulcan, an early ironworkers' union, and both uncles on his mother's side were unionists. The night that he was born, his father was walking a picket line.
He was educated in Catholic parochial schools. In 1915, his father was severely injured when a piece of hot steel impaled his left leg, causing him to be bedridden for 10 months and leaving him with a bad limp.
He got his first job as a paperboy at the age of 13 to help support the family, but his mother refused to let her son work full-time. He became an excellent student, singer and actor. He graduated from high school in 1918, receiving a two-year vocational technology diploma.
McDonald obtained a clerical job at the Jones & Laughlin mill, and later became a machinist's helper. In 1922, he became a typist-switchboard operator at Wheeling Steel Products Co. and studied accounting at Duquesne University.
McDonald married Emily Price in August 1937, who had been a secretary to Mine Workers president John L. Lewis. They had a son, David J. McDonald Jr., in 1939. The couple divorced in 1946. McDonald then married his secretary, Rosemary McHugh, in 1950.
United Mine Workers In 1923, a friend introduced him to Philip Murray, president of District 5 of the United Mine Workers. Murray hired him on the spot as his personal secretary, impressed with his typing speed and that McDonald had organized both the Holy Cross High School Alumni Association and Pittsburgh Catholic Alumni Association. The two become close friends.
McDonald enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now part of Carnegie Mellon University, where he studied drama and dancing. He became an amateur actor and graduated in 1932. He was invited to come to Hollywood by Warner Brothers to discuss becoming an assistant movie director but turned down the offer.
SWOC career
Secretary-Treasurer In June 1936, Murray was named director of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC). He named McDonald the union's secretary-treasurer. McDonald instituted tight financial controls and centralized dues collection and expense payments in the national headquarters.
In 1940, Murray was elected president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Although Murray retained the presidency of the Steelworkers, McDonald increasingly oversaw more than just the day-to-day operations of the union. In many cases, he made union policy, often substituted for Murray at public and union events, helped negotiate contracts, and represented the union at CIO events.
In 1942, SWOC merged with the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers to form the United Steelworkers of America. Murray was named the new union's first president and McDonald its first secretary-treasurer.
The same year, Murray established a permanent political action committee within the CIO. McDonald was appointed to the executive council of the CIO-PAC, controlling its policies, endorsements and donations alongside Jacob Potofsky of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, Emil Rieve of the Transport Workers Union of America and Emil Mazey of the United Auto Workers. He also served as the PAC's secretary-treasurer.
The AFL, the CIO, and the Railroad Brotherhoods went to Latin America to become familiar with the labor movements in other American countries at the behest of Bernardo Ibáñez Águila, secretary-general of the CATL. The delegation sent included Edward J. Brown, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers from the AFL, McDonald representing the CIO; and Samuel Phillips, vice-president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen from the Railroad brotherhoods. The trip included stops in Chile, Peru, Colombia, Panama, Cuba, and Mexico. The visit was a show of solidarity of international mutual co-operation with the goal of raising living standards across the Americas. The result of the trip was the creation of American Labor Conference on International Affairs.
Murray sent McDonald to England in 1944 to report on the war effort. While in London, a V-2 rocket killed 175 people in the apartment building next to his hotel. In July and August, he toured Normandy as American troops broke out from their beachheads during Operation Cobra, and his group came under artillery fire several times. The experience deeply moved him, and he urged the CIO to renew its "no-strike" pledge and redouble its efforts to support the war effort.
In 1946, McDonald was one of several union leaders within the CIO who pushed for a major organizing drive in the Deep South. In March 1946, the CIO established the Southern Organizing Committee, and McDonald was its secretary-treasurer and one of its executive board members. Although McDonald had urged the organizing effort, he later criticized it for being underfunded and understaffed.
Murray increasingly resented McDonald's influence within the Steelworkers, however. The relationship between Murray and McDonald became strained. In 1950, Murray won passage of an amendment to the Steelworkers' constitution to curb McDonald's powers. Murray played a key role in the 1952 steel strike, centralizing the union's picketing, demonstrations, leafletting, bannering, job actions, and public statements more in the national headquartas well as educating local and district leaders on the union's collective bargaining strategy and tactics.
Murray was a strong supporter of the National Labor Relations Act and believed the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 significantly weakened union organizing prospects.
Presidency Philip Murray died in November 1952, and McDonald was named acting president by the USWA executive board. Although observers felt that Murray had intended to push McDonald out of the union, his sudden death left McDonald in a position to take control. In 1953, the USWA executive board named McDonald president.
