Hellraisers Journal – Wednesday April 9, 1919
New York, New York – Dress and Waist Makers Declare Victory
Local 25 of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union declared total victory for 12,000 striking Dress and Waist Makers on April 7th (see article below from the New York Tribune).
From the Liberator of April 1919:
“Strike!” OUR cover design, drawn by Cornelia Barns, will carry to readers all over the country something of the spirit with which Local 25 of the International Garment Workers is conducting its strike for the 44-hour week in New York. Eighty-five per cent of the strikers are girls. Of the 35,000 who went out on January 21st, 23,000 have already won their terms and gone back to work. The rest are sticking it out magnificently.
From I. L. G. W. U.’s Justice of April 5, 1919:
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From the New York Tribune of April 8, 1919:
All Demands Won, Say Dress Makers;
12,000 to Return
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Agreement Granting Review of Discharges,
Increase in Wages and 44-Hour Week,
Is Signed
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With the ratification yesterday by 12,000 dress and waist workers of an agreement with the Dress and Waist Manufacturers’ Association the strike, which was in its twelfth week, came to an end.
“We go everything we wanted,” said Benjamin Schlesinger, president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, “and are satisfied with the result. We should have been more pleased if the strike had not taken place, as it resulted in loss to the manufacturers and to the workers.”
The agreement concedes the following demands of Ladies’ Waist and Dress Makers’ Local 25, which had been conducting the strike:
1. The forty-four-hour week.
2. The following weekly wage increases; $3 for cutters, $2 for cutters, pressers and drapers, $1.50 for others.
3. Pieceworkers to receive 10 per cent increase.
4. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union is recognized and only its members are to be employed in shops affected by the agreement.
5. Discharged employes are to be entitled to a review by and impartial board.
It was about the right to review of discharges that the struggle between the manufacturers’ association and the union was most bitter.
The manufacturers called the union’s insistence upon review a demand for “life tenure” of employment. The union insisted that to permit uncontrolled discharges would mean elimination of union workers and destruction of the union.
The agreement on this point provides that any worker who has been employed in a shop for more than two weeks is entitled to have his discharge reviewed by a board consisting of a union representative, an employers’ representative and an impartial outsider.
Workers discharged for union activity are to be immediately reinstated with back pay. Those unjustly discharged after being employed four months are to be immediately reinstated with back pay.
The strike, which originally involved 37,000 workers, was narrowed to Local 25 in the last three weeks, when the kimono workers, children’s dress workers and white goods workers settled their disputes with the manufacturers.
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[Emphasis added.]
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SOURCES & IMAGES
Quote Mother Jones Raising Hell, NYT p1, Oct 6, 1916 -NYT Archives
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