Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
Encyclopedia
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America 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
in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, 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 progressive union named Workers United, Led by former UNITE president Bruce Raynor.
affiliate the United Garment Workers
. The roots of this conflict date back to the general strike of Chicago
, when a spontaneous strike by a handful of women workers led to a citywide strike of 45,000 garment workers in 1910, That strike was a bitter one and pitted the strikers against not only their employers and the local authorities, but also their own union.
The leadership of the United Garment Workers mistrusted the more militant local leadership in Chicago and in other large urban locals, which had strong Socialist
loyalties. When it tried to disenfranchise those locals' members at the UGW's 1914 convention, those locals, representing two thirds of the union's membership, bolted to form the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. The AFL refused to recognize the new union and the UGW regularly raided it, furnishing strikebreakers and signing contracts with struck employers, in the years to come.
The Amalgamated's battles with the UGW's leadership also soured the union's relations with Abraham Cahan
and the Daily Forward
, which Cahan edited. During the 1913 strike by the United Brotherhood of Tailors in New York City, Cahan and the United Hebrew Trades
had taken sides with the UGW leadership against the strikers by endorsing a settlement that the strikers rejected. The same split surfaced again the following year when the Forward and members of the Socialist Party who had a stake in the AFL supported the new union, but only tepidly, when it split from the UGW and the AFL. While the Forward played a direct role in the internal politics of the other major garment union, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, in years to come, it had far less influence over the ACWA.
, where it was able to sign an agreement with one of the largest manufacturers that, like HSM (Hart Schaffner and Marx) in Chicago, sought labor peace, it found itself at odds with an unusual alliance of UGW locals, the corrupt head of the Baltimore Federation of Labor, and the Industrial Workers of the World
, who undermined the Amalgamated's strikes and attacked strikers. Complicating the picture further were the ethnic bonds between the many Lithuanian members of the IWW and the subcontractors whom the Amalgamated was trying to put out of business and the anarcho-syndicalist politics of many Lithuanian workers, who had developed their politics in opposition to czarist oppression in their homeland. The Amalgamated eventually prevailed, as the contradictions between the IWW's politics and its alliance with small contractors and the AFL eventually undercut its support among Lithuanian workers.
The ACWA also benefited from the relatively pro-union stance of the federal government during World War I
, during which the federal Board of Control and Labor Standards for Army Clothing enforced a policy of labor peace in return for union recognition. With the support of key progressives, such as Walter Lippman, Felix Frankfurter
, and Charles Rosen the union was able to obtain government support in organizing outposts such as Rochester, New York
as part of an experiment in industrial democracy.
That experiment ended in 1919, when employers in nearly every industry with a history of unionism went on the offensive. The ACWA not only survived a four month lockout in New York City
, but came away in an even stronger position. By 1920, the union had contracts with 85 percent of men's garment manufacturers and had reduced the workweek to 44 hours.
Under Hillman's leadership, the union tried to moderate the fierce competition between employers in the industry by imposing industry wide working standards, thereby taking wages and hours out of the competitive calculus. The ACWA tried to regulate the industry in other ways, arranging loans and conducting efficiency studies for financially troubled employers. Hillman also favored "constructive cooperation" with employers, relying on arbitration rather than strikes to resolve disputes during the life of a contract. As he explained his philosophy in 1938:
The ACWA also pioneered a version of "social unionism" that offered low-cost cooperative housing and unemployment insurance to union members and founded a bank that would serve labor's interests. Hillman and the ACWA had strong ties to many progressive reformers, such as Jane Addams
and Clarence Darrow
.
Hillman was, on the other hand, opposed to revolutionary unionism and to the Communist Party USA
. While Hillman had maintained warm relations with the Communist Party during the early 1920s—at a time when his leadership was being challenged both by the Forward on the right and by Lithuanian and Italian syndicalists and Jewish anarchists within the union on the left—those relations cooled in 1924 when the CP withdrew its support for the Farmer-Labor Party created to support La Follette's candidacy for President
. From that point forward Hillman battled the CP activists within his union, but without the massive internecine strife that nearly tore apart the ILGWU in this era.
The CP did not refuse to put up a fight when it broke with Hillman and the ACW leadership. The struggle was most acute in outlying areas, such as Montreal
, Toronto
and Rochester, where the CP and its Canadian counterpart were strongly entrenched. In New York City the fight was often physical, as Hillman brought in Abraham Beckerman, a prominent member of the Socialist Party with close ties to The Forward, to use strongarm tactics on communist opponents within the union. By the end of the decade, the CP was no longer a significant force in the union.
