David J. McDonald

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.

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.

McDonald had a rocky relationship with the CIO under its new president, Walter Reuther.

McDonald strongly, actively and openly disliked Reuther. He opposed Reuther's plans to undertake a new wave of organizing and pushed for stronger support of mainstream Democrats rather than left-wing candidates. McDonald believed that the conservative trend in American politics indicated labor should retrench rather than expand aggressively. At the CIO convention in December 1952, McDonald nominated Allan S. Haywood, the CIO's 64-year-old director of organizing, as president. McDonald was supported by most of the CIO's independent local unions and Industrial Union Councils (the CIO's local central labor bodies). Reuther promised to create the office of executive vice-president and appoint Haywood to the position, a move with allowed him to eke out a win, with 54 to 48 percent of the vote.

Reuther followed through on his convention promise, and Haywood became the CIO's new executive vice-president but died suddenly in February 1953. McDonald quickly demanded for John V. Riffe, a veteran organizer with several CIO unions, to be appointed in Haywood's stead. Reuther acquiesced. McDonald then pushed Riffe, who was in ill health, to promote McDonald's views within the CIO. McDonald also won a CIO staff position for his longtime personal assistant, Oral Garrison, who also pressured Riffe and reported on CIO affairs to McDonald.

Throughout most of 1953 and 1954, McDonald implicitly threatened to leave the CIO. He associated with Lewis, who had led his United Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942 and back into the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1944, and he pointedly reminded the press and the CIO that the Steelworkers were an independent union, which would go its own way in politics, collective bargaining, and policy.