David Dubinsky (David Dubnievski) (February 22, 1892 - September 17, 1982) was a U.S. labor leader. He served as president of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) between 1932 and 1966, took part in the creation of the CIO and was one of the founders of the American Labor Party and the Liberal Party of New York. February 22 is the 53rd day of every year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1892 was a leap year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... September 17 is the 260th day of the year (261st in leap years). ... 1982 is a common year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The United States of America — also referred to as the United States, the U.S.A., the U.S., America, the States, or (archaically) Columbia—is a federal republic of 50 states located primarily in central North America (with the exception of two states: Alaska and Hawaii). ... The International Ladies Garment Workers Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. ... 1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday. ... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, was a federation of unions that organized industrial workers in the United States and Canada in the 1930s through the 1950s. ... The American Labor Party was a socialist political party in the United States active almost exclusively in the state of New York. ... The Liberal Party of New York is a minor American political party active only in the state of New York. ...

Years in Poland

Born in Brest-Litovsk, Dubinsky and his family moved to Lodz, Poland when he was three. He worked from early childhood as a delivery boy in his father's bakery while going to school, then graduated to being a baker. As a baker he joined the Bund, where his facility in Polish and Russian as well as Yiddish helped him to be elected assistant secretary within the union by 1906. For a city in France, see Brest, France. ... . Łódź (pronunciation: ) is the second-largest city (population 776,297 in 2004) of Poland, located in the centre of the country. ... A Bundist demonstration, 1917 The General Jewish Labour Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, in Yiddish the Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln un Rusland (אַלגמײַנער ײדישער אַרבײטערסבונד אין ליטאַ, פוילין און רוסלאַנד), generally called The Bund (בונד) or the Jewish Labor Bund, was a Jewish political party operating in several European countries between the 1890s and the... Yiddish (ייִדיש, Jiddisch) is a Germanic language spoken by about four million Jews throughout the world. ... 1906 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ...

Arrested after participating in a bakers' strike, then released on the condition that he leave Lodz, he went to Brest-Litovsk to live with relatives, then returned to Lodz only to be arrested again at another meeting of the bakers union. While en route to exile in Siberia he walked out of the prison camp where the authorities were holding him and, after several months hiding in Chelyabinsk and Bialystok, managed to make his way to the United States in 1911 with a ticket sent to him by one of his brothers, who was living in New York City. Siberia Siberia (Russian: , common English transliterations: Sibir’, Sibir; from the Tatar for “sleeping land”) is a vast region of Russia and northern Kazakhstan constituting almost all of northern Asia. ... Chelyabinsk Theatre. ... Białystok (pronounce: [bȋa:wistɔk]) (Belarusian: Беласток, Lithuanian: Balstogė) is the largest city (pop. ... 1911 was a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005 New York City (officially named the City of New York) is the most populous city in the United States, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. ...

Early days in the rag trade and the union

Dubinsky went to work in a garment factory in Brooklyn, then joined the Socialist Party in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. With the help of his brother's connections through the Bakery Workers Union, Dubinsky got a job as a cutter in a cloak shop, then a desirable job in an industry otherwise dominated by sweatshops. A map highlighting Brooklyn and the rest of New York City. ... The Socialist Party of America is a socialist political party in the United States. ... The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was a major industrial disaster, causing the death of more than one hundred garment workers who either died in the fire or jumped to their deaths. ... A sweatshop is a factory, where people work for a very small wage, producing products such as clothes, toys, shoes, and other consumer goods. ...

Now a member of Local 10 of the ILGWU, Dubinsky joined a group of members who rebelled against the old guard leadership of that union to argue for fairer distribution of job opportunities within the union. Dubinsky was elected to the local's executive board in 1918, became vice-president of it the following year and president in 1921. He was elected to the International's Executive Board as a Vice-President in 1922. 1918 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... 1921 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... 1922 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ...