, who refused on principle to work for employers.
Internecine warfare
between labor sluggers eliminated many of the earliest racketeers. "Little Augie" Jacob Orgen
took over the racket, providing muscle for the ILGWU in the 1926 strike. Louis "Lepke" Buchalter
had Orgen assassinated in 1927 in order to take over his operations. Buchalter took an interest in the industry, acquiring ownership of a number of trucking firms and control of local unions of truckdrivers in the garment district, while acquiring an ownership interest in some garment firms and local unions.
Buchalter, who had provided services for some locals of the Amalgamated during the 1920s. also acquired influence within the ACW. Among his allies within the ACW were Beckerman and Philip Orlofsky, another officer in Cutters Local 4, who made sweetheart deals with manufacturers that allowed them to subcontract to cut-rate subcontractors out of town, using Buchalter's trucking companies to bring the goods back and forth.
In 1931 Hillman resolved to act against Buchalter, Beckerman and Orlofsky. He began by orchestrating public demands on Jimmy Walker
, the corrupt Tammany Hall
Mayor of New York, to crack down on racketeering in the garment district, Hillman then proceeded to seize control of Local 4, expelling Beckerman and Orlofsky from tech union, then taking action against corrupt union officials in Newark, New Jersey
. The union then struck a number of manufacturers to bar the subcontracting of work to non-union or cut rate contractors in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey
. In the course of that strike the union picketed a number of trucks run by Buchalter's companies to prevent them from bringing finished goods back to New York.
While the campaign cleaned up the ACW, it did not drive Buchalter out of the industry. The union may, in fact, have made a deal of some sort with Buchalter, although no evidence has ever surfaced, despite intensive efforts of political opponents of the union, such as Thomas Dewey
and Westbrook Pegler
, to find it. Buchalter claimed, before his execution in 1944, that he had never dealt with either Hillman or Dubinsky, head of the ILGWU.
reduced the Amalgamated's membership to one third or less of its former strength. Like many other unions, the ACWA revived with the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act
, whose promise of legal protection for workers' right to organize brought thousands of garment workers back to the ACWA. The AFL finally allowed the ACWA to affiliate in 1933.
Hillman and the ACWA were supporters of the New Deal
and Roosevelt from the outset. FDR named Hillman to the Labor Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration
in 1933 and to the National Industrial Recovery Board in 1934. Hillman provided key assistance to Senator Robert F. Wagner
in the drafting of the National Labor Relations Act
and to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins
in winning enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act
.
Within the AFL, the ACWA was one of the strongest advocates for organizing the mass production industries, such as automobile manufacture and steel, where unions had almost no presence, as well as the textile industry, which was only partially organized. Hillman was one of the original founders in 1935 of the Committee for Industrial Organizing, an effort led by John L. Lewis
, and the ACWA followed the Mine Workers and other unions out of the AFL in 1937 to establish the CIO as a separate union confederation.
The ACWA provided major financial support for the Textile Workers Organizing Committee, which sought to establish a new union for textile workers after the disastrous defeat of the United Textile Workers' strike
in 1934. The Textile Workers Union of America, with more than 100,000 members, came out of that effort in 1939 as part of Operation Dixie
. The ACWA also helped create the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union of America through the CIO's Department Store Workers Organizing Committee.
Hillman and Lewis eventually had a falling out, with Lewis advocating a more independent tack in dealing with the federal government than Hillman. Lewis, however, gradually distanced himself from the CIO, finally resigning as its head and then withdrawing the United Mine Workers from it in 1942. Hillman remained in it, still the second most visible leader after Philip Murray
, Lewis' successor.
Jacob Potofsky
, a fellow veteran of the Hart. Schaffner & Marx strike of 1910, succeeded Hillman upon his death in 1946. The Amalgamated continued to grow during the 1950s, but, like other garment unions, faced long-term pressures from the flight of unionized work to non-union manufacturers in the South
and abroad.
The ACWA merged with the TWUA in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. The ACTWU merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1995 to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
(UNITE), which later merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union
(HERE) to become UNITE HERE
.
