Philip Murray

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Philip Murray (May 25, 1886 - November 9, 1952) was a Scottish-born U.S. labor leader. He served as the first president of the United Steelworkers of America between 1942 and 1952.

He was the son of a miner and entered the mines as a worker at age 10. When he was 16, he and his father went to Pennsylvania and they earned enough to bring the entire family over.

In 1905 he was elected president of the United Mine Workers local in Horning, Pennsylvania. In 1912 he was appointed to the union's executive board, in 1915 he became president of District 5, and in 1920 he was appointed a vice-president of the union by its new president, John L. Lewis.

Lewis was also president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the umbrella body for industrial unions, and appointed his close associate Murray to the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in 1936. He became a vice-president of the CIO in 1938, and assumed the presidency of the CIO from Lewis in 1940 when Lewis resigned in protest of his disagreements with Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In 1942 Lewis disaffiliated the UMW from the CIO and caused Murray's expulsion from the Mineworkers. Murray continued as head of the CIO and became the president of the Steelworkers.