Founding
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America—also known as "ACWA" or simply "the Amalgamated"—formed in 1914 as a result of the revolt of the urban locals against the conservative AFL affiliate the United Garment Workers. The roots of this conflict date back to the general strike of Chicago, when a spontaneous strike by a handful of women workers led to a citywide strike of 45,000 garment workers in 1910, That strike was a bitter one and pitted the strikers against not only their employers and the local authorities, but also their own union.
The leadership of the United Garment Workers mistrusted the more militant local leadership in Chicago and in other large urban locals, which had strong Socialist loyalties. When it tried to disenfranchise those locals' members at the UGW's 1914 convention, those locals, representing two thirds of the union's membership, bolted to form the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. The AFL refused to recognize the new union and the UGW regularly raided it, furnishing strikebreakers and signing contracts with struck employers, in the years to come.
The Amalgamated's battles with the UGW's leadership also soured the union's relations with Abraham Cahan and the Daily Forward, which Cahan edited. During the 1913 strike by the United Brotherhood of Tailors in New York City, Cahan and the United Hebrew Trades had taken sides with the UGW leadership against the strikers by endorsing a settlement that the strikers rejected. The same split surfaced again the following year when the Forward and members of the Socialist Party who had a stake in the AFL supported the new union, but only tepidly, when it split from the UGW and the AFL. While the Forward played a direct role in the internal politics of the other major garment union, the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, in years to come, it had far less influence over the ACWA.
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Famous quotes containing the word founding:
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