When was the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union formed?
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU was founded on June 3, 1900 in New York City by seven local unions, with a few thousand members between them. The union grew rapidly in the next few years but began to stagnate as the conservative leadership favored the interests of skilled workers, such as cutters. This did not sit well with the majority of immigrant workers, particularly Jewish workers with a background in Bundist activities in Tsarist Russia, or with Polish and Italian workers, many of whom had strong socialist and anarchist leanings.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
At the same time political splits within the union were beginning to grow larger. The Socialist Party split in 1919, with its left wing leaving to form various communist parties that ultimately united under the name of the Communist Party USA. Those left wing socialists, joined by others with an IWW or anarchist background, challenged the undemocratic structure of the ILGWU, which gave every local an equal vote in electing its leaders, regardless of the number of workers that local represented, and the accommodations that the ILGWU leadership had made in bargaining with the employers. Left wing activists, drawing inspiration from the shop stewards movement that had swept through British labor in the preceding decade, started building up their strength at the shop floor level.
International Workers' Association
The final formation of this new international, then known as the International Workingmen's Association, took place at an illegal conference in Berlin in December 1922, marking an irrevocable break between the international syndicalist movement and the Bolsheviks.
Signatories to the founding statement of the International Workingmen's Association included groups from around the world. The single largest anarcho-syndicalist union at the time, the CNT in Spain, were unable to attend when their delegates were arrested on the way to the conference - though they did join the following year, bringing 600,000 members into the international. Despite the CNT's absence, the international represented well over 1 million workers at its inauguration:The first secretaries of the International included the famed writer and activist Rudolph Rocker, along with Augustin Souchy and Alexander Schapiro.
Elisabeth Christman
In 1902, after several years of working long hours, she and her co-worker Agnes Nestor lead a successful 10-day strike out. This strike led to the creation of Glove Workers of America Local 1. Christman and 27 other others formed the International Glove Workers Union of America. She served as the organization's secretary-treasurer from 1913-1931.
Pauline Newman (labor activist)
In recognition of her central role in organizing and sustaining the strike, Newman was appointed as the first woman general organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). From 1909 to 1913, she organized garment strikes around the country, organizing in Philadelphia, Cleveland, Boston, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. In addition, she stumped for the Socialist Party of America in the freezing, bleak coal-mining camps of southern Illinois and continued to campaign for woman suffrage for the Women's Trade Union League. Although, waves of successful strikes were happening all around the United States, it was a lonely and frustrating few years for Newman. She felt that the union leadership had little interest in organizing women and that her work was undervalued and undermined at every turn.
Women's Trade Union League (UK)
Macarthur founded the Union of Jute, Flax and Kindred Textile Operatives in 1906, to improve the position of women workers in the city, and the difficulties of supporting the union led her to found the National Federation of Women Workers (NFWW), with a constitution stating that three members of the league would serve on the federation's executive. The federation took on much of the direct organising work previously covered by the league.
Irish Distributive and Administrative Trade Union
The union was founded in 1901 as the Irish Drapers' Assistants' Association by Michael O'Lehane. O'Lehane had been working at Cannocks in Limerick where several female shop workers living on the premises died in a major fire. O'Lehane relocated to Dublin, where he founded the union.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The news of the strike spread quickly to all the New York garment workers. At a series of mass meetings, after the leading figures of the American labor movement spoke in general terms about the need for solidarity and preparedness, Clara Lemlich rose to speak about the conditions she and other women worked under and demanded an end to talk and the calling of a strike of the entire industry. The crowd responded enthusiastically and, after taking a traditional Yiddish oath, "If I turn traitor to the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from the arm I now raise," voted for a general strike. Approximately 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out in the next two days.
Irish Women Workers' Union
James Larkin, brother of Delia, was the union's first president, while Delia was its first secretary. A founder member and activist was Rosie Hackett. In 1911 Rosie was working as a messenger for the Jacob's biscuit factory. The male workers withdrew their labour in pursuit of better working conditions and Rosie was one of the first women to come out in sympathy with them and helped organise the women workers to withdraw their labour in protest. The women were successful and they received better working conditions and an increase in pay.
Charles S. Zimmerman
In 1916, Zimmerman joined the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), and was elected chairman of his shop within a few weeks.
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
The ACWA merged with the TWUA in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. The United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union (UHCMW) merged into the union in 1983. The ACTWU merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1995 to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), which later merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) to become UNITE HERE.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU was able to turn the partial victory of the Great Revolt into a lasting victory; within two years it had organized roughly ninety percent of the cloakmakers in the industry in New York City. It improved benefits in later contracts and obtained an unemployment insurance fund for its members in 1919.
Pink-collar worker
New women's organizations sprouted up working to reform and protect women in the workplace. The largest and most prestigious of these organizations was The General Federation of Women's Clubs (GFWC), whose members were conservative middle-class housewives. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) was formed after women shirtwaist makers went on strike in New York City in 1909. It started as a small walkout, with a handful of members from one shop and grew to a force of ten of thousands, changing the course of the labor movement forever. In 1910 women allied themselves with the Progressive Party who sought to reform social issues.