Battles with the left

Shortly after Dubinsky was elected to the International Executive Board Benjamin Schlesinger, the International's President, resigned. Dubinsky campaigned hard for election of Morris Sigman, a former IWW member who took office in 1923. Sigman began to remove Communist Party members from leadership of locals in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Boston. Dubinsky supported Sigman's campaign. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, having much in common with anarcho-syndicalist unions, but also many differences. ... 1923 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. ... Chicago (officially named the City of Chicago) is the third largest city in the United States (after New York City and Los Angeles), with an official population of 2,896,016, as of the 2000 census. ... Independence Hall Philadelphia (sometimes referred to as Philly or the City of Brotherly Love) is the fifth most populous city in the United States and the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, both in area and population. ... City nickname: Beantown, The Hub (of the Universe), Athens of America Location Location in Massachusetts Government Counties Suffolk County Mayor Thomas Menino (Dem) Physical characteristics Area      Land      Water 89. ...

Sigman could not, however, regain control of the New York locals, including Dressmakers' Local 22 and Cloak Finishers Local 9, where the CP leadership and their left wing allies, some anarchists and some Socialists, enjoyed strong support of the membership. Dubinsky, by his own account, thought that Sigman was too rash and appears to have urged him to call a truce after the left wing-led unions led a campaign to reject a proposed agreement that Sigman had negotiated with the industry in 1925, bringing more than 30,000 members to a rally at Yankee Stadium to call for a one-day stoppage on August 10, 1925. 1925 was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... Yankee Stadium is the home stadium of the New York Yankees, a major league baseball team. ... August 10 is the 222nd day of the year (223rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ...

The left wing won control of the New York Joint Board, the body that coordinated the activities of all of the New York City ILGWU locals in all aspects of the industry, that year. When it called a general strike on July 1, 1926 Dubinsky was given a nominal role in the strike, reflecting his power base in the cutters' union, but was largely sidelined. That strike was a disastrous failure, leading to the rout of left leadership from the Joint Board and ultimately from the industry, other than the independent International Fur Workers Union. July 1 is the 182nd day of the year (183rd in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 183 days remaining. ... 1926 was a common year starting on Friday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Rise to power

Dubinsky was somewhat disenchanted with Sigman's leadership by this point; while he was a wholehearted supporter of Sigman's attack on the CPUSA within the union, he thought that Sigman was too abrasive, alienating the right wing almost reflexively, given his dislike of "union bureaucrats" gained through his years in the IWW. At the 1928 convention of the ILGWU he first proposed that Sigman resign in favor of Schlesinger – a suggestion seen by many as part of a plan by Dubinsky to become the eventual head of the union. Dubinsky denied any personal ambitions and rebuffed a proposal from Abraham Cahan of the Forward to promote him as Sigman's heir apparent. 1928 was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The Forward is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York. ... Contrasting with heir presumptive, an heir apparent is one who cannot be prevented from inheriting by the birth of any other person. ...

When Morris Hillquit, the union's long-time counsel, advanced a proposal to create a new position of Executive Vice-President, which Schlesinger would hold, giving up his position as General Manager of the Forward, Sigman agreed. Five months later, after the union's Executive Board rejected an attempt by Sigman to merge two unions, Sigman resigned and Schlesinger returned to office. Morris Hillquit (1869-1933) was a prominent Socialist and labor lawyer and leader in New York Citys Lower East Side in the early twentieth century. ...

By that point, however, the union was in a shambles, still struggling with the huge debts acquired during the failed strike, fighting expelled local leaders, some of whom had taken their unions out of the ILG, and facing an even more disorganized and piratical industry. Dubinsky set out to rebuild the ILGWU's base in New York City by striking a deal with the major manufacturers' group in 1929 that provided no pay raises but made it possible for the union to police the contract by cracking down on subcontractors who "chiseled", cheating workers out of pay or hours in order to gain a competitive advantage. The CPUSA opposed the new agreement but was by that time too weak to muster any effective resistance to Dubinsky. 1929 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Dubinsky was elected Secretary-Treasurer of the ILGWU at the end of 1929. He was elected President after Schlesinger died in 1932, retaining the position of Secretary-Treasurer in order to avoid the sort of internecine battles that previous officers had waged in the past. He held the Presidency until 1966, while remaining Secretary-Treasurer until 1959. 1929 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday. ... 1959 was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Dubinsky proved to be far more durable than his predecessors. He did not brook dissent within the union and insisted that every employee of the International first submit an undated letter of resignation, to be used should Dubinsky choose to fire him later. He also acquired the power to appoint key officers throughout the union. As he explained his position at one of the union's conventions: "We have a democratic union – but they know who's boss."

