DUBINSKY, DAVID 1892-1982

President of the international ladies garment workers union

Leadership

In the early months of 1933 the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) stood virtually in ruins. Internal factionalism had ripped the union apart. By the end of the year, however, the ILGWU had become one of the most powerful unions in the United States. The man responsible for the dramatic turnaround was a short, squat, feisty leader named David Dubinsky. Dubinsky personally carried the union to the forefront. His deep commitment to industrial democracy and unionism placed Dubinsky among the great leaders of the 1930s.

Background

Dubinsky may have the most interesting background of any union leader from the period. He was born David Dobnievski in Brest Litovsk, Russian Poland, on 22 February 1892. His family moved to Lodz, Poland, the industrial center of the country, where his father owned a small bakery. Dubinsky went to work in his family's bakery at age eleven, and by fifteen he had advanced to master baker. He joined a local bakers' union and became deeply involved in unionism and underground rebellion. Dubinsky quickly became a leader of the union and led a strike against the city's Jewish bakeries, including his father's. He was arrested as a labor agitator and sent to jail. His father bribed the jailer to get his fifteen-year-old released, and Dubinsky spent the next three months hiding in Brest Litovsk. In 1908 a spy betrayed the young man, and he was arrested as a second offender and sentenced to Chelyabinsk, Siberia. Dubinsky spent the next eighteen months in prison. In 1910, on his way to exile, he bribed a guard by giving him his winter clothing and escaped from the train taking him to Siberia. Dubinsky made his way back to Lodz but had to remain in hiding. His brother, Jacob, sent him a ticket for New York City since he could have no future in Lodz. In the fall Dubinsky was smuggled over the German border and sailed from Antwerp, Belgium, on 1 January 1911. Dubinsky was just nineteen years old when he entered the New York harbor.

Craftsman and Leader

Dubinsky arrived in the United States in 1911, and within two weeks he took out citizenship papers, joined the Socialist Party, and enrolled in night school. He became a citizen in 1911 and set out to learn the cloak-cutting trade and joined Local 10 of the ILGWU. Soon Dubinsky became a master of the cloak-cutting craft and one of the best in New York City. His strong interest in unionism and the Socialist Party propelled him to union leadership in Local 10. The branch chapter became like a home for Dubinsky. He was named to Local 10's executive board in 1918 and by 1922 had become the chapter's president and general manager. In that same year he also began his rise in the national organization, being named a vice president and a member of the ILGWU executive board. Dubinsky was elected secretary-treasurer in 1929, and his meteoric rise was capped by being elected president in 1932 on condition that he also remain secretary-treasurer.

Character

Dubinsky was a master at getting along with people. Often called an accommodator and pragmatist, he was able to chart a middle course between feuding labor leaders William Green and John L. Lewis. He was also a man of extremes, sometimes rigidly dieting to lose twenty-five pounds in one month and then falling prey to fits of self-indulgence when he would eat marinated herring and goose pastrami washed down with ample quantities of scotch and rum. Dubinsky, like many other prominent labor leaders, was deeply committed to political and industrial democracy. He was against all forms of discrimination and, although he opposed communism, he allowed some former Communists into the ILGWU. Dubinsky set himself apart from other labor leaders by insisting on a modest salary, and he guarded his union's treasury like a hawk. He was content within the confines of the ILGWU and not as willing to gamble on national unionism as was Lewis or Sidney Hillman.

Reorganizing the ILGWU

The membership of the ILGWU fell from 105,000 in 1920 to 40,000 in 1933. The organization was heavily in debt, and its internal paper. Justice, ceased publication. When Dubinsky took over in 1932 he used the initiative of the New Deal to take the offensive in reviving the union. He called for a strike against the nonunion Philadelphia dress industry in May 1933 and was successful, raising the spirits of the entire organization. After the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), which he helped formalize as a labor adviser to the National Recovery Administration (NRA), Dubinsky called for volunteers to help reorganize the ILGWU. He received a huge response, and hundreds of thousands of circulars were printed; even Justice resumed publication. Dubinsky opened organizational drives simultaneously in sixty cities.

Successful Strikes

Dubinsky used the help of the federal government to standardize working conditions nationally through the NRA code. The Roosevelt administration's prolabor stance helped the ILGWU organize and rebuild its membership. Dubinsky called for a general dress strike, and sixty thousand workers walked out in New York City. The employers soon folded under the pressure of union solidarity. After the impressive victory in New York, Dubinsky faced little resistance from other factory owners. Underwear workers struck for three weeks in September 1933 until their wages were increased. Corset and brassiere makers and neckwear and scarf workers also staged brief and successful strikes under Dubinsky's leadership.

