Maloney, Shaun, 1911-1999

Shaun Maloney, also known as Jack Maloney, was a fiery union activist and advocate for workers' rights whose involvement in the labor movement spanned eight decades.

Shaun McGillin Maloney was born on Sept. 10, 1911, in Minneapolis. His natural father deserted the family before Maloney's birth. As a youth he was known as John or Jack Severson, adopting the name of his stepfather. He reverted to using Maloney in about 1936 when he was issued a social security card. He was called Shaun by his longshore associates, but remained Jack to those who had a Minnesota connection and John to a handful of relatives.

Maloney was introduced to labor activism and radical politics as a youth. His mother was a fierce Irish nationalist. His stepfather, a Teamster who was blacklisted after an unsuccessful Teamsters strike in 1917, was an early member of the Industial Workers of the World. The Severson home was the scene of frequent Wobblie gatherings.

Maloney left school after the eighth grade. Through the 1920s and early 1930s, he worked driving delivery wagons-initially horse-drawn wagons and eventually trucks. When hauling work was unavailable, he sailed on the Great Lakes and worked in the fields, following the harvest north from the southern plains to the Dakotas. It was during the late 1920s that Maloney joined the Wobblies and his first union, General Drivers, Helpers and Inside Workers Union (Teamsters) Local 574 of Minneapolis. Through his union activities he became acquainted with noted socialists such as Karl Skoglund and V.R. and Miles Dunne.

In May 1934 Local 574, spurred on by a successful strike against area coal companies, began what was to be a long and bitter general trucking strike. Seven weeks into the strike armed police fired into the crowd of strikers. Two strikers were killed and dozens of others, including Maloney, were injured on what came to be known as "Bloody Friday." Martial law was declared and federal mediators were sent in to lead negotiations. The union won the strike and approved a contract in August. Maloney, who was elevated from picket line captain to the negotiation committee after the strike's primary leaders were arrested, appeared on the front page of a local Minneapolis paper casting his vote in favor of the contract.

After the 1934 strikes, Maloney organized truckers in South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska. In fall 1937, he joined the drive to organize the then-neglected over-the-road drivers and bring them under a single area contract. As a member of the North Central District Drivers Council, he helped negotiate the first area contract covering an 11-state area and tens of thousands of drivers. The area contract set up the structure that turned the Teamsters from a loose confederation of provincial outposts to a powerful national union.

In the course of a 22-week strike leading up to the contract, a bakery delivery truck traveling across the Iowa-Minnesota border was destroyed, and the company blamed the union. Maloney, who had been assigned to work with Local 383 in Sioux City, Iowa, and several other union organizers closest to the scene were rounded up and charged with interference with interstate commerce. Maloney was convicted and entered the federal penitentiary in Sandstone, Minn., in June 1940.

A draft notice was awaiting Maloney upon his release from prison in Mar. 1942. To avoid fighting in a war that he opposed, Maloney traveled to New York and joined the merchant marine. He found a berth on the SS Samuel Chase, which turned out to be part of a convoy delivering supplies to Murmansk, Russia. Just days after departing from a layover in Iceland, the convoy was attacked and suffered heavy casualties. The Samuel Chase limped into the Russian port of Molotovsk, where she remained for several months and was presumed lost. Of the original 35 vessels of Convoy PQ-17, only three, including the Samuel Chase, survived both the sailing to Russia and the return voyage across the Atlantic.

Maloney returned from Russia in the fall of 1942 and came to the West Coast. After a brief stay in San Francisco, he made his way to Seattle, from where he sailed the relatively safe Alaska run for the duration of the war. After the war Maloney continued sailing throughout the Pacific and took an active part in the Sailors' Union of the Pacific (SUP) until he became involved in the Mahoney Beef in 1949.

John Mahoney was expelled from the SUP in June 1949 for questioning the leadership's attempt to break a strike by the Canadian Seamen's Union, which the leadership viewed as Communist-influenced. Over 30 of his supporters, including Maloney and his half-brother Jim Severson, would be expelled over the course of 12 months. Maloney was not initially part of the so-called Mahoney gang; the collection of a small fund for the family of a deceased shipmate led union leaders to suspect Maloney and his shipmates of financially supporting Mahoney's defense. Maloney became a key member of the Mahoney Defense Committee and helped coordinate the efforts of the expelled sailors who filed suit for reinstatement. The court battles dragged on for several years. Mahoney's case eventually worked its way up to the Washington State Supreme Court, which affirmed the lower court's order of reinstatement. Maloney and his co-plaintiffs also won reinstatement, but were again expelled.

After his expulsion from the SUP, Maloney did not return to sea. He and many of the other expelled sailors found work as longshoremen while contesting their expulsions. Maloney gained membership in the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union in Apr. 1953. With its reputation for militancy and rank-and-file democracy, the longshore union seemed a good fit for Maloney. He quickly became active in Seattle's Local 19. He was elected vice president of the local in 1956, was appointed to the area committee in 1957 and sat on the Executive Board. He frequently opposed positions taken by ILWU President Harry Bridges and was critical of the controversial "Mechanization and Modernization" Agreement of 1960.

