Rose Pesotta and fellow strikers confront a police officer while picketing in Los Angeles, 1940s.
Since the 1920s, the garment industry of Los Angeles has seen constant struggle between employers and immigrant workers’ unions. In 1933, young women in the industry led a militant general strike that shut down production and led to dramatic confrontations between strikers, strikebreakers, and the police. The strike’s leader was Rose Pesotta, an Jewish immigrant from Ukraine who later rose to a national leadership position in the union, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Although the 1933 strike was a limited success, the union fought on to expand membership during and after World War II. The ILGWU and a second garment union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, represented large sections of the garment industry from the 1940s through the 1960s.
By the 1970s, unionism was in decline as the apparel industry faced competition from imported goods. Many employers returned to old ways of doing business, hiring mainly undocumented immigrants, operating without union contracts, and contracting out to homeworkers. At this time, many unions favored deporting undocumented workers rather than organizing them, but this attitude was changing. In Los Angeles, the ILGWU hired Spanish-speaking organizers and aggressively signed up new members. But the union faced an uphill climb as immigration officers frequently raided factories and deported union supporters, sometimes on the day of a union election. These experiences led the ILGWU to call for unconditional amnesty for undocumented workers, and in 1980 the union unsuccessfully advocated for the AFL-CIO to embrace a general amnesty. At the local level, the union also used the contracts it did win to expand the rights of undocumented workers. For instance, some contracts required employers to inform workers when immigration officials planned contacted them or required legal warrants for factory raids.
in the 1970s immigration officers frequently raided factories and deported union supporters, sometimes on the day of a union election.
Although the ILGWU campaign was not as successful as hoped, it pointed to the future of organizing. The AFL-CIO finally changed its policy on undocumented workers in 2000, reflecting the common orientation of most its unions by that time. The ILGWU campaign was a training ground for a new generation of union organizers, many of whom went on to play a role in the union upsurge of the 1990s. Among them were Maria Elena Durazo (HERE/UNITE HERE, current state Senator), Cristina Vasquez (SEIU-Workers United, the current name for the ILGWU), Jono Shaffer and Rocio Saenz (later with SEIU), Peter Olney (later with ILWU), and others.
Today, Workers United (affiliated with SEIU) carries on the work of the ILGWU and the ACWA, however, most of the industry’s workers do not enjoy collective bargaining rights. For nonunion workers, the Los Angeles Garment Worker Center (GWC) supports garment workers in efforts to enforce labor standards, recover unpaid wages, and build a culture of solidarity in the industry. The GWC is an example of the complementary roles played by unions and worker centers today.
Soldatenko, Gutierrez Maria A. de. “International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Labor Organizers: Chicana and Latina Leadership in the Los Angeles Garment Industry.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 23, no. 1 (April 2002): 46–66. https://doi.org/10.1353/fro.2002.0013.
Katz, Daniel. All Together Different: Yiddish Socialists, Garment Workers, and the Labor Roots of Multiculturalism. The Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
Laslett, John H. M. Sunshine Was Never Enough: Los Angeles Workers, 1880-2010. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.
Zepeda-Millán, Chris. Latino Mass Mobilization: Immigration, Racialization, and Activism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Primary Sources
Garment workers affiliated with the ILGWU celebrate an overwhelming victory in their union election at Glydons High Fashion Intimate Apparel, February 1980. Members of SEIU local 399, CIWA, the ILGWU, and other organizations march in the wake of the 1992 civil unrest.A STOP-WORK PROTEST–A band plays as members of International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union here hold a rally that was part of a nationwide protest against the importation of textiles. Lola Patina of the ILGWU addresses workers attending a special class at the union hall, 1940Rose Pesotta and fellow strikers confront a police officer while picketing in Los Angeles during a strike in the late 1940s.
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