McDonald, along with USWA general counsel Arthur J. Goldberg, played a key role in the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955. Murray had long disdained merger but had engaged in desultory merge talks on and off for much of his presidency. With the death of Murray on November 9 and AFL president William Green just two weeks later, the personality differences keeping the two labor federations apart seemed to disappear. Gone too were the paralyzing arguments over industrial unionism, organizing and civil rights. Both labor federations were organizing significant numbers of workers (including blacks), and many of the workers went into industrial unions.