International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union - Internal Battles

Internal Battles

In 1923, Benjamin Schlesinger, the International's President, resigned; the convention elected Morris Sigman, who had previously been Secretary-Treasurer of the International before resigning in a dispute with Schlesinger, as its new President. Sigman, a former IWW member and anti-communist, began to remove Communist Party (CP) members from leadership of locals in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston.

Sigman could not, however, regain control of the New York locals, including Dressmakers' Local 22, headed by Charles S. Zimmerman, where the CP leadership and their left wing allies, some anarchists and some Socialists, enjoyed strong support of the membership. Local 22 rallied to prevent the International from physically retaking their union hall. Those unions led the campaign to reject a proposed agreement that Sigman had negotiated with the industry in 1925, bringing more than 30,000 members to a rally at Yankee Stadium to call for a one-day stoppage on August 10, 1925.

After Sigman called a truce in the internecine war with the left-led locals, followed up by a reform of the ILGWU's internal governance system that gave proportional weight to locals based on the size of their membership, the left wing of the union was even stronger than before. Sigman depended on the support of David Dubinsky's cutters union, many of the Italian locals, and the "out-of-town locals", many of which were mere paper organizations, to hold on to his presidency at the 1925 convention.

The inevitable showdown came the next year. The International supported the recommendations of an advisory board appointed by Governor Al Smith that supported the union's demands that wholesale jobbers be financially responsible for the wages owed by their contractors and that workers be guaranteed a set number of hours per year, while allowing employers to reduce their workforces by up to ten percent in any given year. While Sigman and Dubinsky supported the proposal, the CP-led and CP-influenced locals denounced it. The New York Joint Board called a general strike on July 1, 1926.

The left wing locals may have hoped that a general strike, which had the support of even the right wing locals loyal to Sigman, would be a quick success; it was not. Employers hired "Legs" Diamond and other gangsters to beat up strikers; the union hired their own protection, led by "Little Augie" Orgen, to fight back. When the strike went into its third month, the left wing leadership went to A.E. Rothstein, a retired manufacturer, to ask him to intercede. He suggested they talk to his estranged son, Arnold Rothstein, a gambler with widespread influence in the New York underworld.

Rothstein was able to get the hired gangsters on both sides to withdraw. The local leadership was then able to negotiate a modified version of the agreement they had rejected before the strike began. While they had reservations about the concessions they were accepting, the left wing recommended it.

Factional divisions within the CPUSA, however, led the party leadership to reject the offer. As one member of the CPUSA and a leader in Local 22 recalled the scene, one of the members of the committee said, when presenting the agreement to a meeting of the shopfloor leaders, "Maybe we could have gotten more, but . . .", at which point a party leader interjected, "They didn't get more. If there is a possibility of getting more, go and get more." The rest of the leadership, unwilling to appear less militant, joined in urging rejection of the deal.

That ended negotiations with the employers and kept the strike going another four months, at the end of which the union was nearly bankrupt and the left leadership almost wholly discredited. Sigman took over negotiations, settled the strike and then proceeded to drive the Communist Party from any positions of influence within the ILG.