Improved Conditions

At the ILGWU convention in May 1934 Dubinsky announced that membership had reached two hundred thousand, making it the third largest union in the American Federation of Labor (AFL). Eighty new locals had been chartered all across the nation and in Canada. Wages, hours, and conditions improved dramatically in all industries. Dubinsky profited from his hard work by being named a vice president of the AFL and a member of its executive council in 1935. Dubinsky, however, agreed with Lewis that the AFL needed to include nonskilled workers. Lewis called on him for help in founding the Committee for Industrial Organizations (CIO). Sensing that his union followed his lead in favoring industrial unionism, Dubinsky pledged five thousand dollars to help form the CIO, even though he was opposed to dual unionism.

Attempted Neutrality

Dubinsky believed that a moderate course could be maintained between the AFL and the CIO. He was a close personal friend of AFL leader William Green and CIO leader Lewis, but the rivalry between the two men made it impossible for Dubinsky to stay neutral. The desire to accommodate both sides in the rupture directly reflects Dubinsky's character. He wanted to commit simultaneously to industrial unionism and to labor unity. Dubinsky wanted to move in a direction that he believed was necessary and still hold on to old ties that had helped his union reach its powerful position.

Independence

Dubinsky and the ILGWU participated actively in CIO ventures. The union contributed $345,000 to organizing efforts in steel and textiles. Dubinsky, however, still tried to bring peace between the AFL and CIO, a fruitless effort, especially after the AFL expelled all ILGWU locals from the organization. Although Dubinsky's efforts at mediating a settlement failed, he supported Lewis and the CIO until Lewis decided to change the committee into a permanent national organization. The ILGWU was isolated between the two groups and remained that way for a year and a half. Independence might have destroyed many unions, but Dubinsky had built the ILGWU to such great strength that it could survive on its own and bide its time until it was feasible to rejoin one of the groups.

Legacy

In early 1940 Dubinsky initiated talks with Green about the ILGWU returning to the AFL. Green wanted the organization back because of the group's largesse and because bringing the ILGWU back within the AFL would be a victory in the war with the CIO. The AFL voted to let the ILGWU back into the group, and the motion passed 640 to 12. By 1945 Dubinsky regained his vice presidency and his position of the executive council. Over the next twenty years Dubinsky remained an active leader, retiring from the presidency of the ILGWU in 1966. In that span he participated in politics and labor concerns and served on various public and private boards and agencies. For the rest of his long, illustrious life Dubinsky sustained his commitment to improving the lives of America's working class.

Source:

Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970).

David Dubinsky

David Dubinsky (1892-1982) was an influential American trade union official. His leadership of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union demonstrated his ability to combine the more mundane attributes of the labor movement with the broader social vision of a reformer.

Together with such men as John L. Lewis, Sidney Hillman, and Philip Murray, David Dubinsky built the American labor movement as it now functions. During the Great Depression and the New Deal of the 1930s, through the creation of industrial unions (as opposed to craft unions) in the mass-production industries, these leaders brought trade unionism into a position of power whereby labor influenced big business and national politics.

Dubinsky (originally Dobnievski) was born in Brest-Litovsk in Russian Poland on Feb. 22, 1892, the youngest of six children in a poor Jewish family. His father moved the family to Lodz, where he operated a bakery. At the age of 11, David went to work for his father. By 14 he was a master baker and a member of the Bakers' Union, an affiliate of the Polish Bund, a revolutionary organization of Jewish workers.

Membership in the Bund led to Dubinsky's arrest in 1907 during a wave of Czarist repression following the abortive 1905 Russian Revolution. After a short jail term he returned to union activity, leading a strike by bakers in Lodz, which resulted in another arrest and expulsion to Brest-Litovsk. Dubinsky, however, returned illegally to Lodz and to union affairs, only to be arrested in 1908 and this time sentenced to exile in Siberia.

He was too young to be sent to Siberia, so Dubinsky was jailed in Lodz for a year and a half, until he was old enough to be transported there. On the way to Siberia he escaped and, convinced he had no future within the Russian Empire, decided to emigrate to the New World. In 1911 Dubinsky arrived in the United States.

Within two weeks Dubinsky took out his first papers, joined the Socialist party, and enrolled in night school. He soon became a garment cutter (the most skilled craft in the garment industry) and a member of Local 10, International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), the union which represented the trade's skilled-labor "aristocrats." At first Dubinsky devoted his time to Socialist party activities and to the Cooperative movement, but after his marriage to Emma Goldberg in 1914 he began to concentrate upon his craft and to take more interest in local union affairs.

