This series consists of approximately one hundred black and white prints of various sizes, as well as contact sheets, and negatives documenting activities of the National Maritime Union (NMU) mostly in the 1940s and 1950s. Groups of photographs include portraits of NMU members and leaders; the opening of the Upgrading and Sea Safety School in New York City in 1943; a 1944 "Maritime Day" celebration with black, white and Hispanic members and their families; a "Safety at Sea" exhibit with NMU leaders; room shots of the Sixth NMU Convention; group portraits of NMU committees from 1947; several images of ships and mess halls; and a circa 1950s hiring hall shape-up. Individuals pictured include NMU president Joseph Curran, treasurer Ferdinand Smith, Mayor Fiorello Laguardia and photographer Berenice Abbott. Several prints, with corresponding contact sheets and negatives, appear to have been taken over the course of a single day inside the NMU's hiring hall in New York City, possibly in the 1970s.

The series contains 32 black and white prints made by photographer Ernst Haas, possibly between 1948 and 1952, for the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), the administrative arm of the Marshall Plan. The photographs appear to document economic development, shipping, and the lives of black and white merchant seamen in Marseille, France. They include portraits of workers at work, in cafes and at home with their families, images of ports, ships, a railroad yard, building construction, post-war housing developments, and signs, political posters and graffiti in French.