Women Garment Workers: Within the Gates 1930 US Department of Labor

more at http://quickfound.net/

Silent, with title cards.

'On the employment of women in the textile and garment industries. Reel 1 analyzes economic factors which compel women to work. Cotton is picked and processed (graded, combed, spun, and warped). Reel 2, cloth is cut and stitched. Shirts are sewed, ironed, folded, and boxed.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Ladies'_Garment_Workers'_Union

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) 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. The union, generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG," merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in the 1990s to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented 250,000 workers between them, down from the ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969...

Early history

The ILGWU was founded on June 3, 1900[2] in New York City by seven local unions, with a few thousand members between them. The union grew rapidly in the next few years but began to stagnate as the conservative leadership favored the interests of skilled workers, such as cutters. This did not sit well with the majority of immigrant workers, particularly Jewish workers with a background in Bundist activities in Tsarist Russia, or with Polish and Italian workers, many of whom had strong socialist and anarchist leanings.

The Uprising of 20,000 and the Great Revolt

The ILGWU had a sudden upsurge in membership that came as the result of two successful mass strikes in New York City.

The first, in 1909, was known as "the Uprising of 20,000" and lasted for fourteen weeks. It was largely spontaneous, sparked by a short walkout of workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, involving only about 20% of the workforce. That, however, only prompted the rest of the workers to seek help from the union. The firm locked out its employees when it learned what was happening.

The news of the strike spread quickly to all the New York garment workers. At a series of mass meetings, after the leading figures of the American labor movement spoke... Approximately 20,000 out of the 32,000 workers in the shirtwaist trade walked out in the next two days...

The strike was a violent one. Police routinely arrested picketers for trivial or imaginary offenses while employers hired local thugs to beat them as police looked the other way.

A group of wealthy women, among them Frances Perkins, Anne Morgan, and Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, supported the struggles of working class women with money and intervention with officials and often picketed with them. Newspapers dubbed them "the mink brigade" because they used their wealth and privilege to try to protect the strikers. The strikers did not always welcome their help; Emma Goldman told the press that "If the strike is won, it will be on its merits, not because it was assisted by wealthy ladies."

The strike was only partially successful. The ILGWU accepted an arbitrated settlement in February 1910 that improved the workers' wages, working conditions, and hours, but the settlement did not provide union recognition. A number of companies, including the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, refused to sign the agreement. But even so, the strike won a number of important gains. It encouraged workers in the industry to take action to improve their conditions, brought public attention to the sweatshop conditions. With some 20,000 shirtwaist workers as new members, Local 25 became the largest local affiliate of the ILGWU.

Several months later, in 1910, the ILGWU led an even larger strike, later named "The Great Revolt," of 60,000 cloakmakers. After months of picketing, prominent members of the Jewish community, led by Louis Brandeis, mediated between the ILGWU and the Manufacturers Association. The employers won a promise that workers would settle their grievances through arbitration rather than strikes during the term of the Agreement (a common clause in Union contracts today)...