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450
independent organization for licensed officers and engineers, the United Licensed
Officers, began to make headway against the AFL Masters, Mates, and Pilots
Union and the older independent Marine Engineers Beneficial Association. The
main attraction of the United Licensed Officers was that, although it was by no
means an industrial union, it took a leaf out of the CIO's book and organized all
licensed personnel, whereas the older unions only accepted one or another category
of officer or engineer. And 1937 also saw portentous new organizational activity on
the waterfront apart from the NMU but within the CIO framework. In June, the
first local, Local 24, of the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers of
America (IUMSWA) was established to organize Bethlehem's Key Highway
Shipyard. From the beginning the CIO leaders believed this union had great
potential in Baltimore. They were right, for during World War II the massive
IUMSWA locals would become far and away the largest union organizations in the
42
region.
Finally, the waterfront was the main hot spot for the CIO in 1937 because it
became the focal point for the AFL counter-offensive against the new industrial
unionism. The shock troops for this offensive came from the ILA, especially from
locals 829 and 858. To counter the CIO thrust toward a national maritime
federation of all marine workers, the AFL set up the American Marine Labor
Council as an umbrella for all AFL marine unions. The first self-proclaimed victory
of the Baltimore branch of the Marine Labor Council came in June when 100 ILA
longshoremen refused to load the Steel Exporter until its NMU crew was replaced
with a crew from the ISU. A few days later, the ILA attempted the same tactic
again by striking the City of Newport News; this time the NMU refused to back
down and a fight broke out between CIO seamen and AFL longshoremen. ^
The AFL attempt to regain control over the waterfront took another tact in
September when the ILA announced that it was organizing the licensed tugboat
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