The National Maritime Union (NMU) was an American labor union founded in May 1937. It affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in July 1937. After a failed merger with a different maritime group in 1988, the union merged with the Seafarers International Union of North America in 2001.
Seamen in hiring hall, NMU banner, New York City, December 1941. (Photograph: Arthur Rothstein)
This building at Seventh Avenue between 12th Street and 13th Street, designed by Albert C. Ledner, was built in 1964 as the union's headquarters. The hiring halls were in the glass blocks on the ground floor. The union sold it to St. Vincent's Hospital in 1973, and it later became Lenox Health Greenwich Village.
The Joseph Curran Annex (left) and Plaza (right), on Ninth Avenue between West 16th and 17th Streets, were built in 1966, also designed by Ledner. The Ninth Avenue building on the right is currently the Maritime Hotel, while the 17th Street building (left) is being converted into the Dream Downtown Hotel.[when?][citation needed]
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. Originally created in 1935 as a committee within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) by John L. Lewis, a leader of the United Mine Workers (UMW), and called the Committee for Industrial Organization. Its name was changed in 1938 when it broke away from the AFL. It focused on organizing unskilled workers, who had been ignored by most of the AFL unions.
The CIO's second headquarters was an office on the third floor of this building, the United Mine Workers' headquarters, at 900 15th Street NW, Washington, DC.
718 Jackson Place NW, Washington, D.C., the fourth and final headquarters for the Congress of Industrial Organizations. As of 2008, the building is owned by the federal government and houses small units attached to the Executive Office of the President.
