David Dubinsky
Encyclopedia
David Dubinsky (born February 22, 1892, Brest-Litovsk, Russian Empire [now Brest, Belarus]; died September 17, 1982, New York, N.Y., U.S.) was an American labor leader. He served as president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
(ILGWU) between 1932 and 1966, took part in the creation of the CIO
and was one of the founders of the American Labor Party
and the Liberal Party of New York
.
, Belarus
), the youngest of five boys and three girls. Dubinsky and his family moved to Łódź, Poland
, shortly before he turned three. David's father Bezalel Dobnievski, a religious Jew, owned a bakery, but limited himself to administrative tasks related to the enterprise. David's mother Shaina Wyshengrad died when he was eight, with his father remarrying a year and a half later. David worked from early childhood delivering bread from his father's bakery to local shops, while attending a Hebrew school, where he studied Polish
, Russian
, and Yiddish. He was later forced to leave a semi-private school he attended to take work in his father's bakery to replace a brother who had left abruptly.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905
, David attended a mass meeting which led to his kinship, if not actual membership, with the Bund
, a Jewish socialist organization close to the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. He joined the bakers' union, which was controlled by the Bund, and owing to his superior education and fluency in several languages, was elected assistant secretary within the union by 1906. By age 15, David was a committed socialist.
In 1907, David was arrested for helping to plan a bakers' strike and was held for three days. In January 1908, David was arrested again, this time for attending a union election meeting held without a police permit. Not quite 16, the boy was held for 18 months in jails in Łódź, Warsaw, and Moscow
, before being sentenced to exile in Chelyabinsk
, Siberia
. While en route to his place of exile, he walked out of the camp where the authorities were holding him and, after several months hiding in Chelyabinsk and Białystok, managed to make his way to the United States in 1911 with a ticket sent to him by one of his brothers, who was living in New York City
.
, then joined the Socialist Party
in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
. With the help of his brother's connections through the Bakery Workers Union, Dubinsky got a job as a cutter in a cloak shop, then a desirable job in an industry otherwise dominated by sweatshops.
Now a member of Local 10 of the ILGWU, Dubinsky joined a group of members who rebelled against the old guard leadership of that union to argue for fairer distribution of job opportunities within the union. Dubinsky was elected to the local's executive board in 1918, became vice-president of it the following year and president in 1921. He was elected to the International's Executive Board as a Vice-President in 1922.
, the International's President, resigned. Dubinsky campaigned hard for election of Morris Sigman
, a former IWW
member who took office in 1923. Sigman began to remove Communist Party
members from leadership of locals in New York, Chicago
, Philadelphia
and Boston. Dubinsky supported Sigman's campaign.
Sigman could not, however, regain control of the New York locals, including Dressmakers' Local 22 and Cloak Finishers Local 9, where the CP leadership and their left wing allies, some anarchists and some Socialists, enjoyed strong support of the membership. Dubinsky, by his own account, thought that Sigman was too rash and appears to have urged him to call a truce after the left wing-led unions led a campaign to reject a proposed agreement that Sigman had negotiated with the industry in 1925, bringing more than 30,000 members to a rally at Yankee Stadium
to call for a one-day stoppage on August 10, 1925.
The left wing won control of the New York Joint Board, the body that coordinated the activities of all of the New York City ILGWU locals in all aspects of the industry, that year. When it called a general strike on July 1, 1926 Dubinsky was given a nominal role in the strike, reflecting his power base in the cutters' union, but was largely sidelined. That strike was a disastrous failure, leading to the rout of left leadership from the Joint Board and ultimately from the industry, other than the independent International Fur Workers Union.
to promote him as Sigman's heir apparent
.
When Morris Hillquit
, the union's long-time counsel, advanced a proposal to create a new position of Executive Vice-President, which Schlesinger would hold, giving up his position as General Manager of the Forward, Sigman agreed. Five months later, after the union's Executive Board rejected an attempt by Sigman to merge two unions, Sigman resigned and Schlesinger returned to office.