In the post-war years, pressure to speed up cargo handling made mechanization an attractive option to shipowners and waterfront employers seeking to increase profitability. Mechanization would naturally result in the loss of waterfront jobs. The longshore union was divided on how to confront this issue. While many members resisted change in the industry, the union leadership concluded that mechanization was inevitable and sought to ameliorate its effects. The M&M agreement allowed shipowners and stevedoring contractors to introduce labor-saving machinery and work practices in return for a guarantee against layoffs and increased wages and benefits.

Maloney was elected president of Local 19 in Dec. 1970 and served five terms, the first person to do so. When Maloney took over as Local 19 president, the ILWU was still dealing with the consequences of the M&M agreement of 1960. Of growing concern to the union was the spread of the employers' practice of hiring "steady men" equipment operators who were assigned work outside the normal dispatch procedure. Contract negotiations were at an impasse, and on July 1, 1971, the longshoremen went on strike. Only after a 134-day strike (interrupted by a court-imposed "cooling off" period) was a settlement reached. The issue of steady men nevertheless remained a source of tension. In the fall of 1972, Local 19 was embroiled in a dispute locally with employers over hiring of steady men crane operators. The waterfront employers hit the union, and Maloney personally, with a lawsuit accusing the union of an illegal work slowdown.

Maloney retired from the ILWU in 1976, but remained active in union affairs. He regularly attended membership meetings and served as an advisor to the more militant wing of the local union membership. He also remained an active figure in the wider labor movement, in which he was better known for his role in the 1934 Teamsters strike. He cultivated a circle of correspondents around the country and campaigned on behalf of union solidarity.

Maloney died in Seattle on Dec. 19, 1999.

From the guide to the Shaun Maloney Papers, 1932-2000, 1946-1998, (University of Washington Libraries Special Collections)

Shaun "Jack" Maloney was a union leader and activist for over 50 years in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. He was born on September 10, 1911 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His biological father left the family before his birth. As a child he took his stepfather Ole Severson's surname and was known as Jack Severson until approximately 1936, upon which time he reverted back to Maloney.

Maloney was introduced to the local union at an early age; his stepfather was involved in the Teamsters' strike in Minneapolis in 1917. When the strike was squashed the participants, including Ole Severson, were blacklisted in the city. Maloney went to work with his stepfather as a child and left school at the end of the 8th grade (1925) to work in the delivery room of the Dayton Company. He joined the Minneapolis Teamsters local 574 in the early 1930s.

By age 18, Maloney was driving truck for a transfer company and in 1934 he was driving trucks or teams of horses for Cameron Transfer and Storage. Maloney was a participant in the Teamsters truck drivers strike in Minneapolis on June 20, 1934, also known as "Bloody Friday." Two strikers were killed and over 50 injured by riot police, including Maloney who was shot in the abdomen. After strike mediators helped to settle a contract between the Teamsters and local businesses, the contract went to vote on August 21, 1934 and Maloney was the first member to cast his ballot and also served as one of three union observers to ensure a fair election. The 1934 strike helped the Teamsters become one of the largest international unions, and many of the participants became well-known union activists.

After the strike, Maloney went back to work for Cameron Transfer and later became an organizer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) in Iowa and South Dakota. Maloney, along with six other union leaders, was sentenced to jail in 1938 for interfering with interstate commerce after a bakery truck was destroyed in a crash during a 22-week strike in Iowa.

After Maloney was released from prison in 1940, he joined the merchant marine, eventually settling in Seattle, Washington in 1950, where he worked as a longshoreman. He was an active member of the local union and was appointed an executive in 1970, serving until his retirement in 1976. Jack Maloney died on December 19, 1999 in Seattle, Washington.

From the guide to the Shaun Maloney papers., 1916-1996., (Minnesota Historical Society)

Union leader and activist.

Shaun Maloney was born in Minneapolis in 1911. As a youth, he adopted his stepfather's surname and was known as John (Jack) Severson, reverting to Maloney in about 1936. Influenced by the labor activism and radical politics of his mother and stepfather, Maloney joined the International Workers of the World and was an active Teamsters organizer throughout the Midwest during the 1930s. He became well known for his role on the negotiating committee during the bloody 1934 Teamsters strike in Minneapolis, and he served two years in a Minnesota penitentiary for a charge stemming from later organizing activities. Following his release in 1942, Maloney joined the Merchant Marine. After surviving an attack on his convoy enroute to Russia, he came to San Francisco and then Seattle, from where he worked as a seaman and took an active part in the Sailors' Union of the Pacific (SUP). When he supported union member John Mahoney, who had been expelled from the SUP for questioning the leadership's attempt to break a strike, however, Maloney was also expelled from the SUP. In 1953 Maloney joined the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILUW) and became active in Seattle's Local 19. During the 1960s and early '70s, Maloney was involved in several disputes and strikes that resulted from the controversial "Mechanization and Modernization" agreement of 1960, and from 1971-1976, he served five terms as the president of Local 19. Maloney retired in 1976 but remained an active figure in organized labor activities both locally and nationally. He died in Seattle in 1999.

From the description of Shaun Maloney papers, 1932-2000 (bulk 1946-1998). (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 48862236