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Women Trade Unions
While male workers in New York City had formed unions,
women workers were not organized and had no recognized union.
Women discovered that when the men workers won rights, it was
at the expense of the women—not the bosses. For example,
when the men were given a half-cent pay raise, women’s paychecks
were a half-cent less. Convinced that women workers would benefit
from their own union, several women were able to start the first
all women’s union in 1909 called the International Ladies
Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Another important union at the
turn of the twentieth century was the Women Trade Union League
(WTUL). This union was formed in 1903 to try to bring more women
into the unions.
In 1909, garment workers had a strike that was called
the "Uprising of the 20,000"—one of the largest
strikes in the history of New York City. Workers at the Triangle
Factory went out on strike and picketed the factory. They were
joined by thousands of immigrant women in the shirtwaist industry.
The strike lasted for three winter months. Triangle Factory owners
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris hired new workers and called in thugs
to break the picket lines. By the strike’s end, the women
in some factories had won a shorter working day, a small pay increase,
and some safety changes, but their union had not been recognized.
This meant that the bosses did not have to talk with the union
people. Though many factories agreed to make improvements, the
Triangle Facotry refused to make changes in safety and kept a
fifty-nine hour workweek.
Eight months after the strike, one of the strikers
came to the WTUL to tell them of a fire in a factory in Newark,
New Jersey, in which 25 working women had died. The WTUL demanded
an investigation of all factory buildings and unsafe working conditions.
However, no action by the city was taken and the women’s
union remained powerless.
Adapated from http://galenet.gale.com
DISCovering U.S. History.
Further Reading
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