By that point, however, the union was in a shambles, still struggling with the huge debts acquired during the failed strike, fighting expelled local leaders, some of whom had taken their unions out of the ILG, and facing an even more disorganized and piratical industry. Dubinsky set out to rebuild the ILGWU's base in New York City by striking a deal with the major manufacturers' group in 1929 that provided no pay raises but made it possible for the union to police the contract by cracking down on subcontractors who "chiseled", cheating workers out of pay or hours in order to gain a competitive advantage. The CPUSA opposed the new agreement but was by that time too weak to muster any effective resistance to Dubinsky.
Dubinsky was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the ILGWU at the end of 1929. He was elected President after Schlesinger died in 1932, retaining the position of Secretary-Treasurer in order to avoid the sort of internecine battles that previous officers had waged in the past. He held the Presidency until 1966, while remaining Secretary-Treasurer until 1959.
Dubinsky proved to be far more durable than his predecessors. He did not brook dissent within the union and insisted that every employee of the International first submit an undated letter of resignation, to be used should Dubinsky choose to fire him later. He also acquired the power to appoint key officers throughout the union. As he explained his position at one of the union's conventions: "We have a democratic union – but they know who's boss."
Under his leadership the union, more than three fourths of whose members were women, continued to be led almost exclusively by men. Rose Pesotta
, a longtime ILGWU activist and organizer, complained to Dubinsky that she had the same uncomfortable feeling of being the token woman on the ILGWU's executive board that Dubinsky had complained about when he was the only Jew on the AFL's board. The union did not, however, make any significant efforts to bring women into leadership positions during Dubinsky's tenure.
. Its dues-paying membership slipped to 25,000 in 1932 as unionized garment shops shut or went nonunion or stopped abiding by their union contracts.
The union recovered, however, after the election of the Roosevelt and the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act
, which promised to protect workers' right to organize. As in the case in other industries with a history of organizing, that promise alone was enough to bring thousands of workers who had never been union members in the past to the union; when the union called a strike of dressmakers in New York on August 16, 1933 more than 70,000 workers joined in it – twice the number that the union had hoped for. It did not hurt, moreover, that the local leader of the NRA was quoted as saying – without any basis in fact – that President Roosevelt had authorized the strike. The union rebounded to more than 200,000 members by 1934, increasing to roughly 300,000 by the end of the Depression.
As one of the few industrial unions
within the AFL, the ILGWU was eager to advance the cause of organizing employees in the steel, automobile and other mass production industries that employed millions of workers, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, at low wages. The ILGWU was one of the original members of the Committee for Industrial Organization, the group that John L. Lewis
of the United Mine Workers
formed within the AFL in 1935 to organize industrial workers, and provided key financial support and assistance; Rose Pesotta played a key role in early organizing drives in the rubber and steel industries.
Dubinsky was unwilling, on the other hand, to split the AFL into two competing federations and did not follow Lewis and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers when they formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations
as a rival to, rather than a part of, the AFL. Dubinsky also had personality differences with Lewis, whom he resented as high-handed.
In addition, Dubinsky was alarmed by the presence of Communist Party members on the payroll of the CIO and the fledgling unions it had sponsored. Dubinsky was opposed to any form of collaboration with communists and had offered financial support to Homer Martin
, the controversial president of the United Auto Workers
, who was being advised by Jay Lovestone
, a former leader of the Communist Party turned anti-communist. Lewis, by contrast, was unconcerned with the number of communists working for the CIO; as he told Dubinsky, when asked about the communists on the staff of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, "Who gets the bird? The hunter or the dog?"
The ILGWU began reducing its support for the CIO and, after a few years in which it attempted to be allies with both sides, reaffiliated with the AFL in 1940. Dubinsky regained his former positions as a vice president and member of the executive council of the AFL in 1945. He was the most visible supporter within the AFL of demands to clean house by ousting corrupt union leaders; the AFL-CIO ultimately adopted many of his demands when it established codes of conduct for its affiliates in 1957.
, leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, helped found the American Labor Party
in 1936. At the time Dubinsky and Hillman were both nominal members of the Socialist Party, although Dubinsky had, by his own admission, allowed his membership to lapse during the factional fighting of the 1920s. The Labor Party served as a halfway house for socialists and other leftists who were willing to vote for liberal Democratic politicians such as Roosevelt or Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, but who were not prepared to join the Democratic Party itself.
