In 1909, immigrant shirtwaist workers like Ida and Angelica led a major strike--the "Uprising of the 20,000"--that revealed to the public the low pay, harsh supervision, and unsafe conditions that plagued garment workers. To achieve their goals, the strikers had to assemble a coalition that crossed ethnic, gender, and class lines.

When the strike began, the garment workers' union--the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU)--was tiny and weak. Many labor leaders thought that organizing a union among women was futile. But the strike proved this notion false.

It was the female strikers' courage, confronting police arrest and beatings by hired thugs, that won the public's heart. Employers hired prostitutes to taunt picketers, knowing that working women feared falling into the brutalized life of the streets. Judges and police also preyed on the young women's fears through sexual harassment and severe prison sentences.

"Shtarkes." Employers hired neighborhood thugs to guard strikebreakers and attack picketers. By December, female strikers had taken over picket duty from men in the mistaken belief that the shtarkes would refrain from attacking women. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

The striking women were supported by male ILGWU members, Socialist Party activists, and community organizations that helped strikers' hungry families. The strikers' other key ally was the Women's Trade Union League, a group of college students and prominent New York women. Founded in 1903, the WTUL united middle and upper-class women's activism (aimed at winning the vote) with working women's struggles in the workplace. This unusual alliance across class lines drew the attention of the mainstream press to the strikers' plight.

Ethnicity shaped many workers' response to the strike. Young Jewish women, some with family ties to the socialist Bund in Russia, spearheaded the strike. While some Italian women joined the strike, fear of losing their jobs and the ILGWU's failure to organize in the Italian community led others to "break" the strike (or "scab"). Similarly, some African-American seamstresses, blocked from employment by racism and ignored by union organizers, took the jobs of striking workers.

The strikers and the union held together enough of a coalition to win important gains from 300 companies. At Triangle Shirtwaist, one of the biggest shops, women won a 52-hour week and a 12-15 percent wage increase. But Triangle and other large companies rejected workers' safety demands and refused to recognize the union as the workers' representative. Later strikes (and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire) led to union recognition and the passage of state and city laws forcing industry-wide reform.

Learning from its mistakes in the 1909 strike, the ILGWU built a more multi-ethnic union by hiring Italian organizers. Though firm commitment to black workers was slower in coming and women were long denied union leadership positions, by 1920 the ILGWU claimed more than 100,000 members and was one of the nation's most powerful industrial unions.

Viewer's Guide
Video Home

Previous Page