Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) was a
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by
Sidney Hillman
Sidney Hillman (March 23, 1887 – July 10, 1946) 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' ...
for its first thirty years, it helped found the
Congress of Industrial Organizations. It merged with the
Textile Workers Union of America
The Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) 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 Clo ...
(TWUA) in 1976 to form the
Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) was a labor union representing workers in two related industries in the United States.
The union was founded in 1976, when the Textile Workers Union of America merged with the Amalgamated ...
(ACTWU), which merged with the
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
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 U.S. unions to have a primarily female membe ...
in 1995 to create the
Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees
The Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE, often stylized UNITE!) was a labor union in the United States. In 2004, UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) to form UNITE HERE.
Histo ...
(UNITE). UNITE merged in 2004 with the
Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union
The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) was a United States labor union representing workers of the hospitality industry, formed in 1890. In 2004, HERE merged with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UN ...
(HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as
UNITE HERE
UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with roughly 300,000 active members. The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by ...
. 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
Workers United is an American and Canadian labor union which represents about 86,000 workers in the apparel, textile, commercial laundry, distribution, food service, hospitality, fitness and non-profit industries.Greenhouse, Steve"Union Rejoini ...
, led by former UNITE president
Bruce Raynor
Bruce S. Raynor is an American labor union executive. He is the former Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), former President of Workers United, former General President of UNITE HERE, a founding member of ...
.
Founding
In 1914, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America—also known as "ACWA" or simply "the Amalgamated"—formed as a result of the revolt of the urban locals against the conservative
AFL affiliate the
United Garment Workers
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.
History
The UGWA was formed in New York in April 1891 and lead ...
.
The roots of this conflict date back to the
general strike of
Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordinates =
, coordinates_footnotes =
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name ...
, 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
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...
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 "Abe" Cahan (Yiddish: אַבֿרהם קאַהאַן; July 7, 1860 – August 31, 1951) was a Lithuanian-born Jewish American socialist newspaper editor, novelist, and politician. Cahan was one of the founders of ''The Forward'' (), ...
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
The United Hebrew Trades (Yiddish: ''Fareynikte Yidishe Geverkshaftn''), was an association of Jewish labor unions in New York formed in the late 1880s. The organization was inspired by and modeled upon the United German Trades (German: ''Deutsche ...
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
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 U.S. unions to have a primarily female membe ...
(ILGWU, or ILG), 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
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, 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
The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), members of which are commonly termed "Wobblies", is an international labor union that was founded in Chicago in 1905. The origin of the nickname "Wobblies" is uncertain. IWW ideology combines general ...
, 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 (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, 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
Walter may refer to:
People
* Walter (name), both a surname and a given name
* Little Walter, American blues harmonica player Marion Walter Jacobs (1930–1968)
* Gunther (wrestler), Austrian professional wrestler and trainer Walter Hahn (born 1 ...
,
Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter (November 15, 1882 – February 22, 1965) was an Austrian-American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1939 until 1962, during which period he was a noted advocate of judic ...
, and Charles Rosen the union was able to obtain government support in organizing outposts such as
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located in W ...
as part of an experiment in
industrial democracy
Industrial democracy is an arrangement which involves workers making decisions, sharing responsibility and authority in the workplace. While in participative management organizational designs workers are listened to and take part in the decisi ...
.
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, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
, 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,
Amalgamated Bank
Amalgamated Bank () is an American financial institution. It is the largest union-owned bank and one of the only unionized banks in the United States. Amalgamated Bank is currently majority-owned by Workers United, an SEIU Affiliate.
Founded on ...
, that would serve labor's interests. Hillman and the ACWA had strong ties to many progressive reformers, such as
Jane Addams
Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage ...
and
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Seward Darrow (; April 18, 1857 – March 13, 1938) was an American lawyer who became famous in the early 20th century for his involvement in the Leopold and Loeb murder trial and the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. He was a leading member of t ...
.
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
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
* President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ...
. 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 ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...
,
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
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 Fein, who refused on principle to work for employers.
Internecine
warfare
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regul ...
between labor sluggers eliminated many of the earliest racketeers. "Little Augie"
Jacob Orgen
Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen (January 1893 – October 16, 1927) was a New York gangster involved in bootlegging and labor racketeering during Prohibition.