The new party was subject to many of the same fissures that divided the left in the late 1930s. For a while after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
, CPUSA members within the ALP condemned FDR as a warmonger because of his support for Britain. At one particularly stormy meeting Dubinsky and the other leaders were only able to hold their vote endorsing Roosevelt after moving from room to room and calling the police to arrest those who had disrupted the meeting.
Dubinsky ultimately left the Labor Party in 1944 after a dispute with Hillman over whether labor leaders in New York, such as Mike Quill
, who either were members of the Communist Party or were seen as sympathetic to it, should be given any role in the ALP. When Hillman prevailed, Dubinsky and his allies left to form the Liberal Party of New York
. The ALP went on to endorse Henry Wallace
in the 1948 presidential election, while the ILGWU campaigned energetically for Harry S. Truman
, nearly bringing New York State into his column.
Dubinsky had hopes of launching a national liberal party, headed by Wendell Willkie
, the Republican candidate for President in 1940 who had soured on the Republican Party after his defeat in the primaries
in 1944. He proposed that Willkie begin by running for Mayor of New York City in 1945; Willkie, however, died before the plan could get off the ground.
Dubinsky and the ILGWU played an active role in the Liberal Party for most of the 1950s and up until his retirement in 1966. The ILGWU ended its support for the party after Dubinsky left office.
Policing the industry became much harder, however, as gangsters invaded the garment district. Both the employers and the union had hired gangsters during the strikes of the 1920s. Some of them, such as Lepke Buchalter
remained in the industry as labor racketeers who took over unions for the opportunities for raking off dues and extorting payoffs from employers with the threat of strikes. Some also became garment manufacturers themselves, driving away unions, other than those they controlled, by violence. While Dubinsky himself remained untouched by graft, a number of officers within the union were corrupted.
The industry changed greatly in the years after World War II
; while it had once been concentrated in New York City and other eastern and Midwestern cities, with smaller outposts on the West Coast
, the work done by formerly unionized shops fled to other parts of the US or abroad, where unions were nonexistent and wages far lower. The ILGWU was unable to prevent these runaway shops or to organize workers at the new locations.
The union's membership also changed greatly in the years after World War II
; what once had been a predominantly Jewish and Italian workforce became largely Latino, African-American and Asian. The leadership of the union had less and less in common with its membership and very often had no experience in the trade itself.
In the last decade of Dubinsky's tenure some of these new members began to rebel, protesting their exclusion from positions of power within the union. That rebellion failed: the established leadership had too strong a hold on the official structure of the union, in an industry in which members were scattered across a number of small shops and in which power was concentrated in the upper echelons of the union, rather than in the locals. Without the support of a mass movement that would have given the majority an effective voice, individual insurgents were either marginalized or coopted.
The union continued to expand its membership after World War II
reaching its apex at 500,000 members in 1965, one year after Dubinsky's retirement. Dubinsky's focus on maintaining the stability of the industry and the union's place in it dampened the union's desire to gain significant wage increases for its members. The union gradually lost its ability to keep sweatshop conditions from returning, even in the former center of its strength in New York. While the union still had one-half million members in the years immediately after Dubinsky's retirement, the forces that brought about the decline and eventual disappearance of the ILGWU thirty years later, when it merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union to form the union known as UNITE
, were already at work.
In his last years, Dubinsky was often accessible to the union's members and was once observed in the 1970s chatting with a Pennsylvania garment worker and coalminer's daughter, one Florence Schiefer, at the ILGWU's Unity House, a resort for its members in the Pennsylvania Pocono mountains.
Dubinsky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
on January 20, 1969. He died September 17, 1982.
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...
(ILGWU) between 1932 and 1966, took part in the creation of the CIO
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...
and was one of the founders of 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...
and 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...
.
Early years
David Isaac Dobnievski, known to history as David Dubinsky, was born February 22, 1892 in Brest-Litovsk (currently BrestBrest, Belarus
Brest , formerly also Brest-on-the-Bug and Brest-Litovsk , is a city in Belarus at the border with Poland opposite the city of Terespol, where the Bug River and Mukhavets rivers meet...
, Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
), the youngest of five boys and three girls. Dubinsky and his family moved to Łódź, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, shortly before he turned three. David's father Bezalel Dobnievski, a religious Jew, owned a bakery, but limited himself to administrative tasks related to the enterprise. David's mother Shaina Wyshengrad died when he was eight, with his father remarrying a year and a half later. David worked from early childhood delivering bread from his father's bakery to local shops, while attending a Hebrew school, where he studied Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, and Yiddish. He was later forced to leave a semi-private school he attended to take work in his father's bakery to replace a brother who had left abruptly.
During the Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
, David attended a mass meeting which led to his kinship, if not actual membership, with the Bund
General Jewish Labor Union
The General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia , generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire, active between 1897 and 1920. Remnants of the party remain active in the diaspora as well as in Israel...
, a Jewish socialist organization close to the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party. He joined the bakers' union, which was controlled by the Bund, and owing to his superior education and fluency in several languages, was elected assistant secretary within the union by 1906. By age 15, David was a committed socialist.
In 1907, David was arrested for helping to plan a bakers' strike and was held for three days. In January 1908, David was arrested again, this time for attending a union election meeting held without a police permit. Not quite 16, the boy was held for 18 months in jails in Łódź, Warsaw, and Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, before being sentenced to exile in Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk
Chelyabinsk is a city and the administrative center of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, located in the northwestern side of the oblast, south of Yekaterinburg, just to the east of the Ural Mountains, on the Miass River. Population: -History:...
, Siberia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
. While en route to his place of exile, he walked out of the camp where the authorities were holding him and, after several months hiding in Chelyabinsk and Białystok, managed to make his way to the United States in 1911 with a ticket sent to him by one of his brothers, who was living 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...
.
Early days in New York
Dubinsky went to work in a garment factory in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, then joined the Socialist Party
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...
in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history...
. With the help of his brother's connections through the Bakery Workers Union, Dubinsky got a job as a cutter in a cloak shop, then a desirable job in an industry otherwise dominated by sweatshops.
Now a member of Local 10 of the ILGWU, Dubinsky joined a group of members who rebelled against the old guard leadership of that union to argue for fairer distribution of job opportunities within the union. Dubinsky was elected to the local's executive board in 1918, became vice-president of it the following year and president in 1921. He was elected to the International's Executive Board as a Vice-President in 1922.
Battles with the left
Shortly after Dubinsky was elected to the International Executive Board Benjamin SchlesingerBenjamin Schlesinger
Benjamin Schlesinger was the President of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union from 1903–1907, for a second term from 1914–1923, and for a third and final term from 1928 until his death in 1932...
, the International's President, resigned. Dubinsky campaigned hard for election of Morris Sigman
Morris Sigman
Morris Sigman was president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union from 1923 to 1928.-Early life:Born in Russia, Morris Sigman spent his youth working as a lumberjack before moving to London in 1902. In 1903, Sigman emigrated to New York City and began work as a presser in the cloak...
, a former IWW
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...
member who took office in 1923. Sigman began to remove Communist Party
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....
members from leadership of locals in New York, 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...
, Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
and Boston. Dubinsky supported Sigman's campaign.
Sigman could not, however, regain control of the New York locals, including Dressmakers' Local 22 and Cloak Finishers Local 9, where the CP leadership and their left wing allies, some anarchists and some Socialists, enjoyed strong support of the membership. Dubinsky, by his own account, thought that Sigman was too rash and appears to have urged him to call a truce after the left wing-led unions led a campaign to reject a proposed agreement that Sigman had negotiated with the industry in 1925, bringing more than 30,000 members to a rally at Yankee Stadium
Yankee Stadium
Yankee Stadium was a stadium located in The Bronx in New York City, New York. It was the home ballpark of the New York Yankees from 1923 to 1973 and from 1976 to 2008. The stadium hosted 6,581 Yankees regular season home games during its 85-year history. It was also the former home of the New York...
to call for a one-day stoppage on August 10, 1925.
