Kheel Center Labor Photos

Collection 5780 P International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Photographs, 1885 – 1985.

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was formed in 1900 by merging smaller related craft unions which were later organized on local, regional department, and international levels. This collection reflects the public face of this influential, women’s-clothing industry union as it was documented in photographs. The visual records were created by the union’s members and professional photographers hired by the union, as well as by others whose images were collected through purchase and donation. Over a period of 100 years a collection of approximately 20 linear feet was assembled. Subjects not felt to be of interest at the time, were lost to the union through lack of documentation or failure to preserve the photographs that were taken. Many more activities and contributions by union members were never recorded. While many individuals who shared the union’s struggle are pictured in these photos, relatively few have been identified.

Photographs document everyday life and work at home, in garment shops, at the Union’s offices, in the streets and the courts, and abroad. Subjects include homework, shop scenes, strikes, pickets, demonstrations, parades, conventions, union and governmental elections, collective bargaining, educational and cultural programs, celebrations, recreation, labor legislation, management engineering, musical, radio, and theatrical productions, war efforts, relations with other unions, health services, civil rights, cooperative union housing, the resort at Unity House, the Training Institute, the tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and the union label campaign.

Organizations pictured in these images include many of the regional and local unions, as well as joint boards, districts, and the international office, the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the American Labor Party and the Liberal Party, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the Italian-American Labor Council, and the Jewish Labor Committee, among others.

In 1995, the merger of two of the nation's oldest unions, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU), resulted in the founding of UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees). In July of 2004 UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union (HERE) to form UNITE HERE, organizing a still stronger and more dynamic union representing workers in apparel and textile manufacturing, distribution centers, and retail, industrial laundries, hotels, casinos, foodservice, airport concessions, and restaurants.

The Kheel Center is pleased to be able to preserve and make available the records of these unions, thanks to the support of UNITE HERE. More about this organization can be found on their website at http://www.unitehere.org/