ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

UNIONISM AS A WAY OF LIFE:



THE COMMUNITY ORIENTATION OF THE

INTERNATIONAL LADIES' GARMENT WORKERS' UNION

AND THE AMALGAMATED CLOTHING WORKERS OF AMERICA

BY LEYLA F. VURAL



Dissertation Director: Professor Robert W. Lake



Drawing upon critical geographic theory, feminist analysis and labor history, this dissertation examines the community orientation of the International Ladies' Garment

Workers' Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA).  In the pre-New Deal era, both unions organized and developed programs based on a broad social vision and a dynamic conception of class-consciousness.  In an effort to make unionism a way of life, both unions encouraged garment workers to construct a class identity in which they connected their workplace and community-based experiences.



Thus the unions extended the traditional scope of union activity.  Using union archival records, this thesis tells this aspect of the garment unions7 stories.  First, I discuss the ILGWU's and the ACWA's organizing strategies in the 1910's and 1920's.  During this period, both unions blended class-consciousness with gender and ethnic identity. Second, I examine the ILGWU's Education Department.  Founded in 1916, it created a wide array of programs intended to empower workers, to foster class-consciousness, and to prepare them for a new society, a worker-controlled cooperative commonwealth.  Starting in 1934, however, a restructured department approached workers' education as a form of public relations.  Finally, I analyze the needle trade unions' roles in cooperative housing.  In 1927 the ACWA created the first union-sponsored, worker-owned and controlled housing in the country.  For the ACWA leadership this project represented both the power of the unionism as a way of life philosophy and a first step toward creating a new social order.  By contrast, the ILGWU's housing efforts in the 1950's were directed at enhancing the union's public image by improving conditions within the existing social order.



As the New Deal brought organized labor into the emerging social contract, the leadership in both unions came to view the commitment to unionism as a way of life as an irrelevant relic of the past.  The resulting shift in union philosophy had tremendous implications for union activities and goals.  No longer seeking to construct a class-conscious membership that would change the world, the unions retreated both from the community and from class.