- Person
- Rose Schneiderman
- Lived
- 1882–1972
- Field
- Labour organising
- From
- Polish-American
The story
The peace settlement that followed the First World War created the International Labour Organization, written into the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 to set standards for working people around the world. Its first annual conference was due to open in Washington, D.C., in late October 1919. Women trade unionists were determined that the concerns of working women would be heard there.
Their answer was the first International Congress of Working Women, called by the National Women's Trade Union League of America and opened in Washington on 28 October 1919, a day before the labour conference began. Its aim was to address women's working conditions at the first annual ILO convention. Rose Schneiderman, president of the New York Women's Trade Union League since 1917, was a key member.
She brought long experience. She had organised women in the garment trades since 1903, served as the league's chief organiser from 1908 to 1914, helped prepare the ground for the Uprising of the 20,000 shirtwaist makers in 1909, and in 1917 led the industrial section of New York's successful suffrage campaign. It was a remarkable position for an immigrant from a small village in Russian Poland whose schooling had ended at thirteen.
The conference that followed adopted the first six international labour conventions, on hours of work in industry, unemployment, maternity protection, night work for women, minimum age and night work for young people. These were exactly the questions of hours, safety and the protection of mothers that the league had spent years raising in American factories.
Schneiderman kept working on these issues for decades. She was president of the National Women's Trade Union League from 1926 until her retirement, and in 1933 she became the only woman on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board, where she wrote the codes for industries with mainly female workforces. As New York's secretary of labor she campaigned for equal pay and comparable worth. The ILO, now a United Nations agency with 187 member states, still sets international labour standards through talks between governments, employers and workers.
Why it matters
Schneiderman's work at the 1919 congress helped put working women's needs on the international agenda as global labour standards were first being set.
About Rose Schneiderman
Polish-Jewish immigrant cap-maker who became a towering labour leader, popularised the cry “bread and roses” and helped shape New Deal labour law.
More about Rose Schneiderman
- Rose Schneiderman fought for workers' bread and roses“The worker must have bread, but she must have roses, too,” Rose Schneiderman declared in 1912; she spent half a century winning better wages, hours and safety for working women.
- Rose Schneiderman founded a union's first women's localIn 1903 Rose Schneiderman organised the women in her cap factory so quickly that the United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers' Union chartered its first women's local within days.
- Rose Schneiderman was a founding member of the ACLURose Schneiderman was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union, bringing a labour organiser's experience to the defence of free speech and civil liberties.
- Rose Schneiderman's speech after the Triangle fireAt a memorial meeting on 2 April 1911, after the Triangle fire killed 146 garment workers, Rose Schneiderman declared that working people must save themselves through a strong movement.
- Rose Schneiderman refused a privilege few workers hadIn 1908 Rose Schneiderman turned down a scholarship to finish her schooling, saying she could not accept a privilege so few working women had, and organised workers instead.
- Rose Schneiderman brought working women into suffrageFrom 1907 Rose Schneiderman argued that working women needed the vote to win better conditions, helping widen the suffrage movement beyond the middle class.
- Rose Schneiderman toured Ohio to win men's votes for womenIn 1912 Rose Schneiderman travelled through Ohio's industrial cities for the National American Woman Suffrage Association, urging working men to vote for women's suffrage.
- Rose Schneiderman helped win the vote for New York womenIn 1917 Rose Schneiderman led the industrial section of New York's suffrage campaign, and the state referendum that year gave New York's women full voting rights.
Sources
- Rose Schneiderman Wikipedia
- Rose Schneiderman Jewish Women's Archive
- Women's Trade Union League Wikipedia
- International Labour Organization 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.