In 1900 male cloak makers organized the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) to improve working conditions for employees manufacturing women's clothing. The founders promoted the union label, discouraged strikes, and endorsed socialism. Union leaders recruited the young immigrant women who composed 70 percent of the industry's work force, but did not trust women's ability to sustain constructive union membership.
The 1909 "uprising of the twenty thousand" among New York's female shirtwaist makers invigorated the union. This strike dramatized the plight of young Eastern European Jewish and Italian workers who received a meager three dollars for a fifty-four-hour work week. By withstanding freezing temperatures, strikebreakers' assaults, police brutality, arrests, and imprisonment, these women demonstrated their ability to act collectively to win improved working conditions and partial union recognition.
Inspired by the uprising, the ILGWU hired women organizers to convert picket-line heroics into union solidarity, including Rose Schneiderman, a Polish cap maker; Gertrude Barnum, a settlement-house resident who organized dressmakers; and Lithuanian-born Pauline Newman, a socialist. Several locals pioneered educational and social programs for their female members. By 1916 women composed 50 percent of the ILGWU's members, including eight women organizers and the educational director position.
After passage of the Wagner Act in 1935, the ILGWU recovered ground lost in the anti-union 1920s. After 1960 Latina and Asian women entered the industry in significant numbers, recruited by Katie Quan and other ILGWU organizers in California and New York.
The ILGWU utilized the courts to enforce health and safety regulations. Although some workers complained that the male-dominated leadership of the 90-percent female ILGWU neglected crucial "women's issues," union members receive health benefits, social and educational programs, paid vacations, and relative job security. In 1995, ILGWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers' Union (ACTWU) to form UNITE!, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees.
Carolyn D. McCreesh
See also
Textile/Apparel Workers.