Fur Workers Industrial Union
In 1935 the Fur Workers Industrial Union merged back into the International Fur Workers Union of the United States and Canada. The merger was preceded by a meeting in Toronto, Ontario, Canada at which the left and right wings of the fur workers movement reconciled and opted for a united front. A mass meeting of 5,000 members of the International Fur Workers Union of the United States and Canada was held in New York in June 1935, defying the AFL president Green by voting to continue merger efforts with the dissident union. According to media reports, Gold received a 15-minute standing ovation when entering the meeting hall.
Irish Women Workers' Union
The union's membership peaked at 6,000 in 1955, then continually fell until it merged into the Federated Workers' Union of Ireland in 1984.
League of Nations
The International Labour Organization was created in 1919 on the basis of Part XIII of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO, although having the same members as the League and being subject to the budget control of the Assembly, was an autonomous organisation with its own Governing Body, its own General Conference and its own Secretariat. Its constitution differed from that of the League: representation had been accorded not only to governments but also to representatives of employers' and workers' organisations. Albert Thomas was its first director.
The ILO successfully restricted the addition of lead to paint, and convinced several countries to adopt an eight-hour work day and forty-eight-hour working week. It also campaigned to end child labour, increase the rights of women in the workplace, and make shipowners liable for accidents involving seamen. After the demise of the League, the ILO became an agency of the United Nations in 1946.
Sweatshop
In 1910, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was founded to try to improve the condition of these workers.
Ben Gold
Determined to expand the union, Gold merged the IFWU with the National Leather Workers' Association (NLWA). The IFWU had organized leather workers over the years but never concertedly. The NLWA was formed by four local unions in Massachusetts in 1933, and affiliated with the CIO in 1937. By 1939, however, the NLWA had only 14 locals (half of which actually functioned) and only 5,000 dues-paying members. The two unions agreed to merge in March 1939. The NLWA approved the merger during its 5th National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts, April 29 to May 2, and the IFWU approved the merger at its annual convention in New York City on May 14. Ben Gold was elected the president of the newly amalgamated union, which adopted "International Fur and Leather Workers Union of the United States and Canada" (IFLWU)as its new name. The new union maintained distinctly separate fur and leather divisions. Each division had its own executive board and conventions and maintained its own finances. But the amalgamated union was nonetheless effective: Within a year, the union had organized 25,000 new workers into 42 new locals.
International Ms. Leather
It was in this social climate that the idea for the first International Ms Leather Contest was launched. IMsL was founded in July 1986, when Joann Lee and Alan Selby (the "Mr. S" of the Mr. S Leather store) assembled the initial steering committee. Joann Lee, Alan Selby, Kathy Gage, Gayle Rubin, Jim Thompson, Chris Burns, Patrick Toner, and Christian Haren composed the first planning meeting, and additional volunteers from the Outcasts were soon recruited to help out. At the beginning, IMsL had the support of the Outcasts and the Society of Janus, a mixed gender/ mixed sexual-orientation SM organization. Other prominent members of the Leather community were supportive of IMsL, including Chuck Renslow, the owner of IML
Evelyn Dubrow
Evelyn Dubrow (March 6, 1911, Passaic, New Jersey – June 20, 2006, Washington, D.C.) was a legendary labour lobbyist for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
Horace Moulden
In 1945, Moulden finally succeeded in persuading the unions to unite, forming the National Union of Hosiery and Knitwear Workers, and Moulden was elected as its first General President. In 1960, he was also elected to the executive committee of the International Textile and Garment Workers' Federation. He retired from all his posts in 1963.
John Newton (trade unionist)
Newton was elected as the president of the Middlesbrough branch of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers (NUTGW) in 1939, he was elected to the union's executive council in 1943, then became assistant regional organiser for the North of England in 1947 and then regional organiser in 1948. In 1952, he was elected as the union's general secretary, taking over from Anne Loughlin the following year. He also served as president of the International Textile and Garment Workers' Federation from its formation, then as the first president of the new International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation, standing down in 1972.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Several months later, in 1910, the ILGWU led an even larger strike, later named "The Great Revolt", of 60,000 cloakmakers. After months of picketing, prominent members of the Jewish community, led by Louis Brandeis, mediated between the ILGWU and the Manufacturers Association. The employers won a promise that workers would settle their grievances through arbitration rather than strikes during the term of the Agreement (a common clause in Union contracts today).
Congress of American Women
The Congress of American Women was an American women's rights organization. It was founded in New York on March 8 (International Women's Day) 1946 following a 1945 feminist conference in Paris. Its primary organizer was Elinor S. Gimbel (wife of Louis S. Gimbel, Jr., grandson of Adam Gimbel of Gimbels department store). It was affiliated with the Soviet sponsored organization Women's International Democratic Federation. In 1948 the organization was accused of being a communist front organization by the House Un-American Activities Committee and was forced to register as a "subversive" organization. The organization was finally dissolved in 1950. Among its members were anthropologist Gene Weltfish, aviator Jacqueline Cochran, educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown, and author and artist Muriel Draper. Actress Jean Muir was briefly a member.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU had a sudden upsurge in membership that came as the result of two successful mass strikes in New York City.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU established its own industrial engineering office, called the Management Engineering Department, in 1941. This followed two unsuccessful attempts to begin such a program in 1916 and 1919. The 1916 attempt had been suggested by future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and Morris Hillquit, who invited Taylor Society co-founder R. G. Valentine to set up an experiment to demonstrate the techniques of scientific management. Unfortunately, Valentine died before the experiment could be carried out. This was followed by a demonstration program carried out in Cleveland from 1919-1931 under Morris L. Cooke and Francis P. Goodell.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The failed 1926 strike nearly bankrupted the ILGWU; the International also lost, for a time, some of the locals that chose to follow their expelled leaders out of the ILGWU rather than remain within it. Sigman also proved nearly as abrasive, although not as fierce, toward the right wing within the ILGWU, leading Dubinsky to suggest in 1928 that the union should bring back Schlesinger, who had gone on to become General Manager of the "Forward", the highly influential Yiddish newspaper in New York, as Executive Vice-President of the union.
