Women Garment Industry Workers Strike

March is Women’s History Month. Our site always centers women’s history; this month we’ll do so a bit more emphatically.

One hundred years ago today … The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union called for a strike, demanding a minimum wage of $25/week among other concessions. The labor force of more than 250 shops in New York, largely composed of women, heeded the call. The feather boa industry was particularly hard hit by being shut down.

According to the Tribune, the workers demands were “reaffirmation of the old agreements between the employers and the union, a minimum wage of $25 A week and reëstablishment of the old wage scale.”

The Age noted that the strike was multiracial: “many colored women and girls are involved” (“Urban League Notes,” New York Age, 12 March 1921, p.4.)

The strike would last until March 21, when manufacturers largely acceded to the union's demands.

– Jonathan Goldman, March 9, 2021

TAGS: strike, union, women’s labor, textiles, garments, wages, clothes