International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union

Examples of International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in the following topics:

• Early Efforts in Urban Reform

  • The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who died from the fire, smoke inhalation, or falling or jumping to their deaths.
  • The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
  • 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.
  • That, however, only prompted the rest of the workers to seek help from the union.
  • The news of the strike spread quickly to all of the New York garment workers.

• The New Immigrants on Strike

  • Led by Clara Lemlich and supported by the National Women's Trade Union League of America (NWTUL), the strike began in November 1909.
  • In the garment industry, sixty-five hour work weeks were normal, and in season they might expand to as many as 75 hours.
  • Workers could be fined for being late for work or for damaging a garment they were working on.
  • In response, the workers at Triangle walked off the job, supported by Local 25 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which had called for a strike.
  • The strike, which lasted more than two months, was successful, defying the assumptions of conservative trade unions within the AFL that immigrant, female, and ethnically divided workers could not be organized.

• Work in Industrial America

  • By the 1890s, the Federation had begun to organize only skilled workers in craft unions and became an organization of mostly white men.
  • In most ways, the AFL's treatment of women workers paralleled its policy towards black workers.
  • Female-domination began to emerge in the first two decades of the twentieth century, including the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union.
  • From the beginning, unions affiliated with the AFL found themselves in conflict when both unions claimed jurisdiction over the same groups of workers: both the Brewers and Teamsters claimed to represent beer truck drivers, both the machinists and the International Typographical Union claimed to represent certain printroom employees, and the machinists and a fledgling union known as the "Carriage, Wagon, and Automobile Workers Union" sought to organize the same employees, even though neither union had made any effort to organize or bargain for those employees.
  • The Metal Trades Department engaged in some organizing of its own, primarily in shipbuilding, where unions such as the Pipefitters, Machinists and Iron Workers joined together through local metal workers' councils to represent a diverse group of workers.

• Mobilizing a Nation

  • The service also brought 110,000 workers into the country from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, enrolled 1 million people in a reserve labor force, and in early 1918 began mobilizing 3 million workers for agriculture, ship building, and defense plant positions.
  • AFL membership soared to 2.4 million in 1917, and its unions strongly encouraged their young men to enlist in the military.
  • They fiercely opposed efforts to reduce recruiting and slow war production by groups like the International Workers of the World (IWW), which was controlled by anti-war socialists and subsequently shut down by the federal government.
  • The strikes ultimately failed, however, forcing unions back to positions similar to those around 1910.
  • First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt directed the planting of a victory garden on the White House grounds to support the initiative.