- Person
- Rose Schneiderman
- Lived
- 1882–1972
- Field
- Labour organising
- From
- Polish-American
The story
Rose Schneiderman's formal schooling ended in 1895, when she was thirteen. Her father had died three years earlier, and when her mother lost her night job the family needed Rose's wages. She worked first as a department store salesgirl and then as a lining stitcher in a cap factory, and in 1903 she organised the first women's local of the United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers' Union.
Her talent caught the attention of the New York Women's Trade Union League, an organisation founded by progressive reformers to help working women unionise. The league's leaders were sincere, but they lacked credibility among working people and hoped to gain it by attracting respected women unionists. By 1906 Schneiderman had become vice-president of the New York league.
In 1908 the German Jewish philanthropist Irene Lewisohn offered Schneiderman money to finish her schooling. It was a real chance for a woman who had wanted to continue her education. Schneiderman refused, on the grounds that she could not accept a privilege that so few working women had. She did accept Lewisohn's amended offer: a salary to organise working women. She left the factory to work for the league full time.
She became chief organiser for the league, a post she held until 1914. Organising tirelessly in garment shops across Lower Manhattan, she helped pave the way for the Uprising of the 20,000 shirtwaist makers in 1909 to 1910, which the Jewish Women's Archive calls the largest strike by American women workers up to that time. During the strike she organised more than a hundred shirtwaist makers, coordinated events that raised money for the strikers, and persuaded women to join their local branch of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union.
Her choice set the pattern for her life. She went on to lead the league in New York from 1917 and nationally from 1926, and to serve on the National Recovery Administration's Labor Advisory Board and as New York's secretary of labor. Throughout, she put the advancement of working women as a group ahead of her own, and the protections she helped win, from fair hours to equal pay, benefited far more women than any single scholarship could have.
Why it matters
By choosing solidarity over personal advancement, Schneiderman became the organiser who helped bring tens of thousands of women garment workers into the labour movement.
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 took women's labour rights worldwideRose Schneiderman was a key member of the first International Congress of Working Women in 1919, which aimed to address women's working conditions at the new International Labour Organization.
- 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 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 Jewish Women's Archive
- Rose Schneiderman Wikipedia
- Women's Trade Union League 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.