The left wing won control of the New York Joint Board, the body that coordinated the activities of all of the New York City ILGWU locals in all aspects of the industry, that year. When it called a general strike on July 1, 1926 Dubinsky was given a nominal role in the strike, reflecting his power base in the cutters' union, but was largely sidelined. That strike was a disastrous failure, leading to the rout of left leadership from the Joint Board and ultimately from the industry, other than the independent International Fur Workers Union.
Rise to power
Dubinsky was somewhat disenchanted with Sigman's leadership by this point; while he was a wholehearted supporter of Sigman's attack on the CPUSA within the union, he thought that Sigman was too abrasive, alienating the right wing almost reflexively, given his dislike of "union bureaucrats" gained through his years in the IWW. At the 1928 convention of the ILGWU he first proposed that Sigman resign in favor of Schlesinger – a suggestion seen by many as part of a plan by Dubinsky to become the eventual head of the union. Dubinsky denied any personal ambitions and rebuffed a proposal from Abraham Cahan of the ForwardThe 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...
to promote him as Sigman's heir apparent
Heir apparent
An heir apparent or heiress apparent is a person who is first in line of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting, except by a change in the rules of succession....
.
When Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit
Morris Hillquit was a founder and leader of the Socialist Party of America and prominent labor lawyer in New York City's Lower East Side during the early 20th century.-Early years:...
, the union's long-time counsel, advanced a proposal to create a new position of Executive Vice-President, which Schlesinger would hold, giving up his position as General Manager of the Forward, Sigman agreed. Five months later, after the union's Executive Board rejected an attempt by Sigman to merge two unions, Sigman resigned and Schlesinger returned to office.
By that point, however, the union was in a shambles, still struggling with the huge debts acquired during the failed strike, fighting expelled local leaders, some of whom had taken their unions out of the ILG, and facing an even more disorganized and piratical industry. Dubinsky set out to rebuild the ILGWU's base in New York City by striking a deal with the major manufacturers' group in 1929 that provided no pay raises but made it possible for the union to police the contract by cracking down on subcontractors who "chiseled", cheating workers out of pay or hours in order to gain a competitive advantage. The CPUSA opposed the new agreement but was by that time too weak to muster any effective resistance to Dubinsky.
Dubinsky was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the ILGWU at the end of 1929. He was elected President after Schlesinger died in 1932, retaining the position of Secretary-Treasurer in order to avoid the sort of internecine battles that previous officers had waged in the past. He held the Presidency until 1966, while remaining Secretary-Treasurer until 1959.
Dubinsky proved to be far more durable than his predecessors. He did not brook dissent within the union and insisted that every employee of the International first submit an undated letter of resignation, to be used should Dubinsky choose to fire him later. He also acquired the power to appoint key officers throughout the union. As he explained his position at one of the union's conventions: "We have a democratic union – but they know who's boss."
Under his leadership the union, more than three fourths of whose members were women, continued to be led almost exclusively by men. Rose Pesotta
Rose Pesotta
Rose Pesotta was an anarchist, feminist labor organizer and vice president within the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.-Biography:...
, a longtime ILGWU activist and organizer, complained to Dubinsky that she had the same uncomfortable feeling of being the token woman on the ILGWU's executive board that Dubinsky had complained about when he was the only Jew on the AFL's board. The union did not, however, make any significant efforts to bring women into leadership positions during Dubinsky's tenure.
Organizing during the Great Depression
As weak as the ILGWU was in the aftermath of the 1926 strike, it was nearly destroyed by 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...
. Its dues-paying membership slipped to 25,000 in 1932 as unionized garment shops shut or went nonunion or stopped abiding by their union contracts.
The union recovered, however, after the election of the Roosevelt and 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...
, which promised to protect workers' right to organize. As in the case in other industries with a history of organizing, that promise alone was enough to bring thousands of workers who had never been union members in the past to the union; when the union called a strike of dressmakers in New York on August 16, 1933 more than 70,000 workers joined in it – twice the number that the union had hoped for. It did not hurt, moreover, that the local leader of the NRA was quoted as saying – without any basis in fact – that President Roosevelt had authorized the strike. The union rebounded to more than 200,000 members by 1934, increasing to roughly 300,000 by the end of the Depression.
