United Garment Workers of America | |
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| Merged into | United Food and Commercial Workers |
|---|---|
| Founded | April 1891 |
| Dissolved | 1994 |
| Location | |
Members | 15,000 (1994) |
| Affiliations | AFL–CIO |
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.
The UGWA was formed in New York in April 1891 and led a successful strike of 16,000 garment workers in New York City in 1893, but soon adopted a more conservative, conciliatory tone with manufacturers. [1]
Thomas A. Rickert of Chicago served as UGW's president from 1904 [2] through at least 1939. [3]
At the UGW's 1914 convention in Nashville, Tennessee, a number of large urban locals, with stronger Socialist loyalties and more willingness to strike, and who represented a full two-thirds of the national membership, split off to form the rival Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America under Hillman's founding leadership.
In 1994, the UGW's 15,000 members merged into the United Food and Commercial Workers.
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. [4]
The strike was a bitter one, with hundreds of strikers injured and two killed. Future union president Sidney Hillman was a rank-and-file leader, and lawyer Clarence Darrow was involved with the settlement negotiations. The action not only pitted workers against management and against Chicago police on horseback, it also exposed divisions in the union—namely that the organization did not support its unskilled members. Similar allegations dogged the UGA's mishandling of the 1913 New York Garment Workers Strike, a nine-week walkout of some 85,000 workers. [5]
Later UGW strikes included one in February, 1913, in Rochester, New York, where striker Ida Braiman was killed and others wounded by gunfire. [6] During a subsequent strike in Chicago in October 1915, striker Edward Kapper was killed in a riot on October 26, [7] and 10-year-old bystander Leo Schroeder was crushed by a mob on the 29th. [8]
Sidney Hillman was an American labor leader. He was the head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and was a key figure in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and in marshaling labor's support for President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal coalition of the Democratic Party.
William Z. Foster was a radical American labor organizer and Communist politician, whose career included serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party USA from 1945 to 1957. He was previously a member of the Socialist Party of America and the Industrial Workers of the World, leading the drive to organize packinghouse industry workers during World War I and the steel strike of 1919.
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), whose members were employed in the women's clothing industry, was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first US 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 the 1990s 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.
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations. It merged with the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU), which merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1995 to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged in 2004 with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. After a bitter internal dispute in 2009, the majority of the UNITE side of the union, along with some of the disgruntled HERE locals left UNITE HERE, and formed a new union named Workers United, led by former UNITE president Bruce Raynor.
The Women's Trade Union League (WTUL) (1903–1950) was a U.S. organization of both working class and more well-off women 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.
Jacob Samuel Potofsky was a Russian-born American trade unionist, best known as second president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, succeeding founder Sidney Hillman.
The 1905 Chicago Teamsters' strike was a sympathy strike and lockout by the United Brotherhood of Teamsters in the summer of 1905 in the city of Chicago, Illinois. The strike was initiated by a small clothing workers' union. But it soon spread as nearly every union in the city, including the Teamsters, supported the job action with sympathy strikes. Initially, the strike was aimed at the Montgomery Ward department store, but it affected almost every employer in the metropolitan region after the Teamsters walked out. The strike eventually pitted the Teamsters against the Employers' Association of Chicago, a broad coalition of business owners formed a few years earlier to oppose unionization in Chicago.
Hart Schaffner Marx is an American manufacturer of ready-to-wear menswear owned by New York–based Authentic Brands Group. With origins dating to a family business in 1872 Chicago and incorporated in 1911 as "Hart Schaffner & Marx", the company is now located in Des Plaines, Illinois.
Meyer Kestnbaum was an American businessman and civic leader who was president of Hart, Schaffner & Marx, served as Chairman of President Dwight Eisenhower's Commission on Intergovernmental Relations in 1954–1955, and later was a special assistant to Eisenhower.
Jacob Benjamin Salutsky, also known by the alias as J.B.S. Hardman, was a Russian political activist, radical journalist and trade union functionary. Hardman was a proponent of radicalism as a Marxist thinker and a leader of the Jewish Socialist Federation of the Socialist Party of America (SPA). A brief stint in the American Communist movement ended in his expulsion in 1923.
The 1910 Chicago garment workers' strike, also known as the Hart, Schaffner and Marx (HSM) strike, was a labor strike established and led by women in which diverse workers in the garment industry showed their capability to unify across ethnic boundaries in response to an industry's low wages, unrealistic production demands, and poor working conditions. The strike began on September 22, led by 17-year old Hannah Shapiro, with sixteen women protesting the establishment of a bonus system that demanded high production rates, while also cutting in the piece rate by ¼ cent. Eventually up to 41,000 workers walked out at the peak of the strike. The strike was initially supported by the United Garment Workers (UGW), however the UGW withdrew its support in December over issues of settlement and the strike came to a halt when a deal was agreed upon between the labor leader Sidney Hillman and HSM in January 1911. Although the most militant strikers held out until February 18, the strike succeeded in getting Rate Committee mandated contracts that presented workers with improved wages and conditions.
August Bellanca (1880–1969) was an American labor activist who was a founder and three-time vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA). The ACWA was formed as an offshoot of United Garment Workers and was the result of tensions between the national union and urban locals. Bellanca served as vice president at intervals over a period of fifty years, from 1916-1934, 1946-1948 and also from 1952-1966.
Clothing industry or garment industry summarizes the types of trade and industry along the production and value chain of clothing and garments, starting with the textile industry, embellishment using embroidery, via the fashion industry to apparel retailers up to trade with second-hand clothes and textile recycling. The producing sectors build upon a wealth of clothing technology some of which, like the loom, the cotton gin, and the sewing machine heralded industrialization not only of the previous textile manufacturing practices. Clothing industries are also known as allied industries, fashion industries, garment industries, or soft goods industries.
The United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union (1934–1983), also known by acronyms including UHCMW, U.H.C. & M.W.I.U. and UHC & MWIU, was a 20th-century American labor union.
Bessie Hillman was a labor activist and founder of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. She led the 1910 Chicago Garment Workers' Strike, which brought about the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America labor union in 1914.
The Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIC) was an international economic development venture launched in 1922 by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in conjunction with the government of Soviet Russia. The corporation, mostly funded measure by small donations from sympathetic American union members, was conceived as a mechanism for the launch of new clothing factories to help alleviate the economic distress which had wracked the Soviet republic during the recently terminated era of Civil War and War Communism.
The Journeymen Tailors Union (JTU) was a trade union in the United States, with some local branches in Canada.
A Cloak maker worked in the garment industry, often in an enterprise whose workers were represented by a union.
Frank Rosenblum was an American labor unionist.
Thomas Alfred Rickert was an American labor union leader.
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