Dubinsky spoke for the more recent immigrants in the union, whose increasing numbers assisted his rise to union power. In 1918 he was elected to Local 10's executive board and a year later was vice-president. Elected president in 1920, the following year Dubinsky also became general manager, a full-time, well-paid position that allowed him to leave the cutter's bench. By 1924 he added to his offices the secretary-treasurership of the local, thus becoming the most powerful figure within the New York locals that dominated the ILGWU.

A born pragmatist whose Socialist dreams had died, and eager to rise in the union hierarchy, Dubinsky joined the anti-Communist faction of the ILGWU during the 1920s in the internal war that almost tore the organization apart. With the aid of Dubinsky's powerful Local 10, the anti-Communists triumphed, but the union was wrecked and nearly bankrupt.

A member of the ILGWU's general executive board since 1923, Dubinsky was elected secretary-treasurer in 1929, allowing him to run the union since its president was desperately sick. In 1932 the president died, and Dubinsky replaced him, still retaining his secretary-treasurer's office. Until 1959 he held both positions.

Franklin Roosevelt's election to the U.S. presidency in 1932 offered Dubinsky true opportunity. Taking advantage of New Deal labor legislation, Dubinsky had increased his union's membership to over 200,000 by the end of the next year.

Elected to the American Federation of Labor (AFL) executive council in 1934, Dubinsky supported the industrial unionists' effort to organize mass-production workers. When the AFL refused its assistance, Dubinsky in 1936 resigned from the executive council. He assisted in forming the Committee on Industrial Organization (CIO). Always a firm believer in labor unity, however, when the CIO became a permanent, second national labor federation in 1938, Dubinsky took the ILGWU out. He returned his union to the AFL in 1940 and 5 years later was reelected to the AFL executive council.

During the 1930s Dubinsky broke with socialism, becoming a fervent supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal. He declared, "Trade unionism needs capitalism like a fish needs water." Because New York City's Jewish workers looked with suspicion upon the local Democratic machine, Dubinsky helped create the American Labor party to capture former Socialist voters for the New Deal. When he thought that Communists had taken over the American Labor party, he helped found the Liberal party. By the mid-1940s he was one of the nationally respected leaders of the pro-New Deal, rabidly anti-Communist wing of the American labor movement. In 1947 he helped found Americans for Democratic Action, and independent political organization.

At his retirement from union office in March 1966, Dubinsky left a thriving labor organization, though it was no longer committed to the establishment of a cooperative society. Dubinsky's heritage to the labor movement was a belief in militant economic action, a trust in reform politics, and a faith in the justice of a socially conscious capitalism.

Dubinsky died on September 17, 1982, in Manhattan after a lengthy illness. He was 90 years old. According to the New York Times, "Dubinsky's most notable achievement was bringing in a standard 35-hour week to the sweatshop industry that was in a constant state of chaos."

Further Reading

The World of David Dubinsky (1957) is a complete but uncritical biography by Max D. Danish, who worked for Dubinsky. Another glowing tribute to Dubinsky is the general history of the ILGWU and the needle trades by Benjamin Stolberg, Tailor's Progress: The Story of a Famous Union and the Men Who Made It (1944). Two books by Irving Bernstein offer the most objective account of Dubinsky's union activities in the 1920s and 1930s: The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 (1960) and Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941 (1969). A short but excellent general introduction to the garment industry and its unions is Joel Seidman, The Needle Trades (1942). Dubinsky's obituary appeared in the September 18, 1982 edition of the New York Times. □

David Dubinsky , 1892–1982, American labor leader, president (1932–66) of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), b. Brest-Litovsk, Poland. He was a baker in his father's shop in Lodz (then in Russian Poland), and after becoming active in the bakers' union, he was banished (1908) to a Siberian prison. He escaped and reached (1911) the United States, where he became a cloak cutter and joined the ILGWU. He rose rapidly through the ranks of the union and served as president from 1932 until his retirement in 1966. After 1932 he led in the expansion of membership of the ILGWU.

Although a vice president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), he led (1935–36) his union to join the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO; see American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations ). When the AFL suspended the CIO unions (1936), Dubinsky resigned from the AFL. He opposed, however, the establishment of the CIO on a permanent independent basis, and in 1938 he also broke with it, thus making the ILGWU independent until 1940 when it reaffiliated with the AFL. In 1936 he was one of the founders of the American Labor party in New York State. When it fell under Communist influence, he resigned and helped organize (1944) the Liberal party . In 1945 he again became a vice president and member of the executive council of the AFL, retaining the position after it merged with the CIO in 1955. His efforts at ousting corrupt union leaders culminated in the antiracket codes adopted by the AFL-CIO in 1957.

Bibliography: See M. D. Danish, The World of David Dubinsky (1957).