Leonora O'Reilly
There is some controversy between American and European historians and women's rights activists as to when the International Women's Day was first established. Some believe that the first American IWD was on March 8, 1907, a day marking the 50th anniversary of the New York Strike of Female Textile Workers. The European women's rights activists had declared their International Women's Day on March 18, 1911.
Ben Gold
In the summer and fall of 1928, Gold began building support for a new international union of fur workers. He met with the leaders of eight non-New York City fur workers' locals as well as a left-wing group of fur workers who were attempting to disaffiliate from what remained of the Joint Council. Included in the new union were 15,000 dressmakers and other garment workers comprising the left wing of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The new Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union was formed on January 1, 1929. Louis Hyman was elected President, and Ben Gold was elected Secretary-Treasurer. The thirty-nine member General Executive Board included African Americans, Russians, Poles, Greeks, women and even a youth delegate.
Sol Chick Chaikin
Sol Chick Chaikin (9 January 1918–1 April 1991) was an American trade union organizer. He served as president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union from 1975 until 1986.
Alexander Trachtenberg
In June 1920, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) hired Trachtenberg as an economist.
Los Angeles Garment Workers strike of 1933
In 1933 Rose Pesotta was sent from the New York City headquarters of the ILGWU to help organize Mexican garment workers. Rose described these women as having the potential to be the "backbone of our union in the West coast" increasing the membership of the ILGWU.
Waterproof Garment Workers' Trade Union
In 1914, the union renamed itself as the "Waterproof Garment Workers' Trade Union". The following year, it was a founder constituent of the United Garment Workers' Trade Union, but it retained significant autonomy, and became independent once more in 1921. The Great Depression saw great unhappiness among members with the union's organisation, many members leaving as a result. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress conducted an investigation, which concluded that the union should reform its structures, and the breakaway members should return to the union.
International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation
The ITGLWF was founded in 1970 as a result of the merger of the International Textile and Garment Workers' Federation and the International Shoe and Leather Workers' Federation. These organizations were preceded by much older ones: The International Glove Workers' Union was founded in 1892, the International Secretariat of Shoemakers in 1893, and the International Secretariat of Leather Workers in 1896. The International Federation of Textile Workers' Associations originated in 1893 and the International Tailors' Secretariat in 1896.
Fannia Cohn
Fannia Mary Cohn (1885–1962) was a leading figure in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) during the first half of the 20th Century. She is remembered as one of the pioneers of the workers' education movement in the United States and as a prolific author on the theme of trade union education.
Emma Paterson
The first women's union founded by the league in London was the bookbinders' in 1874. Unions of upholstresses, shirt-makers, tailoresses, and dressmakers quickly followed. In 1875 Mrs. Paterson was a delegate to the Trade Union Congress at Glasgow as a representative of the bookbinders' and upholstresses' societies. No woman had been admitted to the congress before. She attended each succeeding congress (except that of 1882) until her death, and by her tact partially overcame the prejudices of the working-men delegates against female activists. In the league's behalf she repeatedly addressed public meetings in London, Oxford, and other cities in the provinces, and edited the "Women's Union Journal", a monthly record of the league's proceedings, which was started in February 1876. Meanwhile, in 1876, Mrs. Paterson had founded the Women's Printing Society at Westminster. She devoted all her spare energies to managing that, and personally mastered the printer's craft.
Pauline Newman (labor activist)
In 1923, Newman became the educational director for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union Health Center. This center was the first comprehensive medical program created by a union for its members. Newman would carry out that position for sixty years, using it to promote worker health care, adult education, and greater visibility for women in the union. She quickly became a beloved and highly respected mentor to young women in the union. In addition, she promoted the cause of women in trade unions through her positions as vice president of the New York and National Women's Trade Union Leagues.
History of New York City (1898–1945)
The International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) formed in 1900 and was a major player in the American Federation of Labor. It grew rapidly in its first two decades and took credit for abolishing sewing work in the tenements, establishing a six-day, 54-hour week, writing union contracts that gave preference to ILGWU members applying for a job, and setting up arbitration machinery. The union was much larger and stronger than the hundreds of small shops with which it dealt. However, in the 1920s the ILGWU was ripped apart by battles between the established leadership, the Communists. By 1928 the establishment won out; the Communists only controlled the Furriers union, which they ruled by paramilitary violence. ILGWU membership had dropped to 40,000 (the great majority of whom were women). The early years of the Great Depression further undermined the union. Under the leadership of David Dubinsky, the ILGWU became a major supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal, and it grew rapidly in membership in the late 1930s and during World War II.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The strike was only partially successful. The ILGWU accepted an arbitrated settlement in February 1910 that improved workers' wages, working conditions, and hours, but did not provide union recognition. A number of companies, including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, refused to sign the agreement. But even so, the strike won a number of important gains. It encouraged workers in the industry to take action to improve their conditions, brought public attention to the sweatshop conditions.
