biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1901–51)
|
| biography:
| Labour leader, born in Oslo, Norway. A sailor, he emigrated to the USA in 1923, joined the Sailors' Union of the Pacific (1926) and was a leader of the 1934 San Francisco waterfront strike. He was founder and first president (1938–51) of the Seafarers International Union, and led a series of strikes that greatly improved sailors' wages and working conditions. A radical in his early days, he became known as a fierce opponent of Communists in the labour movement, but he never gave up wearing the clothes of a working sailor. |
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