Workers’ efforts to organize in the United States date back to the colonial period. Short-lived and isolated, most of these efforts predate unions, which rose to prominence around the turn of the 20th century. Unions rose not only due to industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, but also due to changes in labor laws and public policy. Their numbers and size continued to grow until the mid-20th century, and then their membership and political influence declined from the late 20th century until recently. This is the context for organized labor in the textile industry, which also was shaped – like American society and culture in general – by racial, regional, gender, and class divisions.

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (ACWU) and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) – both outgrowths of earlier labor movements in Chicago and New York City – were among the largest and most influential of the needletrade and garment unions. In the 1990s, ACWU and ILGWU merged to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), which would reorganize further in the decades that followed.

Bessie Abramowitz Hillman immigrated from Russia to the United States in 1905. She began work as a teenager in a garment factory in Chicago, and later married Sydney Hillman, the president of the ACWU. Bessie Hillman’s career in organized labor spanned the national and international stages, and interests ranging from civil rights to child labor to labor education. She remained active with labor causes until her death in 1970.

David Dubinsky began his association with organized labor in the General Jewish Labor Bund in what was then the larger Russian Empire, before fleeing to the United States in 1911. There he worked primarily with the ILGWU in New York City. After rising quickly from its management to executive ranks he led the ILGWU from near-collapse to its height of political sway and influence. Olga Diaz represents both another story of a rise to prominence in the textile industry unions and a broader societal shift toward greater inclusion of women and people of color in leadership roles in the late 20th century. Diaz’s work also illustrates how North American textile unions operated in a broader global context. Diaz was active mainly in the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU), formed in 1976 through the merger of ACTU with the Textile Workers Union of America. As a union vice president in the 1980s, she was involved in consortia that included unions such as the Federación Interamericana de Trabajadores de la Industria Textil, Vestuario y Cuero (FITITVC). While Diaz’s international work spanned organized labor in many Latin American countries, from Peru to Dominica, it also included award-winning work at home.

Efforts to organize labor in the United States have increased in the last few years, for the first time in decades. What this means for the global textile industry is a story in the making.

ACWA. Biography of Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, 1951.

On loan from the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives

Collection/Call #: 6064

Search CUL catalog for this item/collection

ACTWU. Two membership books and a business card for Bessie Abramowitz Hillman, ca. 1916 and undated.

On loan from the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives

Collection/Call #: 5619 MB

Search CUL catalog for this item/collection

John Dewey. David Dubinsky: A Pictorial Biography, 1951.

On loan from the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives

Collection/Call #: HD6509.D8 D45

Search CUL catalog for this item/collection

Previous section | Next section