Louis Stulberg
Louis Stulberg (1901–1977) was president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union from 1966 to 1975.
Los Angeles Garment Workers strike of 1933
The Los Angeles Garment Workers strike of 1933 is considered to be one of the most influential strikes in Los Angeles after the passing of the New Deal. The strike is known for being one of the first strikes where Mexican immigrant workers played a prominent role. The garment workers strike occurred in the fall of 1933 in the downtown Garment District in Los Angeles, California. Leaders of the strike, including Rose Pesotta and other members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), organized the strike to be culturally orientated in order to include Mexican immigrant workers to fight for union recognition in the garment industry.
Shelley Appleton
Shelley Appleton (born New York City, June 11, 1919, died New York City, July 27, 2005) was a local union manager and later Vice-President and General Secretary-Treasurer of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
World Organization of Workers
WOW was founded in September 1921, under the name of World Federation of Clerical Workers (WFCW). The WFCW joined the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions (IFCTU), which was later called the World Confederation of Labour (WCL). On October 31, 2006, the WCL was dissolved when it joined with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions to form the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Rather than join ITUC, the WFCW decided to function as an independent trade union federation under the name World Organization of Workers (WOW).
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
A group of wealthy women, among them Frances Perkins, Anne Morgan, and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, supported the struggles of working class women with money and intervention with officials and often picketed with them. They earned the derisive label "the mink brigade".
The International Alliance for Women
The International Alliance for Women (TIAW), formerly known as The National Alliance (1980–1986) and The International Alliance of Professional and Executive Women (TIA) (1986–2002), is a nonprofit corporation founded in 1980 to promote the interests of professional women. It adopted its current name in 2002, and should not be confused with the much older human rights organization International Alliance of Women.
International Workingmen's Association in America
The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), commonly known as the First International, was established in London in 1864. The organization was initially strictly European in composition, including prominently English, French, German, Polish, and Italian labor leaders and political activists.
International Trade Union Confederation
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC; ; ; ) is the world's largest trade union federation. It was formed on 1 November 2006, out of the merger of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL). The Founding Congress of the ITUC was held in Vienna and was preceded by the dissolution congresses of both the ICFTU and the WCL. The ITUC has three main regional organizations – the Asia-Pacific Regional Organization, the American Regional Organization, and the African Regional Organization. The Trade Union Development Cooperation Network (TUDCN) is an initiative of the ITUC whose main objective is to bring the trade union perspective into international development policy debates and improve the coordination and effectiveness of trade union development cooperation activities.
Helen Marot
In 1906 Marot became executive secretary of the New York branch of the national Women's Trade Union League. Marot also was responsible for creating the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants Union of New York. She was the organizer and leader of the first great strike of shirtwaist makers and dressmakers (1909–10) under the banner of the new International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
Rose Schneiderman
Schneiderman obtained wider recognition during a citywide capmakers' strike in 1905. Elected secretary of her local and a delegate to the New York City Central Labor Union, she came into contact with the New York Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), an organization that lent moral and financial support to the organizing efforts of women workers. She quickly became one of the most prominent members and was elected the New York branch's vice president in 1908. She left the factory to work for the league, attending school with a stipend provided by one of the League's wealthy supporters. She was an active participant in the Uprising of the 20,000, the massive strike of shirtwaist workers in New York City led by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1909. She also was a key member of the first International Congress of Working Women of 1919, which aimed to address women's working conditions at the first annual International Labour Organization Convention.
American Federation of Labor
Attitudes gradually changed within the AFL due to the pressure of organized female workers. Female-domination began to emerge in the first two decades of the 20th century, including particularly the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union. Women organized independent locals among New York hat makers, in the Chicago stockyards, and among Jewish and Italian waist makers, to name only three examples. Through the efforts of middle class reformers and activists, often of the Women's Trade Union League, these unions joined the AFL.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
As weak as the ILGWU was in the aftermath of the 1926 strike, it was nearly destroyed by the Great Depression. Its dues-paying membership slipped to 25,000 in 1932 as unionized garment shops shut or went nonunion or stopped abiding by their union contracts.
International Labor Union
The ILU was founded by members of the Workingmen's Party of the United States who were upset with the parties turn toward political action after the Newark convention of December, 1877. Some members wanted to concentrate on the economic organization of the working class and split from the renamed Socialistic Labor Party to found the International Labor Union in 1878. Members of the provisional committee of the new organization included Ira Steward, George Gunton, Albert Parsons, Friedrich Adolph Sorge, Otto Weydemeyer, J. P. McDonnell, George McNeill, Carl Speyer and George Schilling. It held its first congress in Paterson, New Jersey in December 1878.