As president, McDonald emphasized enhancing fringe benefit. The election of Dwight D. Eisenhower as president and the advent of Republican majorities in the United States Congress (at least from 1952 to 1954) made expansion of social programs unlikely even if some later occurred. To compensate, McDonald focused negotiations on benefits such as unemployment compensation, health insurance, pensions, tuition reimbursement, and more. Throughout the 1950s, however, McDonald often felt an intense rivalry with the Auto Workers (UAW). The UAW often won better wage and benefit packages than the Steelworkers, and were able to obtain the closed shop. McDonald's negotiating stands often reflected the interunion jealousy.
McDonald led the Steelworkers out on strike in 1956, winning substantial wage increases, unemployment benefits, and layoff rights, and improved pensions.
1959 strike In 1959, McDonald led the union out on strike again. But the 1959 steel strike was both a victory and a disaster.
Prior to the strike, the major steel companies were reporting high profits. McDonald and Steelworkers general counsel Arthur J. Goldberg requested a major wage increase. But industry negotiators refused to grant a wage increase unless McDonald agreed to substantially alter or eliminate Section 2(b) of national contract.
Section 2(b) of the steelworkers' contract limited management's ability to change the number of workers assigned to a task or to introduce new work rules or machinery which would result in reduced hours or numbers of employees. Management claimed that this constituted featherbedding and reduced the competitiveness of the American steel industry.
McDonald characterized management's proposals as an attempt to break the union. Negotiations broke off, and the contract expired on July 1, 1959.
President Eisenhower asked both sides to extend the agreement and resume bargaining. McDonald and Goldberg offered to extend the contract by one year and to create a joint committee to study changes to Section 2(b) and to the contract's benefit structure. Steelmakers rejected the offer, and on July 15 500,000 steelworkers struck. The strike shuttered nearly every steel mill in the country. By the end of August, the United States Department of Defense voiced concern that there would not be enough steel to meet national defense needs in a crisis.
McDonald was beginning to feel pressure to end the strike from the AFL-CIO. George Meany was willing to support the strike, but not if it meant negatively impacting national security. The strike was also affecting the auto industry, which was threatening to lay off tens of thousands of Walter Reuther's members due to a steel shortage.
On September 28, 1959, Eisenhower met privately with McDonald and Goldberg, and threatened to invoke the back-to-work provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. But McDonald was unwilling to budge on Section 2(b) without other concessions from the steelmakers. The steel companies, realizing they only needed to wait until Eisenhower forced union members back to work, refused to make any such concessions.
Eisenhower set in motion the Taft-Hartley machinery on October 9, and appointed a Board of Inquiry. However, Eisenhower limited the Board to clarifying the issues rather than recommending a settlement. Realizing that the strike could linger despite the provisions of Taft-Hartley, management offered a three-year contract with small improvements in pay and fringe benefits and binding arbitration over Section 2(b). McDonald rejected the offer. He proposed a contract similar to his proposal of early July, but reduced the union's wage and benefit demand and limited the contract to two rather than three years. Working off a plan devised by Goldberg, McDonald also proposed a nine-member committee consisting of three members from labor, management, and the public to study and resolve work-rule issues. Management rejected the new proposal.
The Board of Inquiry issued its final report on October 19 and declared that there was no chance of a negotiated settlement.
On October 20, the United States Department of Justice petitioned the federal district court for western Pennsylvania to an injunction ordering the steelworkers back to work. Goldberg argued that the Taft-Hartley Act was unconstitutional, but the district court ruled for the government on October 21. However, the court agreed to a stay of the injunction until the matter was fully settled. The union appealed to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, and lost again on October 27. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and set argument for November 3, 1959.
Meanwhile, a budding friendship between Goldberg and Kaiser Steel heir Edgar Kaiser led to an independent settlement between the union and Kaiser Steel on October 26. Although the Steelworkers won only a fractionally higher wage increase than the steelmakers had proposed, the settlement included the nine-member committee proposed earlier by Goldberg and McDonald.
On November 7, 1959, on the 116th day of the strike, the Supreme Court upheld the appellate court's findings. In Steelworkers v. United States, 361 U.S. 39 (1959), in an 8-to-1 per curiam decision, the court upheld the constitutionality of the Taft-Hartley Act. The justices affirmed the district court's injunction ordering the workers back to work for an 80-day cooling-off period.