As one of the few industrial unions
Industrial unionism
Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union—regardless of skill or trade—thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations...
within the AFL, the ILGWU was eager to advance the cause of organizing employees in the steel, automobile and other mass production industries that employed millions of workers, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, at low wages. The ILGWU was one of the original members of the Committee for Industrial Organization, the group that 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...
of the United Mine Workers
United Mine Workers
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners and coal technicians. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada...
formed within the AFL in 1935 to organize industrial workers, and provided key financial support and assistance; Rose Pesotta played a key role in early organizing drives in the rubber and steel industries.
Dubinsky was unwilling, on the other hand, to split the AFL into two competing federations and did not follow Lewis and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers when they formed 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...
as a rival to, rather than a part of, the AFL. Dubinsky also had personality differences with Lewis, whom he resented as high-handed.
In addition, Dubinsky was alarmed by the presence of Communist Party members on the payroll of the CIO and the fledgling unions it had sponsored. Dubinsky was opposed to any form of collaboration with communists and had offered financial support to Homer Martin
Homer Martin
Homer Martin was American trade unionist and socialist.After high school he attended Hewing College and received his AB from William Jewel College...
, the controversial president of the United Auto Workers
United Auto Workers
The International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, better known as the United Auto Workers , is a labor union which represents workers in the United States and Puerto Rico, and formerly in Canada. Founded as part of the Congress of Industrial...
, who was being advised by Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions...
, a former leader of the Communist Party turned anti-communist. Lewis, by contrast, was unconcerned with the number of communists working for the CIO; as he told Dubinsky, when asked about the communists on the staff of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, "Who gets the bird? The hunter or the dog?"
The ILGWU began reducing its support for the CIO and, after a few years in which it attempted to be allies with both sides, reaffiliated with the AFL in 1940. Dubinsky regained his former positions as a vice president and member of the executive council of the AFL in 1945. He was the most visible supporter within the AFL of demands to clean house by ousting corrupt union leaders; the AFL-CIO ultimately adopted many of his demands when it established codes of conduct for its affiliates in 1957.
Electoral politics
Dubinsky and Sidney HillmanSidney 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...
, leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, helped found 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. At the time Dubinsky and Hillman were both nominal members of the Socialist Party, although Dubinsky had, by his own admission, allowed his membership to lapse during the factional fighting of the 1920s. The Labor Party served as a halfway house for socialists and other leftists who were willing to vote for liberal Democratic politicians such as Roosevelt or Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, but who were not prepared to join the Democratic Party itself.
The new party was subject to many of the same fissures that divided the left in the late 1930s. For a while after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, named after the Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov and the German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, was an agreement officially titled the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and signed in Moscow in the late hours of 23 August 1939...
, CPUSA members within the ALP condemned FDR as a warmonger because of his support for Britain. At one particularly stormy meeting Dubinsky and the other leaders were only able to hold their vote endorsing Roosevelt after moving from room to room and calling the police to arrest those who had disrupted the meeting.
Dubinsky ultimately left the Labor Party in 1944 after a dispute with Hillman over whether labor leaders in New York, such as Mike Quill
Mike Quill
Michael J. Quill was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America , a union founded by subway workers in New York City that expanded to represent employees in other forms of transit, and the President of the TWU for most of the first thirty years of its existence...
, who either were members of the Communist Party or were seen as sympathetic to it, should be given any role in the ALP. When Hillman prevailed, Dubinsky and his allies left to form 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...
. The ALP went on to endorse Henry Wallace
Henry Wallace
Henry or Harry Wallace may refer to:*Henry A. Wallace , U.S. Vice President 1941-1945, presidential candidate for the Progressive Party 1948**Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center...
in the 1948 presidential election, while the ILGWU campaigned energetically for Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
, nearly bringing New York State into his column.
Dubinsky had hopes of launching a national liberal party, headed by Wendell Willkie
Wendell Willkie
Wendell Lewis Willkie was a corporate lawyer in the United States and a dark horse who became the Republican Party nominee for the president in 1940. A member of the liberal wing of the GOP, he crusaded against those domestic policies of the New Deal that he thought were inefficient and...