History of New York City (1898–1945)
On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village took the lives of 145 mostly Italian and Jewish female garment workers, which eventually led to great advancements in the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations. Reaction to the disaster spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and took place in the context of broader union movements coordinated by the American Federation of Labor.
International Archives for the Women's Movement
The International Archives for the Women's Movement was founded in 1935 by three Dutch feminists, Rosa Manus, Johanna Naber and Willemijn Posthumus-van der Goot. Manus was a conference organizer for the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA), a secretary of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and was involved with many of the leading feminists of her day, including Aletta Jacobs and Carrie Chapman Catt. When Jacobs died in 1929, her books and papers were bequeathed to Manus. Naber was one of the founders of the IWSA and a historian dedicated to writing about the history of the women's movement, including writing biographies of prominent women. As a member of the National Dutch Women's Council , Naber had begun to collect publications on feminism and create an archive for the NVN and by 1921, had urged creation of a resource for other women to study. Posthumus-van der Goot was an economist and after she attended a 1934 conference arranged by the Dutch Association for Women's Interests and Equal Citizenship (DAWIEC) to study government policies on paid employment for women, she realized that there was inadequate information on the history of women working.
Nathalie Lemel
She worked as a bookbinder and retailer in Paris, and then became a socialist activist. In 1864, the International Workers Association (IWA, aka First International) was created in London in the midst of the agitated social climate in Europe. In August 1864, the bookbinders all went on strike in the middle of a very large conflict, where one of the best known militants was Eugène Varlin. In 1865, Nathalie Lemel joined the First International. When a new strike was called, she was a member of the strike committee and was elected union delegate, which was a rare position for a woman to hold in those days. She distinguished herself by her determination and organisation: she fought notably for the equality of salaries between men and women. According to a police report,
Nell Donnelly Reed
Nell focused on her employees' welfare, providing life insurance and medical fee support, a pension plan, an on-site cafeteria and medical care, and even funded and supported employees who wished to study evening courses at the local college. In addition to this, there was a scholarship fund for her employees' children. Despite pressure from the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union through the 1930s and 1940s to unionize the Donnelly Garment Company, this was resisted by her employees and the company did not join the ILGWU until 1968. By 1953 the Donnelly Garment Company was the largest manufacturer of women's clothing worldwide, having expanded from housedresses to making a wider range of garments.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Dubinsky and Sidney Hillman, leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, helped found the American Labor Party in 1936. the time Dubinsky and Hillman were both nominal members of the Socialist Party, although Dubinsky had, by his own admission, allowed his membership to lapse during the factional fighting of the 1920s. The Labor Party served as a halfway house for socialists and other leftists who were willing to vote for liberal Democratic politicians such as Roosevelt or Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, but who were not prepared to join the Democratic Party itself.
International Federation of Chemical and General Workers' Unions
The federation was founded in 1964, when the International Federation of General Factory Workers merged with the International Federation of Industrial Organizations and General Workers' Unions. Initially, the organisation was in competition with the International Federation of Petroleum and Chemical Workers, but that collapsed in 1976, with many of its affiliates joining the IFCGW, which renamed itself as the "International Federation of Chemical, Energy and General Workers' Unions" (ICEF). Membership accordingly rose from four million to 6.3 million by 1992.
Communist Women's International
The Communist Women's International was launched as an autonomous offshoot of the Communist International in April 1920 for the purpose of advancing communist ideas among women. The Communist Women's International was intended to play the same role for the international women's movement that the Red Peasant International played for poor agrarians and the Red International of Labor Unions played for the international labor movement.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU was unable, on the other hand, to prevent the flight of formerly unionized shops to other parts of the US or abroad, where unions were nonexistent and wages far lower, though there were exceptions, for example, the successful unionization of runaway shops by organizer Min Matheson in northeastern Pennsylvania in the 1950s. The garment industry is an exceptionally mobile one, requiring little capital, using easily carried equipment, and able to relocate its operations with little or no advance warning. The union lost nearly 300,000 members over twenty years to overseas manufacturing and runaway shops in the south.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Dubinsky was also active in the Jewish Labor Committee, which the ILGWU, along with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, the Workmen's Circle and other groups, helped establish in 1934 to respond to Hitler's rise to power and to defend the rights of European Jewry. After the war the ILGWU and other groups affiliated with the JLC helped arrange for adoptions of orphaned children who had survived the war. The JLC also played a part in the work of the AFL-CIO's Civil Rights Department.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
In the late 1920s, the ILGWU began focusing on recruiting African-American women, specifically. Floria Pinkney, a dressmaker from Connecticut who lived in Brooklyn, was instrumental in this focus. Pinkney spoke alongside Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters president A. Philip Randolph at a 1929 ILGWU meeting in Harlem focused on enrolling black women.
Association internationale des femmes
The origins of the association may perhaps be traced to the 1854 proposal by the Swedish feminist Fredrika Bremer for a women-only organization dedicated to peace.
The Swiss feminist Marie Goegg-Pouchoulin (1826–99) was active in the International Peace and Freedom League when it was founded in 1867, became a member of its central committee and edited the league's journal "Les États-Unis d'Europe".
