David J. McDonald papers

David John McDonald, Jr. was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on November 22, 1902. His father, David John McDonald, Sr., immigrated from Ireland at the age of 16, after working for four years in the iron mills of Wales. His mother, Mary (Kelly) McDonald, was from a family of Irish labor leaders. Both became active participants in the labor movement of their day. McDonald, at the age of fifteen, began work at a polishing mill at Jones and Laughlin. While he was working, he completed a two-year commercial course, graduating June 1918. From Jones and Laughlin he began work as a machinist's helper at the National Tube Company's Continental Works. At the same time he attended night school at Duquesne University majoring in accounting, then shifting to Carnegie Tech's School of Industry to complete his high school education in 1920. During his five years at the National Tube Company plant, he became increasingly aware of the inadequacies in safety and grievance procedures. In 1922 he began work at the office of the Wheeling Steel Company in downtown Pittsburgh serving as a handyman, typist and operating a tumbler switchboard. In 1923, McDonald learned from a friend of a job opening as secretary to United Mineworkers of America (UMW) vice-president Philip Murray. Murray was impressed not only by McDonald's background and ambitions but, more importantly, by the fact that he was also a Catholic. During the next few years McDonald was tutored by Murray and John L. Lewis, President of the United Mine Workers. During this time he attended collective bargaining conferences and UMW conventions and witnessed the 1927 coal strike. Uncertain about his future with the failing UMW, McDonald decided to re-enter school. He enrolled in the night school drama department of the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He received a certificate of graduation in 1932 and a job offer as an assistant director at Warner Brothers Studio in Hollywood. Despite this, McDonald decided to remain with the UMW because of Franklin D. Roosevelt's candidacy for president and the potential help for American workers and the coal industry. In June, 1936, McDonald was named Secretary-Treasurer of the Steelworkers Organizing Committee (SWOC) by Murray, its chairman. In 1937, and again in 1941, Murray suffered a heart attack, and in the summer of 1941 McDonald unofficially assumed Murray's administrative duties in the Steelworkers Organizing Committee. In the interim, McDonald organized nine-tenths of the steel industry, started negotiations with the Little Steel companies, and negotiated for a modified form of check off in the steel plants. When the United Steelworkers of America was set up as a constitutional body at the May, 1942 convention, McDonald became its Secretary-Treasurer, serving the steel union in organizing, collective bargaining and administration. On November 9, 1952 Philip Murray died, and McDonald became the acting President of the United Steelworkers of America. On February 10, 1953 he was formally elected to a four-year term at the regular referendum election. I. W. Abel, director of the Canton, Ohio district, succeeded McDonald as Secretary-Treasurer. McDonald served for two more four-year terms, but was defeated for the presidency of the USWA in 1965 by I. W. Abel. McDonald subsequently became a Vice-President of the AFL-CIO from 1955-1965, after having served as Vice-President of the CIO preceding its merger, from 1950-1955. During those years, McDonald's accomplishments included substantial wage and fringe benefits for USWA members, a generous supplemental unemployment benefit program negotiated in 1956 and, following the marathon steel strike in 1959, improved pension payments. During his time in office, McDonald served on a wide variety of boards and committees, including the executive board of the CIO, secretary-treasurer of the CIO political action committee, and secretary of the CIO Southern Organization Committee. He was also a member of the General Council, International Confederation of the Free Trade Unions, an organization set up by unions in democratic countries to fight communist influence in the worldwide labor movement. McDonald and Edward A. Lynch were the authors of Coal and Unionism (1939); McDonald wrote his autobiography, Union Man, in 1969; and was the subject of a biography by George Kelly and Edwin Beachler entitled Man of Steel (1954). McDonald died at the age of 76 on August 10, 1979. He was married to Emily Lou Price in 1937; they had one child, David, Jr. After his divorce in 1946, he married Rosemary McHugh in 1950.