Seamstresses and Strikes: Women Organizers and the Garment Industry

SEAMSTRESSES AND STRIKES: WOMEN ORGANIZERS AND THE GARMENT INDUSTRY

Women Unionizing

In 1914 Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), expressed his regret that women had not joined men in a concerted effort to improve standards in the nation's factories. Gompers's observation, however, was at least partially based in his own bias against women factory workers. If he had looked more closely he would have seen that women were taking important steps toward unionization. Militant women garment workers entered the labor movement in large numbers as organizers, picketers, and negotiators in the 1910s. These brave women willingly met the threats a strike imposed on their livelihood and faced the reality of social ostracism because striking violated the norms of respectability and femininity. Women organizers had to deal with problems that male union organizers did not understand or would not acknowledge.

Grudging Acceptance

Near the end of the decade the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) had eighty-two thousand members and was one of the five largest AFL affiliates. Women comprised more than half of the membership list. This was a remarkable figure considering men did not really want to include women in unions. Male members were intent on monopolizing the industry's best jobs and viewed women as competitors for those jobs. It was a grudging acceptance, at best, for women throughout the 1910s. The effort to organize in the garment industry, however, proved that women, both middle class and wage earners, could play an active role in the trade union movement. Ultimately, it would be women themselves who would have to take the responsibility of improving their working conditions, a call often repeated by Gompers and other AFL leaders. Women answered by joining unions and demanding a place within their hierarchy. They demanded a better working environment, improved wages and hours, and safer conditions. The cross-class alliance between middle-class activists and working women, although treated with suspicion by male union leaders, played a major role in bringing about success.

Companies Resist Unionizing Efforts

Factory employers valued women workers for their willingness to accept low wages and terrible working conditions in silence. Therefore, the companies used every method possible in impeding women's attempts to organize. Employers used police assistance, hired thugs and prostitutes to harass female leaders, and convinced the judiciary to issue injunctions against strikers and impose heavy fines. Meeting the threats required determination and middle-class support, and garment workers had both in abundance. Young Jewish women dominated the industry and had been infused with socialist idealism encountered by themselves or their families in eastern Europe, combined with a cultural heritage that encouraged opposition to oppression.

Middle-Class Activism

Middle-class women activists tried to interest young women in union participation. They introduced courses on labor topics in settlement houses, instruction in English, social evenings, music, and conferences to bring a social component to the organizing effort. Activists replicated what they saw male organizers doing by attempting to make the union a focal point in women's lives. The female leaders from outside the factories sanctioned the strike, another important step in fusing the two groups, and their active support won community acceptance for the workers' cause, Agnes Nestor, Rose Schneiderman, Pauline Newman, Dorothy Jones, and Fannia Cohn were among the early leaders of the women's unionizing movement. The young women of eastern European descent on the front lines, however, were the real focal point. They demonstrated a surprising willingness to sacrifice what few comforts they had to fight for a better life for themselves and their children.

Strikes

In 1910 women led strikes in the garment industries in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland. Although the strikes were defeated because of police protection and hired thugs, they set the tone for the rest of the decade. These strikes also proved that women would stand up to the violence that punctuated strikes in the 1910s. Three years later, white-goods workers struck in New York, led by women as young as fifteen. The strike lasted six weeks, and women won better pay and shorter hours, but not the closed shop they desired. This strike was one of four successful women's strikes in 1913. In the early 1910s unions moved to educate women workers and teach them trade union history in the hope that they would use this knowledge in future uprisings. The period also witnessed some opposition to the assistance of middle-class women. Workers argued that these "outsiders" were becoming too numerous and turning the unions into paper organizations.

AFL Ambivalence

National AFL leaders remained ambivalent toward women in the movement. Embittered delegates to the 1914 national AFL convention even took steps to remove women from the job market completely. Gompers, growing ever more rigid and conservative with age, viewed working women as casual laborers just occupying themselves while they waited for marriage. He refused to take bold action to help improve their situation and straddled the fence in dealing with the Women's Trade Union League (WTUL). Gompers simply did not trust women and continued to question the participation of middle-class activists in the union movement. He was also suspicious of the numerous socialists within the women's movement. The introduction of the suffrage issue infuriated him because he thought that this politically charged issue would create divisions in the ranks of organized labor. Ultimately, it was Gompers's belief that women belonged in the home and not at work that most shaped his view.

Women Wielding Power

While dealing with numerous assaults from outside and internal fighting within the unionization effort, some energetic women were able to gain influential positions in their unions. Unable to move up the AFL ranks, militant women wielded power in other ways. They directed social activities, participated in conventions, led membership drives, and held local offices. Many men were forced to reexamine their assumptions about women when they realized the positive impact the women were having. Men could no longer assume that women were not seriously committed to union work and to the movement to improve the lot of all workers in the United States.

Sources:

Foster Rhca Dulles, Labor in America: A History (New York: Crowell, 1966);

Carolyn D. McCreesh, Women in the Campaigns to Organize Garment Workers, 1880-191 7 (New York: Garland, 1985).