Under his leadership the union, more than three fourths of whose members were women, continued to be led almost exclusively by men. Rose Pesotta, a longtime ILGWU activist and organizer, complained to Dubinsky that she had the same uncomfortable feeling of being the token woman on the ILGWU's executive board that Dubinsky had complained about when he was the only Jew on the AFL's board. The union did not, however, make any significant efforts to bring women into leadership positions during Dubinsky's tenure.

Organizing during the Great Depression

As weak as the ILGWU was in the aftermath of the 1926 strike, it was nearly destroyed by the Great Depression. Its dues-paying membership slipped to 25,000 in 1932 as unionized garment shops shut or went nonunion or stopped abiding by their union contracts. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... 1932 is a leap year starting on a Friday. ...

The union recovered, however, after the election of the Roosevelt and the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, which promised to protect workers' right to organize. As in the case in other industries with a history of organizing, that promise alone was enough to bring thousands of workers who had never been union members in the past to the union; when the union called a strike of dressmakers in New York on August 16, 1933 more than 70,000 workers joined in it – twice the number that the union had hoped for. It did not hurt, moreover, that the local leader of the NRA was quoted as saying – without any basis in fact – that President Roosevelt had authorized the strike. The union rebounded to more than 200,000 members by 1934, increasing to roughly 300,000 by the end of the Depression. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882–April 12, 1945), 32nd President of the United States, the longest-serving holder of the office and the only man to be elected President more than twice, was one of the central figures of 20th century history. ... NRA Blue Eagle poster. ... August 16 is the 228th day of the year (229th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1933 was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ...

As one of the few industrial unions within the AFL, the ILGWU was eager to advance the cause of organizing employees in the steel, automobile and other mass production industries that employed millions of workers, many of them immigrants or children of immigrants, at low wages. The ILGWU was one of the original members of the Committee for Industrial Organization, the group that John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers formed within the AFL in 1935 to organize industrial workers, and provided key financial support and assistance; Rose Pesotta played a key role in early organizing drives in the rubber and steel industries. Industrial unionism is a labor union organizing method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union -- regardless of skill or trade -- thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in bargaining and in strike situations. ... John L. Lewis John Llewellyn Lewis (February 12, 1880 - June 11, 1969) was a labor leader who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) from 1920 to 1960. ... United Mine Workers of America seal The United Mine Workers (UMW or UMWA) is a United States labor union that represents workers in mining. ... 1935 was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Dubinsky was unwilling, on the other hand, to split the AFL into two competing federations and did not follow Lewis and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers when they formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations as a rival to, rather than a part of, the AFL. Dubinsky also had personality differences with Lewis, whom he resented as high-handed. The Congress of Industrial Organizations, or CIO, was a federation of unions that organized industrial workers in the United States and Canada in the 1930s through the 1950s. ...

In addition, Dubinsky was alarmed by the presence of Communist Party members on the payroll of the CIO and the fledgling unions it had sponsored. Dubinsky was opposed to any form of collaboration with communists and had offered financial support to Homer Martin, the controversial president of the United Auto Workers, who was being advised by Jay Lovestone, a former leader of the Communist Party turned anti-communist. Lewis, by contrast, was unconcerned with the number of communists working for the CIO; as he told Dubinsky, when asked about the communists on the staff of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, "Who gets the bird? The hunter or the dog?" The United Auto Workers (UAW), officially the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union, is one of the largest labor unions in North America, with more than 700,000 members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico organized into approximately 950 union locals. ... Jay Lovestone (1897-1990) was at various times head of the Communist Party, leader of a small oppositionist party, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions within it. ... The United Steel Workers of America (USWA) claims over 1. ...