Biography
Born to a middle-class Orthodox Jewish family from Austria as Jacob Orgenstein, ...
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
James John Walker (June 19, 1881November 18, 1946), known colloquially as Beau James, was mayor of New York City from 1926 to 1932. A flamboyant politician, he was a liberal Democrat and part of the powerful Tammany Hall machine. He was forced t ...
, the corrupt
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 City political organization founded in 1786 and incorporated on May 12, 1789 as the Tammany Society. It became the main loc ...
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 the union, then taking action against corrupt union officials in
Newark, New Jersey
Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.[Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...]
and
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the 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 and
Westbrook Pegler
Francis James Westbrook Pegler (August 2, 1894 – June 24, 1969) 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 aimed his pen at president ...
, 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 Depression 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
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a US labor law and consumer law passed by the 73rd US Congress to authorize the president to regulate industry for fair wages and prices that would stimulate economic recovery. It also ...
, 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. With the new federation establishing itself as a viable alternative to the AFL, Hillman would serve as its first vice president. The ACWA experienced prodigious growth during the CIO's early years. At the federation's founding in 1935, the ACWA's members numbered roughly 100,000, but by 1940, they had more than doubled, counting 239,000 members in 265 locals.
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
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 (May 25, 1886 – November 9, 1952) was a Scottish-born steelworker and an American labor leader. He was the first president of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), the first president of the United Steelworkers o ...
, 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, crossing the 300,000 member threshold in 1951, but, like other garment unions, faced long-term pressures from the flight of unionized work to non-union manufacturers in the
South and abroad.
Mergers
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.
In 1961, the
International Glove Workers' Union of America merged into the ACWA. The ACWA merged with the TWUA in 1976 to form the
Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) was a labor union representing workers in two related industries in the United States.
The union was founded in 1976, when the Textile Workers Union of America merged with the Amalgamated ...
.
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 (; born David Isaac Dobnievski; February 22, 1892 – September 17, 1982) was a Belarusian-born American labor leader and politician. He served as president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) between 1932 ...
, in founding the
American Labor Party
The American Labor Party (ALP) was a political party in the United States established in 1936 that was active almost exclusively in the state of New York. The organization was founded by labor leaders and former members of the Socialist Party of A ...
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.
ACWA represented strikers in
The Farah Strike, 1972–1974.
Presidents
:1914:
Sidney Hillman
Sidney Hillman (March 23, 1887 – July 10, 1946) 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' ...
:1946:
Jacob Potofsky
:1972: Murray Finley
Co-Founding Vice Presidents
*
Bessie Abramowitz Hillman
*
August Bellanca
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 ...
*
Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca
*
Joseph Catalanotti
*
Louis Hollander
Louis Hollander (1893–1980) was a labor union leader who co-founded the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America union (ACW), the US portion of the World ORT, and the American Labor Party (ALP); served as state president of the Congress of Indust ...
See also
*
Cooperative Village
267px, Hillman Housing buildings on Grand Street as seen from the East River towers. Amalgamated Dwellings is seen between the second and the third tower
Cooperative Village is a community of housing cooperatives on the Lower East Side of Ma ...
*
Jimmy Burke
*
Dorothy Jacobs Bellanca
*
Russian-American Industrial Corporation
The Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIC) (Russian: Русско-американская индустриальная корпорация) was an international economic development venture launched in 1922 by the Amalgamated Clothing Wo ...
References
Further reading
* Fraser, Steven, ''Labor Will Rule: Sidney Hillman and the Rise of American Labor'', Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1993.
* Josephson, Matthew, Sidney Hillman, Statesman of American Labor, New York: Doubleday & Company 1952.
Lindsay, Debra. The Clothes Off Our Back: A History of ACTWU 459. Manitoba Labour History Series, Winnipeg: Manitoba Labour Education Centre, 1995.
External links
Guide to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America Records, 1914-1980 held at Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library
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UNITE HERE
Defunct trade unions in the United States
Congress of Industrial Organizations
Clothing industry trade unions
Women's occupational organizations
Trade unions established in 1914
Trade unions disestablished in 1976
Lithuanian-American history