Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America - Growth

Growth

The Amalgamated solidified its gains and extended its power in Chicago through a series of strikes in the last half of the 1910s. The Amalgamated found it harder, on the other hand, to make gains in Baltimore, where it was able to sign an agreement with one of the largest manufacturers that, like HSM (Hart Schaffner and Marx) in Chicago, sought labor peace, it found itself at odds with an unusual alliance of UGW locals, the corrupt head of the Baltimore Federation of Labor, and the Industrial Workers of the World, who undermined the Amalgamated's strikes and attacked strikers. Complicating the picture further were the ethnic bonds between the many Lithuanian members of the IWW and the subcontractors whom the Amalgamated was trying to put out of business and the anarcho-syndicalist politics of many Lithuanian workers, who had developed their politics in opposition to czarist oppression in their homeland. The Amalgamated eventually prevailed, as the contradictions between the IWW's politics and its alliance with small contractors and the AFL eventually undercut its support among Lithuanian workers.

The ACWA also benefited from the relatively pro-union stance of the federal government during World War I, during which the federal Board of Control and Labor Standards for Army Clothing enforced a policy of labor peace in return for union recognition. With the support of key progressives, such as Walter Lippman, Felix Frankfurter, and Charles Rosen the union was able to obtain government support in organizing outposts such as Rochester, New York as part of an experiment in industrial democracy.

That experiment ended in 1919, when employers in nearly every industry with a history of unionism went on the offensive. The ACWA not only survived a four month lockout in New York City, but came away in an even stronger position. By 1920, the union had contracts with 85 percent of men's garment manufacturers and had reduced the workweek to 44 hours.

Under Hillman's leadership, the union tried to moderate the fierce competition between employers in the industry by imposing industry wide working standards, thereby taking wages and hours out of the competitive calculus. The ACWA tried to regulate the industry in other ways, arranging loans and conducting efficiency studies for financially troubled employers. Hillman also favored "constructive cooperation" with employers, relying on arbitration rather than strikes to resolve disputes during the life of a contract. As he explained his philosophy in 1938:

Certainly, I believe in collaborating with the employers! That is what unions are for. I even believe in helping an employer function more productively. For then, we will have a claim to higher wages, shorter hours, and greater participation in the benefits of running a smooth industrial machine....

The ACWA also pioneered a version of "social unionism" that offered low-cost cooperative housing and unemployment insurance to union members and founded a bank that would serve labor's interests. Hillman and the ACWA had strong ties to many progressive reformers, such as Jane Addams and Clarence Darrow.

Hillman was, on the other hand, opposed to revolutionary unionism and to the Communist Party USA. While Hillman had maintained warm relations with the Communist Party during the early 1920s—at a time when his leadership was being challenged both by the Forward on the right and by Lithuanian and Italian syndicalists and Jewish anarchists within the union on the left—those relations cooled in 1924 when the CP withdrew its support for the Farmer-Labor Party created to support La Follette's candidacy for President. From that point forward Hillman battled the CP activists within his union, but without the massive internecine strife that nearly tore apart the ILGWU in this era.

The CP did not refuse to put up a fight when it broke with Hillman and the ACW leadership. The struggle was most acute in outlying areas, such as Montreal, Toronto and Rochester, where the CP and its Canadian counterpart were strongly entrenched. In New York City the fight was often physical, as Hillman brought in Abraham Beckerman, a prominent member of the Socialist Party with close ties to The Forward, to use strongarm tactics on communist opponents within the union. By the end of the decade, the CP was no longer a significant force in the union.