- Person
- Sidney Hillman
- Lived
- 1887–1946
- Field
- Labour movement
- From
- Lithuanian-American
The story
In 1934 the United Textile Workers, an affiliate of the American Federation of Labor, called a huge strike to protest worsening conditions during the Great Depression. It ended in disastrous defeat, especially in the South, leaving textile workers largely unorganised.
Sidney Hillman, president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and a founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, set out to try again. Within the AFL he had been one of the strongest advocates of organising mass-production industries, naming textiles alongside automobiles and steel as industries where unions were weak or absent. In 1937 the CIO formed the Textile Workers Organizing Committee as an alternative to the old union. Hillman oversaw the committee and provided major financial support for it.
In 1939 locals from the organising committee and the United Textile Workers merged to form the Textile Workers Union of America, with more than 100,000 members. The new union led organising campaigns across the union-resistant South, seeking higher wages, health insurance and fair labour practices, and it became a leading force in the CIO's post-war Southern drive known as Operation Dixie. The textile union remained grateful: after Hillman's death in 1946 it was among the contributors to the foundation created in his memory.
Hillman strengthened other young CIO unions too. In 1938 he played a decisive role in mediating internal disputes that nearly destroyed the United Auto Workers in its infancy, and he helped create the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union through the CIO's Department Store Workers Organizing Committee.
The textile union's story came full circle in 1976, when it merged with Hillman's Amalgamated Clothing Workers to form the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Its successors are part of Workers United today. Its long campaign in the South, including the struggle to organise J.P. Stevens, inspired the film Norma Rae and helped bring better wages and protections to generations of mill workers.
Why it matters
Hillman's organising and mediation helped give textile, auto and retail workers strong unions of their own.
About Sidney Hillman
Yeshiva student turned garment cutter who built the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, co-founded the CIO and helped write the New Deal’s labour laws.
More about Sidney Hillman
- Sidney Hillman helped found the CIOIn 1935 Sidney Hillman joined John L. Lewis in founding the Committee for Industrial Organization to unionise mass-production workers ignored by craft unions.
- Sidney Hillman led the Amalgamated Clothing WorkersIn 1914 Sidney Hillman became the first president of the new Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, saying "The tailors made me. They can have me."
- Sidney Hillman helped write the Wagner ActSidney Hillman gave key help to Senator Robert Wagner in drafting the National Labor Relations Act and to Frances Perkins in winning the Fair Labor Standards Act.
- Sidney Hillman rose to lead in the great 1910 Chicago strikeWhen a few women walked out of a Chicago clothing factory in 1910, the strike grew to some 45,000 garment workers, and the young cutter Sidney Hillman emerged as a leader.
- Sidney Hillman's union founded a bank for working peopleIn the 1920s Sidney Hillman's Amalgamated pioneered "social unionism", offering members unemployment insurance and cooperative housing and founding the Amalgamated Bank.
- Sidney Hillman won clothing workers a 44-hour weekAfter surviving a four-month lockout in 1919, Sidney Hillman's union had contracts with 85 percent of New York's men's clothing makers by 1920 and a 44-hour working week.
- Sidney Hillman inspired a foundation for a better AmericaAfter Sidney Hillman died in 1946, his union created the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which has given Hillman Prizes for journalism in the public interest since 1950.
- Sidney Hillman backed the first limited-equity co-opThe Amalgamated Housing Cooperative in the Bronx, funded and inspired by Sidney Hillman and Abraham Kazan, was the first limited-equity housing cooperative in the United States.
Sources
- Sidney Hillman Wikipedia
- About the Sidney Hillman Foundation The Sidney Hillman Foundation
- Textile Workers Union of America Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.