On 8 March 1868 the journal published Goegg's proposal to create an international association of women in connection with the league.
This became the "Association Internationale des Femmes" (AIF).
Marie-Louise Rochebillard
In 1899 Rochebillard and some friends, also working women, created the first two women's unions.
Rochebillard became president of the Union of Women Employed in Commerce, and helped found the Union of Lyon Needle-workers.
Cécile Desvignes was president of the needlework union.
These unions marked the birth of Women's Christian unionism.
Soon after they founded the Union of Women Silk Workers.
1919 International Congress of Working Women
International labor turned their attention to the ILO and the Paris Peace Conference. Margaret Dreier Robins, president of U.S. labor organization the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), saw this international gathering as an opportunity to address the new era for women whose labor internationally proved essential to producing food, munitions, and manufactured goods throughout the first World War. The WTUL encouraged women from around the world to gather at the conference to make their voices and concerns surrounding labor conditions heard. Rose Schneiderman and Mary Anderson, both leading members of the WTUL, quickly ascended to France to address the newly established ILO. With them, they brought a document listing labour standards which was drafted by the WTUL’s Committee on Social and Industrial Reconstruction. The document included standards such as, “equal pay for equal work,” a maximum of an eight-hour day and a forty-four-hour work week, prohibiting night work for women, and social wages for maternity, old age, and unemployment. Schneiderman and Anderson, were not able to present the WTUL’s document to the Conference, but met with Britain’s Margaret Bondfield and many other women labor leaders from around the world. The female labor leaders agreed to establish an international labor women’s conference to prepare for the upcoming ILO convention which would take place in October in Washington D.C. A Call for Delegates was rapidly established and urged women of internationally recognized labor unions to attend the ICWW. The International Congress of Working Women was established and was scheduled to meet in mid October to discuss and establish their own labor guidelines which would protect women laborers internationally.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Dubinsky and the ILGWU played an active role in the Liberal Party for most of the 1950s and up until his retirement in 1966. The ILGWU ended its support for the party after Dubinsky left office.
Elizabeth Chambers Morgan
Morgan was a charter member of the Sovereigns of Industry from its establishment in 1874. She became a member of the Knights of Labor in 1881 and the master workman of local chapter 1789. She was the local 1789's delegate at the Chicago Trade and Labor Assembly, a trade union association. According to Ralph Scharnau, from 1888 to 1895 Morgan was the top woman in the Chicago labor movement. In June 1888 she led the effort to established the Ladies' Federal Labor Union No. 2703. She served as the secretary of the Union and was its delegate at the Chicago Trade and Labor Assembly. In four years the Ladies' Federal Labor Union started twenty-three new craft unions for women, all chartered by the American Federation of Labor (AFL).
Sophie Gonzales
Sophie Gonzales (January 30,1920 – January 1, 1995) was an activist and union organizer from San Antonio, Texas. She became the first Mexican-American female organizer of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU). In 1959 she organized the Tex-Son Garment company strike. She served as a union organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) in El Paso, Texas. She organized the 1965 strike at Hortex Manufacturing Company and the 1971 strike at Levi Strauss.
Women's Trade Union League
The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) was a U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women formed in 1903 to support the efforts of women to organize labor unions and to eliminate sweatshop conditions. The WTUL played an important role in supporting the massive strikes in the first two decades of the twentieth century that established the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and in campaigning for women's suffrage among men and women workers.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The union also found it nearly impossible to organize garment workers in communities such as Los Angeles, even when going after established manufacturers such as Guess?. Organizing on a shop by shop basis proved largely futile, given the proliferation of "fly by night" contractors, the number of workers willing to take striking or fired workers' jobs, the uncertain immigration status of many workers and the kinship connections that bound many workers to their foremen and other low-level managers. The union found itself in 1995 in nearly the same position that it had been in more than ninety years earlier, but without any prospect of the sort of mass upsurge that had produced the general strikes of 1909 and 1910.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU turned its attention to social and cultural matters at an early stage in its history. A resort called "Unity House" was opened in the Pocono Mountains (in Forest Park, PA) for union workers. An educational department offered courses in union leadership skills, citizenship and the English language, law, and pattern-making. Health centers provided medial care for union members and their families. The Union also sponsored sports teams and musical groups, while union members staged the topical musical "Pins and Needles" (1937–40). The ILGWU, following the lead of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, also developed housing for its members. The ILGWU, for a time, also owned radio stations in New York City (WFDR-FM 104.3, now WAXQ), Los Angeles (KFMV 94.7, now KTWV), and Chattanooga, Tennessee (WVUN 100.7, now WUSY).
Kate Mullany
Kate Mullany was an Irish immigrant who, with her co-workers Esther Keegan and Sarah McQuillan, organized approximately 300 women into the first sustained female union in the country, the Collar Laundry Union, in 1864. Mullany went on to be its president and was elected second vice-president of the National Labor Union.
International Ms. Leather
The year was 1986. International Mr. Leather (IML) had been in existence for eight years, preceded by the Mr. Gold Coast Contest. IML had grown quickly, starting with 12 contestants in 1979 and averaging close to 30 contestants a year. The Lesbian Sex Mafia, the women's SM organization in New York City, was celebrating its fifth anniversary. The Folsom Street Fair had been around for two years, and the Up Your Alley Fair had begun the year before. Many local and regional men's leather contests were in full swing. And Samois, the world's first women's SM group which was founded in the Bay Area in 1978 as "a lesbian feminist s/m organization," hosted a Ms Leather Contest in 1981.
