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Labor Movement
Contents
The Garment Industry -- 1880
to 1911 > The Uprising of 20,000
> The Great Revolt
The Great Revolt
Only five months after the culmination of the
women's strike, male workers in the garment industry took to the
picket lines on July 7, 1910. The new strike was even greater in
size, as approximately 50,000 - 60,000 strikers left their shops.
The men's strike was better organized and was the result of much
preparation on both a local and national level. If a local union
seemed to be wavering in its support of a strike, delegates from
a stronger union were sent to intervene and boost morale. In addition,
whereas the women's strike had remained largely peaceful despite
the hundreds of arrests, the men's strike quickly became violent
and disruptive to the city as a whole. Strikers waged pitched battles
with policemen and replacement workers who sought to enter garment
shops.
On September 2, 1900, representatives of the manufacturers and garment
workers reached agreement. Workers were granted most of their demands,
which included:
- A 50 hour work week
- Double pay for overtime
- Ten legal holidays with full pay for weekly workers
- A regularly scheduled day for the payment of wages
- Preferential union" shops, in which union members would
be hired over non-union members in situations where both were
available
- All of the stipulations of the agreement were subject to
outside arbitration if the union felt they had been violated
The victory was the first large one for the ILGWU and its affiliated
unions. Nevertheless, the Triangle Factory Fire, which would take
place less than a year later, would expose that many existing and
lethal grievances had yet to been addressed.
For further reading, see: Louis Levine, The Women Garment Workers:
A History of the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union
(New York: B.W. Huebsch, Inc., 1924); SUNY Binghamton maintains
an excellent website devoted to women social movements in the United
States, which offers primary source documents pertaining to the
ILGWU and the strikes of 1909 and 1910. Its address is: http://womhist.binghamton.edu.
The School Of International Labor Relations at Cornell University
also provides resources relating to the events that led to the Triangle
Factory Fire. Its website is: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire.
See also: Triangle Shirtwaist
Factory.
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