Hillman used the ACWA as a base, along with the ILGWU led by David Dubinsky
, in founding the American Labor Party
in 1936, an ostensibly independent party that served as a halfway house for Socialists and other leftists who wanted to support FDR's reelection but were not prepared to join the Democratic Party. Dubinsky later split from the Labor Party over personal and political differences with Hillman to found the Liberal Party of New York
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
labor union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman
Sidney Hillman
Sidney Hillman was an American labor leader. Head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, he was a key figure in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and in marshaling labor's support for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party.-Early years:Sidney Hillman was...
for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Industrial Organizations
Congress of Industrial Organizations
The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, proposed by John L. Lewis in 1932, was a federation of unions that organized workers in industrial unions in the United States and Canada from 1935 to 1955. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 required union leaders to swear that they were not...
. It merged with the Textile Workers Union of America
Textile Workers Union of America
The Textile Workers Union of America was an industrial union of textile workers established through the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1939 and merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America to become the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1976. It waged a...
in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, which merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union 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...
in 1995 to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
The Union of Needle trades, Industrial, and Textile Employees was a labor union in the United States, formed in 1995 as a merger between the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union...
(UNITE). UNITE merged in 2004 with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union
The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union , was a United States labor union representing workers of the hospitality industry, formed in 1891. In 2004, HERE merged with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees to form UNITE HERE. HERE notably organized the staff of Yale...
(HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE
UNITE HERE
UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with more than 265,000 active members The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries...
. 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 progressive union named Workers United, Led by former UNITE president Bruce Raynor.
Founding
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America—also known as "ACWA" or simply "the Amalgamated"—formed in 1914 as a result of the revolt of the urban locals against the conservative AFLAmerican Federation of Labor
The American Federation of Labor was one of the first federations of labor unions in the United States. It was founded in 1886 by an alliance of craft unions disaffected from the Knights of Labor, a national labor association. Samuel Gompers was elected president of the Federation at its...
affiliate the United Garment Workers
United Garment Workers
The United Garment Workers of America was a trade union formed in New York in April 1891, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor....
. The roots of this conflict date back to the general strike of Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, when a spontaneous strike by a handful of women workers led to a citywide strike of 45,000 garment workers in 1910, That strike was a bitter one and pitted the strikers against not only their employers and the local authorities, but also their own union.
The leadership of the United Garment Workers mistrusted the more militant local leadership in Chicago and in other large urban locals, which had strong Socialist
Socialist Party of America
The Socialist Party of America was a multi-tendency democratic-socialist political party in the United States, formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party which had split from the main organization...
loyalties. When it tried to disenfranchise those locals' members at the UGW's 1914 convention, those locals, representing two thirds of the union's membership, bolted to form the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. The AFL refused to recognize the new union and the UGW regularly raided it, furnishing strikebreakers and signing contracts with struck employers, in the years to come.
The Amalgamated's battles with the UGW's leadership also soured the union's relations with Abraham Cahan
Abraham Cahan
Abraham "Abe" Cahan was a Lithuanian-born American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician.-Early years:...
and the Daily Forward
The Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
, which Cahan edited. During the 1913 strike by the United Brotherhood of Tailors in New York City, Cahan and the United Hebrew Trades
United Hebrew Trades
United Hebrew Trades was an association of Jewish labor unions in New York.It was founded by the Socialist Labor Party's Yiddish Branch 8 and Russian Branch 17 together with Jewish unions in in New York in October 1888. Among the founding members were Morris Hillquit and Bernard Weinstein...
had taken sides with the UGW leadership against the strikers by endorsing a settlement that the strikers rejected. The same split surfaced again the following year when the Forward and members of the Socialist Party who had a stake in the AFL supported the new union, but only tepidly, when it split from the UGW and the AFL. While the Forward played a direct role in the internal politics of the other major garment union, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, in years to come, it had far less influence over the ACWA.
Growth
The Amalgamated solidified its gains and extended its power in Chicago through a series of strikes in the last half of the 1910s. The Amalgamated found it harder, on the other hand, to make gains in BaltimoreBaltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, where it was able to sign an agreement with one of the largest manufacturers that, like HSM (Hart Schaffner and Marx) in Chicago, sought labor peace, it found itself at odds with an unusual alliance of UGW locals, the corrupt head of the Baltimore Federation of Labor, and the Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World
The Industrial Workers of the World is an international union. At its peak in 1923, the organization claimed some 100,000 members in good standing, and could marshal the support of perhaps 300,000 workers. Its membership declined dramatically after a 1924 split brought on by internal conflict...
, who undermined the Amalgamated's strikes and attacked strikers. Complicating the picture further were the ethnic bonds between the many Lithuanian members of the IWW and the subcontractors whom the Amalgamated was trying to put out of business and the anarcho-syndicalist politics of many Lithuanian workers, who had developed their politics in opposition to czarist oppression in their homeland. The Amalgamated eventually prevailed, as the contradictions between the IWW's politics and its alliance with small contractors and the AFL eventually undercut its support among Lithuanian workers.