Fannia Cohn
In 1914 the National Women's Trade Union League (NWTUL), an organization established in 1903, launched a training school for women organizers, a year-long program combining academics and field work. New York ILGWU leader Cohn was one of the first three chosen to attend the program in Chicago. In 1915, she was asked by the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union to organize Chicago dressmakers and in doing so founded ILGWU Local No. 59. In connection with this activity, Cohn was a key leader of a major strike of Chicago garment workers which began late in 1915 and continued into the following year, serving as a general organizer for the ILGWU.
Women's Social and Political Union
The Women's Social and Political Union was founded as an independent women's movement on 10 October 1903 at 62 Nelson Street, Manchester, home of the Pankhurst family. Emmeline Pankhurst, along with two of her daughters, Christabel and Sylvia, and her husband, Richard, before his death in 1898, had been active in the Independent Labour Party (ILP), founded in 1893 by Keir Hardie, a family friend. (Hardie later founded the Labour Party.)
Jacob Panken
In 1901, Panken left accountancy to go to work as an organizer for the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. Returning to the industry in which he first worked as a child, Panken was an organizer of the Purse and Bag Workers' Union in 1903.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU began reducing its support for the CIO and, after a few years in which it attempted to be allies with both sides, reaffiliated with the AFL in 1940. Dubinsky regained his former positions as a vice president and member of the executive council of the AFL in 1945. He was the most visible supporter within the AFL of demands to clean house by ousting corrupt union leaders; the AFL-CIO ultimately adopted many of his demands when it established codes of conduct for its affiliates in 1957.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The ILGWU sponsored a contest among its members in the 1970s for an advertising jingle to advocate buying ILGWU-made garments. The winner was "Look for the union label". The Union's "Look for the Union Label" song went as follows:
Lajos Egri
Egri came to the US in 1906 and worked in a New York garment factory as a tailor and presser. He was an active member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union.
Trade Unions International of Public and Allied Employees
The union was founded at a conference in East Berlin on October 29, 1949 as the International Union of Trade Unions of Postal, Telephone and Telegraph Workers. The name was changed in 1955 during a conference in Vienna, when it broadened its scope to include workers in the health, finance and public administration areas.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. The union, generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG," merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1995 to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented 250,000 workers between them, down from the ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969.
Israel Breslow
Israel Breslow (1906 in Ukraine – July 28, 1985 in New York City) was a garment worker, local union manager, union staffer, and Vice-President of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU).
Upholsterers International Union of North America
The Upholsterers International Union of North America (called the UIU or UIUNA) was a North American labor union of upholsterers. It was founded in 1892 when eight small met at a conference in Chicago and agreed to combine. It affiliated with the American Federation of Labor in 1900. In 1929, a convention voted to change the name to Upholsterers, Carpet and Linoleum Mechanics' International Union of North America but the other name remained in common use. Their official organ was the "Upholsters' Journal"; as of 1936, it was estimated that they had 11,500 members.
Luigi Antonini
Luigi Antonini (1883–1968), a United States Trade union leader, was the first Vice President of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and organizer of the Italian-American Labor Council (IALC).
United Garment Workers of America
The United Garment Workers of America (UGW or UGWA) was a United States labor union which existed between 1891 and 1994. It was an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor.
National Union of Glovers and Leatherworkers
The union was formed in 1920 by the merger of the Amalgamated Society of Glovers and the United Glovers' Mutual Aid Society as the National Union of Glovers (NUG). The union was based primarily in Yeovil and the surrounding areas, a major centre for the glove-making industry in Britain. In 1919 the NUG rejected a proposal from the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives (NUBSO) to amalgamate, on the basis that the NUG's status as the majority union on the Glove Manufacturing Joint Industrial Council (JIC) gave it a strong bargaining position with employers. In 1954 the union changed its name to include workers in the leather industry. In 1971 the NUGLW merged with the Amalgamated Society of Leather Workers, NUBSO and the National Union of Leather Workers and Allied Trades to form the National Union of Footwear, Leather and Allied Trades (NUFLAT).
General Council of the International Workingmen's Association
The General Council of the International Workingmen's Association was formed on October 5 1864 following the St. Martin's Hall Meeting held the previous week. The Universal League for the Material Elevation of the Industrious Classes provided a base for them to operate from at 18 Greek Street.
Co-operative Women's Guild
In 1884 the league changed its name to the Women's Co-operative Guild and later to the Co-operative Women's Guild. In 1899, Margaret Llewelyn Davies was elected general secretary of the Guild and was widely credited with greatly increasing the success of the Guild. By 1910 it had 32,000 members. Maternity benefits were included in the National Insurance Act 1911 because of the guild's pressure. The guild became more politically active, and expanded its work beyond the British Isles; their objectives included the establishment of minimum wages and maternity benefits, and in April 1914 they were involved in an International Women's Congress at the Hague which passed a resolution totally opposing war:
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Sigman could not, however, regain control of the New York locals, including Dressmakers' Local 22, headed by Charles S. Zimmerman, where the CP leadership and their left-wing allies, some anarchists and some Socialists, enjoyed strong support of the membership. Local 22 rallied to prevent the International from physically retaking their union hall. Those unions led the campaign to reject a proposed agreement that Sigman had negotiated with the industry in 1925, bringing more than 30,000 members to a rally at Yankee Stadium to call for a one-day stoppage on August 10, 1925.