The ILGWU began reducing its support for the CIO and, after a few years in which it attempted to be allies with both sides, reaffiliated with the AFL in 1940. Dubinsky regained his former positions as a vice president and member of the executive council of the AFL in 1945. He was the most visible supporter within the AFL of demands to clean house by ousting corrupt union leaders; the AFL-CIO ultimately adopted many of his demands when it established codes of conduct for its affiliates in 1957. 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1957 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Electoral politics

Dubinsky and Sidney Hillman, leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, helped found the American Labor Party in 1936. At the time Dubinsky and Hillman were both nominal members of the Socialist Party, although Dubinsky had, by his own admission, allowed his membership to lapse during the factional fighting of the 1920s. The Labor Party served as a halfway house for socialists and other leftists who were willing to vote for liberal Democratic politicians such as Roosevelt or Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, but who were not prepared to join the Democratic Party itself. Sidney Hillman (March 23, 1887 - July 10, 1946) was an American labor leader. ... The American Labor Party was a socialist political party in the United States active almost exclusively in the state of New York. ... Herbert Henry Lehman (March 28, 1878 - December 5, 1963) was a Governor and Senator from New York. ... The Democratic Party is one of the two major United States political parties. ...

The new party was subject to many of the same fissures that divided the left in the late 1930s. For a while after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, CPUSA members within the ALP condemned FDR as a warmonger because of his support for Britain. At one particularly stormy meeting Dubinsky and the other leaders were only able to hold their vote endorsing Roosevelt after moving from room to room and calling the police to arrest those who had disrupted the meeting. // Events and trends The 1930s were spent struggling for a solution to the global depression. ... Molotov (lower left), Ribbentrop (in black) and Stalin (far right) The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin pact or Ribbentrop-Molotov pact or Nazi-Soviet pact and formally known as the Treaty of Nonaggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was in theory a...

Dubinsky ultimately left the Labor Party in 1944 after a dispute with Hillman over whether labor leaders in New York, such as Mike Quill, who either were members of the Communist Party or were seen as sympathetic to it, should be given any role in the ALP. When Hillman prevailed, Dubinsky and his allies left to form the Liberal Party of New York. The ALP went on to endorse Henry Wallace in the 1948 presidential election, while the ILGWU campaigned energetically for Harry S. Truman, nearly bringing New York State into his column. 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Michael J. Quill was one of the founders of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU), a union founded by subway workers in New York City that expanded to represent employees in other forms of transit, and the President of the TWU for most of the first thirty years of... The Liberal Party of New York is a minor American political party active only in the state of New York. ... Henry Wallace may refer to several people: Henry Agard Wallace, the 33rd Vice President of the United States Henry Cantwell Wallace, US Secretary of Agriculture 1921-1924 Henry W. Wallace, inventor of the Kinemassic Field Generator This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists pages that might otherwise... Presidential electoral votes by state. ... Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884 – December 26, 1972) was the thirty-fourth Vice President (1945) and the thirty-third President of the United States (1945–1953), succeeding to the office upon the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt. ...

Dubinsky had hopes of launching a national liberal party, headed by Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate for President in 1940 who had soured on the Republican Party after his defeat in the primaries in 1944. In Dubinsky's eyes this new party would attract the internationalists in the Republican Party and the bulk of the Democratic Party, without the white Southern conservative bloc that commanded so much power in Congress. He proposed that Willkie begin by running for Mayor of New York City in 1945; Willkie, however, died before the plan could get off the ground. Wendell L. Willkie Wendell Lewis Willkie (February 18, 1892 – October 8, 1944) was a lawyer, born in Elwood, Indiana, the only native of Indiana to be nominated as the presidential candidate for a national party, having never held any sort of high elected office. ... This article is about the modern United States Republican Party. ... 1940 was a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ... A primary election is an election in which registered voters in a jurisdiction select a political partys candidate for a later election (nominating primary). ... 1944 was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... 1945 was a common year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar). ...