The ACWA also benefited from the relatively pro-union stance of the federal government during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, during which the federal Board of Control and Labor Standards for Army Clothing enforced a policy of labor peace in return for union recognition. With the support of key progressives, such as Walter Lippman, Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
, and Charles Rosen the union was able to obtain government support in organizing outposts such as Rochester, New York
Rochester, New York
Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
as part of an experiment in industrial democracy.
That experiment ended in 1919, when employers in nearly every industry with a history of unionism went on the offensive. The ACWA not only survived a four month lockout in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, but came away in an even stronger position. By 1920, the union had contracts with 85 percent of men's garment manufacturers and had reduced the workweek to 44 hours.
Under Hillman's leadership, the union tried to moderate the fierce competition between employers in the industry by imposing industry wide working standards, thereby taking wages and hours out of the competitive calculus. The ACWA tried to regulate the industry in other ways, arranging loans and conducting efficiency studies for financially troubled employers. Hillman also favored "constructive cooperation" with employers, relying on arbitration rather than strikes to resolve disputes during the life of a contract. As he explained his philosophy in 1938:
- Certainly, I believe in collaborating with the employers! That is what unions are for. I even believe in helping an employer function more productively. For then, we will have a claim to higher wages, shorter hours, and greater participation in the benefits of running a smooth industrial machine....
The ACWA also pioneered a version of "social unionism" that offered low-cost cooperative housing and unemployment insurance to union members and founded a bank that would serve labor's interests. Hillman and the ACWA had strong ties to many progressive reformers, such as Jane Addams
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was a pioneer settlement worker, founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher, sociologist, author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace...
and Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow was an American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union, best known for defending teenage thrill killers Leopold and Loeb in their trial for murdering 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks and defending John T...
.
Hillman was, on the other hand, opposed to revolutionary unionism and to the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
. While Hillman had maintained warm relations with the Communist Party during the early 1920s—at a time when his leadership was being challenged both by the Forward on the right and by Lithuanian and Italian syndicalists and Jewish anarchists within the union on the left—those relations cooled in 1924 when the CP withdrew its support for the Farmer-Labor Party created to support La Follette's candidacy for President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
. From that point forward Hillman battled the CP activists within his union, but without the massive internecine strife that nearly tore apart the ILGWU in this era.
The CP did not refuse to put up a fight when it broke with Hillman and the ACW leadership. The struggle was most acute in outlying areas, such as Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
and Rochester, where the CP and its Canadian counterpart were strongly entrenched. In New York City the fight was often physical, as Hillman brought in Abraham Beckerman, a prominent member of the Socialist Party with close ties to The Forward, to use strongarm tactics on communist opponents within the union. By the end of the decade, the CP was no longer a significant force in the union.
Fighting organized crime
While battling the CP, Hillman turned a blind eye to the infiltration of gangsters within the union. The garment industry had been riddled for decades with small-time gangsters, who ran protection and loansharking rackets while offering muscle in labor disputes. First hired to strongarm strikers, some went to work for unions, who used them first for self-defense, then to intimidate strikebreakers and recalcitrant employers. ILG locals used "Dopey" Benny FeinBenny Fein
Benjamin "Dopey Benny" Fein was an early Jewish American gangster who dominated New York labor racketeering in the 1910s. With a criminal record dating back to 1900, Fein's arrest record included thirty charges from petty theft and assault to grand larceny and murder...
, who refused on principle to work for employers.
Internecine warfare
Labor Slugger War
The Labor Sluggers War was a 15-year period of gang wars among New York labor sluggers for control of labor racketeering from 1911 to 1927. This began in 1911 with the first war between "Dopey" Benny Fein and Joe "The Greaser" Rosenzweig against a coalition of smaller gangs and continuing on and...
between labor sluggers eliminated many of the earliest racketeers. "Little Augie" Jacob Orgen
Jacob Orgen
Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen was a New York gangster involved in bootlegging and labor racketeering during Prohibition.-Biography:...
took over the racket, providing muscle for the ILGWU in the 1926 strike. Louis "Lepke" Buchalter
Louis Buchalter
Louis "Lepke" Buchalter was a Jewish American mobster and head of the Mafia hit squad Murder, Inc. during the 1930s. After Dutch Schultz' request of the Mafia Commission for permission to kill his enemy, U.S. Attorney Thomas Dewey, the Commission decided to kill Schultz in order to prevent the hit...
had Orgen assassinated in 1927 in order to take over his operations. Buchalter took an interest in the industry, acquiring ownership of a number of trucking firms and control of local unions of truckdrivers in the garment district, while acquiring an ownership interest in some garment firms and local unions.