, the Republican candidate for President in 1940 who had soured on the Republican Party after his defeat in the primaries
Primary election
A primary election is an election in which party members or voters select candidates for a subsequent election. Primary elections are one means by which a political party nominates candidates for the next general election....
in 1944. He proposed that Willkie begin by running for Mayor of New York City in 1945; Willkie, however, died before the plan could get off the ground.
Dubinsky and the ILGWU played an active role in the Liberal Party for most of the 1950s and up until his retirement in 1966. The ILGWU ended its support for the party after Dubinsky left office.
Postwar changes in the industry and the union
The union often saw itself, both before and during Dubinsky's years at the head of the union, as the savior of the industry, eliminating the cutthroat competition over wages that had made it unstable while making workers' lives miserable. Dubinsky took pride in negotiating a contract in 1929 that contained no raises, but allowed the union to cracking down on subcontractors who "chiseled". Dubinsky even claimed to have once turned down an employer's wage offer in negotiations as too costly to the employers, and therefore harmful to employees. Dubinsky summarized his attitude by saying that "workers need capitalism the way a fish needs water."Policing the industry became much harder, however, as gangsters invaded the garment district. Both the employers and the union had hired gangsters during the strikes of the 1920s. Some of them, such as 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...
remained in the industry as labor racketeers who took over unions for the opportunities for raking off dues and extorting payoffs from employers with the threat of strikes. Some also became garment manufacturers themselves, driving away unions, other than those they controlled, by violence. While Dubinsky himself remained untouched by graft, a number of officers within the union were corrupted.
The industry changed greatly in the years after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; while it had once been concentrated in New York City and other eastern and Midwestern cities, with smaller outposts on the West Coast
West Coast of the United States
West Coast or Pacific Coast are terms for the westernmost coastal states of the United States. The term most often refers to the states of California, Oregon, and Washington. Although not part of the contiguous United States, Alaska and Hawaii do border the Pacific Ocean but can't be included in...
, the work done by formerly unionized shops fled to other parts of the US or abroad, where unions were nonexistent and wages far lower. The ILGWU was unable to prevent these runaway shops or to organize workers at the new locations.
The union's membership also changed greatly in the years after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
; what once had been a predominantly Jewish and Italian workforce became largely Latino, African-American and Asian. The leadership of the union had less and less in common with its membership and very often had no experience in the trade itself.
In the last decade of Dubinsky's tenure some of these new members began to rebel, protesting their exclusion from positions of power within the union. That rebellion failed: the established leadership had too strong a hold on the official structure of the union, in an industry in which members were scattered across a number of small shops and in which power was concentrated in the upper echelons of the union, rather than in the locals. Without the support of a mass movement that would have given the majority an effective voice, individual insurgents were either marginalized or coopted.
The union continued to expand its membership after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
reaching its apex at 500,000 members in 1965, one year after Dubinsky's retirement. Dubinsky's focus on maintaining the stability of the industry and the union's place in it dampened the union's desire to gain significant wage increases for its members. The union gradually lost its ability to keep sweatshop conditions from returning, even in the former center of its strength in New York. While the union still had one-half million members in the years immediately after Dubinsky's retirement, the forces that brought about the decline and eventual disappearance of the ILGWU thirty years later, when it merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union to form the union known as UNITE
Unite
- Labor unions :*Unite the Union, a British and Irish trade union, formed by the merger of Amicus and T&G*Unite Union, a trade union in New Zealand*Unite Union , a trade union in Australia...
, were already at work.
In his last years, Dubinsky was often accessible to the union's members and was once observed in the 1970s chatting with a Pennsylvania garment worker and coalminer's daughter, one Florence Schiefer, at the ILGWU's Unity House, a resort for its members in the Pennsylvania Pocono mountains.
Dubinsky received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
on January 20, 1969. He died September 17, 1982.
Further reading
- Dubinsky, David with A.H. Raskin, David Dubinsky: A Life With Labor. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1977.
- Parmet, Robert D., The Master of Seventh Avenue: David Dubinsky and the American Labor Movement. New York: New York University Press, 2005.
External links
- David Dubinsky's life
- Dubinsky and the Liberal Party
- Guide to the ILGWU. David Dubinsky, President's Records, 1932-1966