Dubinsky and the ILGWU played an active role in the Liberal Party for most of the 1950s and up until his retirement in 1966. The ILGWU ended its support for the party after Dubinsky left office. // Events and trends The 1950s in Western society was marked with a sharp rise in the economy for the first time in almost 30 years and return to the 1920s-type consumer society built on credit and boom-times, as well as the height of the baby-boom from returning... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ...

Postwar changes in the industry and the union

The union often saw itself, both before and during Dubinsky's years at the head of the union, as the savior of the industry, eliminating the cutthroat competition over wages that had made it unstable while making workers' lives miserable. Dubinsky took pride in negotiating a contract in 1929 that contained no raises, but allowed the union to cracking down on subcontractors who "chiseled". Dubinsky even claimed to have once turned down an employer's wage offer in negotiations as too costly to the employers, and therefore harmful to employees. Dubinsky summarized his attitude by saying that "workers need capitalism the way a fish needs water."

Policing the industry became much harder, however, as gangsters invaded the garment district. Both the employers and the union had hired gangsters during the strikes of the 1920s. Some of them, such as Lepke Buchalter remained in the industry as labor racketeers who took over unions for the opportunities for raking off dues and extorting payoffs from employers with the threat of strikes. Some also became garment manufacturers themselves, driving away unions, other than those they controlled, by violence. While Dubinsky himself remained untouched by graft, a number of officers within the union were corrupted. Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America as the Roaring Twenties. // Events and trends Technology John T. Thompson invents Thompson submachine gun, also known as Tommy gun John Logie Baird invents the first working mechanical television system (1925) Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to... Louis Lepke Buchalter (6 February 1897 - 4 March 1944) was a Jewish American mobster who was the notorious head of Murder, Inc. ...

The industry changed greatly in the years after World War II; while it had once been concentrated in New York City and other eastern and Midwestern cities, with smaller outposts on the West Coast, the work done by formerly unionized shops fled to other parts of the US or abroad, where unions were nonexistent and wages far lower. The ILGWU was unable to prevent these runaway shops or to organize workers at the new locations. World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that engulfed much of the globe... See: West Coast of the United States West Coast, New Zealand West Coast, Tasmania This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ...

The union's membership also changed greatly in the years after World War II; what once had been a predominantly Jewish and Italian workforce became largely Latino, African-American and Asian. The leadership of the union had less and less in common with its membership and very often had no experience in the trade itself. World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that engulfed much of the globe...

In the last decade of Dubinsky's tenure some of these new members began to rebel, protesting their exclusion from positions of power within the union. That rebellion failed: the established leadership had too strong a hold on the official structure of the union, in an industry in which members were scattered across a number of small shops and in which power was concentrated in the upper echelons of the union, rather than in the locals. Without the support of a mass movement that would have given the majority an effective voice, individual insurgents were either marginalized or coopted.

The union entered a long decline after World War II. Dubinsky's focus on maintaining the stability of the industry and the union's place in it dampened the union's desire to gain significant wage increases for its members. The union gradually lost its ability to keep sweatshop conditions from returning, even in the former center of its strength in New York. While the union had 450,000 members in the years immediately after Dubinsky's retirement, the forces that brought about the decline and eventual disappearance of the ILGWU thirty years later, when it merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union to form the union known as UNITE, were already at work. World War II was a truly global conflict with many facets: immense human suffering, fierce indoctrinations, and the use of new, extremely devastating weapons like the atom bomb World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th-century conflict that engulfed much of the globe... The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was a United States labor union known for its support for social unionism and progressive political causes. ... Track list 1. ...

Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 20, 1969. The Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is one of the two highest civilian awards in the United States, considered the equivalent of the Congressional Gold Medal of Honor. ... January 20 is the 20th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ...

External sources

• David Dubinsky's life

• Dubinsky and the Liberal Party

Further readings

"David Dubinsky: A Life With Labor", by David Dubinsky and A.H. Raskin ISBN 0671224379