The ILGWU at 75

...On June 3, 1975, when 1,600 delegates and friends packed the Grand Ballroom of the Americana Hotel to mark the ILGWU's 75th Anniversary, the double-tier, city-block-wide dais included representatives of foreign lands (Canada, Italy, Israel, Sweden...

...Thus it was a poor, still badly bleeding ILGWU that turned to David Dubinsky in 1932 to lead it into a new era...

...Between Issues On June 3, 1900, 11 harassed, disgruntled cloakmakers determined to improve their lot met in a hall on New York's Lower East Side to form the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union...

...In fact, although these pages have not been without criticism of the ILGWU-and we don't think the union would want it any other way, hard as that may be for some to understand-it has been a mainstay of this magazine throughout almost our entire 52 years...

...Stulberg, a soft-spoken man with a quick, wry wit, in the next nine years upgraded the level of wages by some 65 per cent, instituted an unbelievably low-cost mail prescription drug program, and doubled retirement benefits...

...women, widely considered poor targets for unionization, made up the overwhelming majority of the industry's labor force...

...Native-born, the first of the nine men to hold the ILGWU leadership who did not come out of the "shop," he clearly represents a change...

...A shirt-waistmaker's strike was launched in New York in September 1909, extended to Philadelphia in December, and was settled in February 1910 when over 300 firms recognized the union...

...It also meant favoring government legislation to investigate corruption in unions, and trying to achieve amicable relations with reasonable industry adversaries...

...They saw, as well, a determination to do for today's membership what was so effectively done for yesterday's, and to keep the ILGWU program an admired model of social advance and responsibility...

...The following July a carefully planned, bitterly fought cloakmakers' general strike got under way, and through the intervention of civic leaders like Louis D. Brandeis and Louis Marshall it was successfully concluded in September with a Protocol of Peace establishing grievance machinery, sanitary controls, wage minimums, price committees, and the 54-hour work week...

...funds for fighting organizing battles were virtually nonexistent...

...In the favorable climate provided by the advent of the New Deal, organizing was sharply expanded...

...and the family of then predominantly Italian and Jewish immigrants soon grew to over 300,000...

...It came late on the afternoon of March 25, 1911, in the form of a devastating fire at the overcrowded lower-Manhattan plant of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company that claimed the lives of 146 garment employes, mostly young women...

...It is a future that promises not only to hold the ILGWU family together but to give it new resolve in the final quarter of its opening century, and we wish it the very best as it moves from strength to strength.-M.K...

...In frail health, he announced last month that he would leave office in September...

...The General Executive Board then elected Sol Chick Chaikin, a graduate of City College and Brooklyn Law School, to the Presidency...

...The heartiest applause of the evening was accorded a man introduced from the floor, Morris Goldofsky, among the earliest of the ILGWU's now more than 425,000 members...

...Greedy manufacturers, unwilling to invest a part of their profits in the dignity and welfare of their workers, could not escape to the South, the West or Puerto Rico for very long-the family had relatives on the road...

...The composition of the membership had already begun to change, with Blacks and Hispanics taking the places of the Jews and Italians, but the spirit stayed and the goals remained constant...

...So could the one reflecting outside social concerns...

...At the 75th Anniversary Dinner he did not hesitate to stress this...

...to attack the inflation-recession that continues its stranglehold on the economy...

...Just as it had once extended a hand to those fleeing Tsarist terror, the ILGWU now reached out to the victims of Nazism and Stalinism...

...At the age of 97 he could not resist returning from retirement in Israel to participate in the celebration, and one could sense in the spontaneous standing ovation he received that his presence was more than merely appreciated...

...The list could go on for pages...

...On a different level, it meant creating Labor Stage, the proletarian theater that produced the hit Pins and Needles, and lending support to a variety of other intellectual endeavors, including The New Leader...

...The disaster attracted national attention, and subsequent official investigations rallied widespread support to the cause of industrial reform...

...Indeed, it is perhaps the distinguishing characteristic of this trade union fraternity that despite its growth, despite shifts in the composition of its rank and file, it remains very much a family-with all the pain of private disappointments, all the pleasure of public achievements the term implies...

...In a sense it was the end of an era...

...to cope with the problem of free-trade, once championed by labor, yet currently bedeviling it...

...While they were ultimately routed, the counter-offensive diverted energies and sapped the treasury...

...But before the next decade was half past a new challenge emerged: Communists who had infiltrated its ranks began "boring from within" in a takeover move...

...Its education programs helped to acculturate whole waves of new arrivals to these shores, its pioneering health programs provided otherwise unaffordable medical coverage, its cooperative housing projects here and in Puerto Rico made available attractive apartments at reasonable rentals, its nonprofit Unity House resort in the Poconos allowed a spot of sunshine away from the shop...

...Short, vibrant, his ability easily matching his boundless energy, he eagerly accepted the task...

...Abroad, the union threw itself unsparingly into the fight against totalitarianism wherever it reared its menacing head long before the country as a whole recognized that its future, too, was at stake...

...What they saw there was his desire to stimulate aggressive organization of the substandard shops across the U.S., in Puerto Rico and Canada...

...The name may have seemed a bit ambitious at the time, but the founders proved prophetic...

...After the War its leading figures were active in rescue and relief operations, and aid programs were set up that later found their counterparts in Latin America and Africa...

...The end of the decade saw the beginning of small advances...

...That is the family tradition, and when Dubinsky retired in 1966 at the age of 74, it was continued by his successor Louis Stulberg...

...Not until tragedy struck, though, was the ILGWU really able to turn a corner...

...As with a large number of young families starting out in 1900, the ILGWU's early prospects hardly appeared promising: The sweatshops would not yield easily to pressures for improved wages and working conditions...

...wages, hours and working conditions were radically improved...

...Our cover drawing of the Palace of Nations in Geneva is by Nick Meglin...

...Amid all this the ILGWU justifiably earned a reputation for adhering to uncompromising ethical standards, for caring about the emotional and spiritual no less than the bread-and-butter needs of its members, and for developing a social conscience...

...whose citizens' lives have been touched by the union's activities along the way...

...For the first time the struggling young union seemed to be gaining significant strength...

...Handsome, always well-tailored, with a full head of grey-flecked wavy black hair, Chaikin is a master at the microphone, and one suspects that when he asked those assembled to look with him to the future they did...

...At home, the ILGWU's sense of social obligation actively encouraged political participation-in the American Labor party, and as that came under increasing Communist influence, in the Liberal party in New York and the Democratic party nationally...

...By 1906 there was talk, quickly rejected, of dissolving...