International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union - Growth and Turmoil

Growth and Turmoil

The ILGWU was able to turn the partial victory of the Great Revolt into a lasting victory; within two years it had organized roughly ninety percent of the cloakmakers in the industry in New York City. It improved benefits in later contracts and obtained an unemployment insurance fund for its members in 1919.

At the same time political splits within the union were beginning to grow larger. The Socialist Party split in 1919, with its left wing leaving to form various communist parties that ultimately united under the name of the Communist Party USA. Those left wing socialists, joined by others with an IWW or anarchist background, challenged the undemocratic structure of the ILGWU, which gave every local an equal vote in electing its leaders, regardless of the number of workers that local represented, and the accommodations that the ILGWU leadership had made in bargaining with the employers. Left wing activists, drawing inspiration from the shop stewards movement that had swept through British labor in the preceding decade, started building up their strength at the shop floor level.

The Communist Party did not intervene in ILGWU politics in any concerted fashion for the first few years of its existence, when it was focused first on its belief that revolution in the advanced capitalist countries was imminent, followed by a period of underground activity. That changed, however, around 1921, as the party attempted to create a base for itself in the working class and, in particular, in the unions within the AFL.

The party had its greatest success and failure in that effort in the 1920s in the garment trades, where workers had experience with mass strikes and socialist politics were part of the common discourse. Party members had won elections in some of the most important locals within the ILGWU, particularly in New York City, in the early years of the decade and hoped to expand their influence.