Buchalter, who had provided services for some locals of the Amalgamated during the 1920s. also acquired influence within the ACW. Among his allies within the ACW were Beckerman and Philip Orlofsky, another officer in Cutters Local 4, who made sweetheart deals with manufacturers that allowed them to subcontract to cut-rate subcontractors out of town, using Buchalter's trucking companies to bring the goods back and forth.
In 1931 Hillman resolved to act against Buchalter, Beckerman and Orlofsky. He began by orchestrating public demands on Jimmy Walker
Jimmy Walker
James John Walker, often known as Jimmy Walker and colloquially as Beau James , was the mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932...
, the corrupt Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall
Tammany Hall, also known as the Society of St. Tammany, the Sons of St. Tammany, or the Columbian Order, was a New York political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society...
Mayor of New York, to crack down on racketeering in the garment district, Hillman then proceeded to seize control of Local 4, expelling Beckerman and Orlofsky from tech union, then taking action against corrupt union officials in Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
. The union then struck a number of manufacturers to bar the subcontracting of work to non-union or cut rate contractors in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
and New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. In the course of that strike the union picketed a number of trucks run by Buchalter's companies to prevent them from bringing finished goods back to New York.
While the campaign cleaned up the ACW, it did not drive Buchalter out of the industry. The union may, in fact, have made a deal of some sort with Buchalter, although no evidence has ever surfaced, despite intensive efforts of political opponents of the union, such as Thomas Dewey
Thomas Dewey
Thomas Edmund Dewey was the 47th Governor of New York . In 1944 and 1948, he was the Republican candidate for President, but lost both times. He led the liberal faction of the Republican Party, in which he fought conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft...
and Westbrook Pegler
Westbrook Pegler
Francis James Westbrook Pegler was an American journalist and writer. He was a popular columnist in the 1930s and 1940s famed for his opposition to the New Deal and labor unions. Pegler criticized every president from Herbert Hoover to FDR to Harry Truman to John F. Kennedy...
, to find it. Buchalter claimed, before his execution in 1944, that he had never dealt with either Hillman or Dubinsky, head of the ILGWU.
The Great Depression and the founding of the CIO
The Great DepressionGreat Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
reduced the Amalgamated's membership to one third or less of its former strength. Like many other unions, the ACWA revived with the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act
National Industrial Recovery Act
The National Industrial Recovery Act , officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 The National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA), officially known as the Act of June 16, 1933 (Ch. 90, 48 Stat. 195, formerly...
, whose promise of legal protection for workers' right to organize brought thousands of garment workers back to the ACWA. The AFL finally allowed the ACWA to affiliate in 1933.
Hillman and the ACWA were supporters of the New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
and Roosevelt from the outset. FDR named Hillman to the Labor Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration
National Recovery Administration
The National Recovery Administration was the primary New Deal agency established by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. The goal was to eliminate "cut-throat competition" by bringing industry, labor and government together to create codes of "fair practices" and set prices...
in 1933 and to the National Industrial Recovery Board in 1934. Hillman provided key assistance to Senator Robert F. Wagner
Robert F. Wagner
Robert Ferdinand Wagner I was an American politician. He was a Democratic U.S. Senator from New York from 1927 to 1949.-Origin and early life:...
in the drafting of the National Labor Relations Act
National Labor Relations Act
The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act , is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector who create labor unions , engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in...
and to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins
Frances Perkins , born Fannie Coralie Perkins, was the U.S. Secretary of Labor from 1933 to 1945, and the first woman appointed to the U.S. Cabinet. As a loyal supporter of her friend, Franklin D. Roosevelt, she helped pull the labor movement into the New Deal coalition...
in winning enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act
Fair Labor Standards Act
The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is a federal statute of the United States. The FLSA established a national minimum wage, guaranteed 'time-and-a-half' for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors in "oppressive child labor," a term that is defined in the statute...
.
Within the AFL, the ACWA was one of the strongest advocates for organizing the mass production industries, such as automobile manufacture and steel, where unions had almost no presence, as well as the textile industry, which was only partially organized. Hillman was one of the original founders in 1935 of the Committee for Industrial Organizing, an effort led by John L. Lewis
John L. Lewis
John Llewellyn Lewis was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960...