Portobello, Dublin
The International Tailors, Machinists and Pressers' Trade Union was founded in November 1908 (and registered in April 1909) by Jewish clothing workers hailing from the South Circular Road area. Its HQ was at 52 Camden Street (located next to the headquarters for Concern Worldwide). Aaron Klein of 14 Warren Street was its first treasurer. A later Secretary was Isaac Baker from Emorville Avenue.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Under his leadership the union, more than three fourths of whose members were women, continued to be led almost exclusively by men. Rose Pesotta, a longtime ILGWU activist and organizer, complained to Dubinsky that she had the same uncomfortable feeling of being the token woman on the ILGWU's executive board that Dubinsky had complained about when he was the only Jew on the AFL's board. The union did not, however, make any significant efforts to allow women into leadership positions during Dubinsky's tenure.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The union often saw itself, both before and during Dubinsky's years at the head of the union, as the savior of the industry, eliminating the cutthroat competition over wages that had made it unstable while making workers miserable. Dubinsky took pride in negotiating a contract in 1929 that contained no raises, but allowed the union to crack down on subcontractors who "chiseled". Dubinsky even claimed to have once turned down an employer's wage offer in negotiations as too costly to the employers, and therefore harmful to employees. Dubinsky summarized his attitude by saying that "workers need capitalism the way a fish needs water."
Textile and clothing trade unions
International
International Federation of University Women
The International Federation of University Women (IFUW), renamed Graduate Women International (GWI), is an international organization for women university graduates. IFUW was founded in the wake of the First World War by both British and North American college and university workers who were hoping to contribute to congenial relations between women of different nationalities.
United Garment Workers of America
The union came to national attention with the 1910 Chicago Garment Workers' Strike, which had started as a spontaneous strike on September 22, by a handful of women workers at Hart Schaffner & Marx. It spread to a citywide labor action of almost 40,000 workers that lasted until February 1911. Chicago was then the largest producer of men's garments in the United States, Hart Schaffner & Marx the largest of Chicago manufacturers, and UGW the only union in the industry.
Socialist International Women
Socialist International Women is the international organization of the women's organizations of the socialist, social democratic and labour parties affiliated to the Socialist International. The organization was established on August 17, 1907.
Women's Trade Union League
The WTUL played a similar role in the strike of mostly male cloakmakers in New York City and men clothing workers in Chicago in 1910, in the 1911 garment workers strike in Cleveland and in many other actions in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri and Wisconsin. By 1912, however, the WTUL began to distance itself from the labor movement, supporting strike action selectively when it approved of the leadership's strategy and criticizing the male-dominated leadership of the ILGWU that it saw as unrepresentative of women workers. The WTUL's semi-official relationship with the American Federation of Labor was also strained when the United Textile Workers, an AFL affiliate, insisted that it stop providing relief for Lawrence, Massachusetts textile workers who refused to return to work during the strike led by the Industrial Workers of the World; some WTUL leaders complied, while others refused, denouncing both the AFL and the WTUL for its acquiescence in strikebreaking activities.
International Federation of Business and Professional Women
The International Federation of Business and Professional Women was founded in Geneva, Switzerland, on August 26, 1930, by Dr. Lena Madesin Phillips of Kentucky. As President of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs of the United States of America, Phillips had organized several trips to Europe in 1928 and 1929 to network with business and professional women in Europe. Hundreds of American clubwomen participated in these "Goodwill Tours" and the movement was born. The founding member countries of the BPW International were Austria, Canada, France, Great Britain, Italy and the United States of America. Dr. Phillips was elected as the first president of BPW International and served until 1947. In 1933 Dr. Phillips served as president of the International Council of Women which was held in conjunction with the Chicago World's Fair.
International Federation of University Women
On 11 July 1919, the IFUW was founded in London with founding members from three countries: Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. In addition to promoting peace, the advancement of careers for women in university formed a major objective for the organization. IFUW created fellowships and promoted the founding of women's clubhouses where women could stay during research visits overseas. The IFUW was renamed Graduate Women International in April 2015.
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
In 1923, Benjamin Schlesinger, the International's President, resigned; the convention elected Morris Sigman, who had previously been Secretary-Treasurer of the International before resigning in a dispute with Schlesinger, as its new President. Sigman, a former IWW member and anti-communist, began to remove Communist Party (CP) members from leadership of locals in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston.
World Confederation of Labour
The WCL was founded at The Hague in 1920 under the name of the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions (IFCTU) as a confederation of trade unions associated with the Christian Democratic parties of Europe. Originally catering to Roman Catholic constituencies, the IFCTU was designed to provide an alternative to the secular trade unions in Europe at the time, basing its foundation on the "Rerum novarum" and the "Quadragesimo anno".