, and the ACWA followed the Mine Workers and other unions out of the AFL in 1937 to establish the CIO as a separate union confederation.
The ACWA provided major financial support for the Textile Workers Organizing Committee, which sought to establish a new union for textile workers after the disastrous defeat of the United Textile Workers' strike
Textile workers strike (1934)
The textile workers' strike of 1934 was the largest strike in the labor history of the United States at the time, involving 400,000 textile workers from New England, the Mid-Atlantic states and the U.S. Southern states, lasting twenty-two days...
in 1934. The Textile Workers Union of America, with more than 100,000 members, came out of that effort in 1939 as part of Operation Dixie
Operation Dixie
Operation Dixie was the name of the post-war campaign by the Congress of Industrial Organizations to unionize industry in the Southern United States, particularly the textile industry...
. The ACWA also helped create the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union of America through the CIO's Department Store Workers Organizing Committee.
Hillman and Lewis eventually had a falling out, with Lewis advocating a more independent tack in dealing with the federal government than Hillman. Lewis, however, gradually distanced himself from the CIO, finally resigning as its head and then withdrawing the United Mine Workers from it in 1942. Hillman remained in it, still the second most visible leader after Philip Murray
Philip Murray
Philip Murray was a Scottish born steelworker and an American labor leader. He was the first president of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee , the first president of the United Steelworkers of America , and the longest-serving president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations .-Early...
, Lewis' successor.
Jacob Potofsky
Jacob Potofsky
Jacob Samuel Potofsky was an American trade unionist.He was president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and was known for his skills as a conciliator within the union movement. His work landed him on the master list of Nixon political opponents.He died in New York City of...
, a fellow veteran of the Hart. Schaffner & Marx strike of 1910, succeeded Hillman upon his death in 1946. The Amalgamated continued to grow during the 1950s, but, like other garment unions, faced long-term pressures from the flight of unionized work to non-union manufacturers in the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
and abroad.
Merger with the TWUA and the ILGWU
The ACWA had played a leading role in the funding and leadership of the Textile Workers Organizing Committee, an organization founded by the CIO in 1939 as part of its effort to organize the South. The TWOC, which later renamed itself the Textile Workers Union of America, grew to as many as 100,000 members in the 1940s, but made little headway organizing in the South in the decades that followed.The ACWA merged with the TWUA in 1976 to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. The ACTWU merged with the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in 1995 to create the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
The Union of Needle trades, Industrial, and Textile Employees was a labor union in the United States, formed in 1995 as a merger between the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union...
(UNITE), which later merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union
The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union , was a United States labor union representing workers of the hospitality industry, formed in 1891. In 2004, HERE merged with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees to form UNITE HERE. HERE notably organized the staff of Yale...
(HERE) to become UNITE HERE
UNITE HERE
UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with more than 265,000 active members The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries...
.
Political activities
The ACWA had been active in trying to form a labor party in the 1920s, combining some elements of the Socialist Party with supporters of La Follette.Hillman used the ACWA as a base, along with the ILGWU led by David Dubinsky
David Dubinsky
David Dubinsky was an American labor leader...
, in founding the American Labor Party
American Labor Party
The American Labor Party was a political party in the United States established in 1936 which was active almost exclusively in the state of New York. The organization was founded by labor leaders and former members of the Socialist Party who had established themselves as the Social Democratic...
in 1936, an ostensibly independent party that served as a halfway house for Socialists and other leftists who wanted to support FDR's reelection but were not prepared to join the Democratic Party. Dubinsky later split from the Labor Party over personal and political differences with Hillman to found the Liberal Party of New York
Liberal Party of New York
The Liberal Party of New York is a minor American political party that has been active only in the state of New York. Its platform supports a standard set of social liberal policies: it supports right to abortion, increased spending on education, and universal health care.As of 2007, the Liberal...
.
See also
- Cooperative VillageCooperative VillageCooperative Village is a community of housing cooperatives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City. The cooperatives are centered around Grand Street in an area south of the entrance ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge and west of FDR Drive...
- Jimmy BurkeJimmy BurkeJimmy Burke is the name of:*James Burke , Irish-American gangster*Jimmy Burke , American baseball player...
- Richard Eaton
Further reading
- Fraser, Steven, Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993. ISBN 0-8014-8126-0.
- Josephson, Matthew, Sidney Hillman, Statesman of American Labor, New York: Doubleday & Company 1952.