Guide to the ILGWU. Operations Department. Industrial Homework records

Founded in 1900 by local union delegates representing about 2,000 members in cities in the northeastern United States, the ILGWU grew in geographical scope, membership size, political influence to become one of the most powerful forces in American organized labor by mid-century. Representing workers in the women's garment industry, the ILGWU worked to improve working and living conditions of its members through collective bargaining agreements, training programs, health care facilities, cooperative housing, educational opportunities, and other efforts. In 1995, the ILGWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE).

Little documentation exists in the ILGWU records about the work of the Operations Department in the union's international offices, and the materials that comprise the Operations Department records do not explicitly show that they were created by the department per se. While typically an operations department is known to deal with the everyday business of an organization and to have responsibility for the organization's facilities, the records suggest that the department either complemented the work of the Research Department, the Master Agreements Department, and the former Management Engineering Department, or maintained records useful to those departments.

The Operations Department records consist materials relating to the ILGWU's efforts to maintain a ban on industrial homework, manuals for operations standards in the manufacturing of women's blouses and women's skirts, and collective bargaining agreements. The records relating to homework and operations standards date from the 1980s, and the collective bargaining agreements are from the years just before the ILGWU merged with ACTWU in 1995.

Researchers interested in ILGWU statements on homework and related issues should consult the Research Department records, 5780/209. Likewise, researchers looking for additional collective bargaining agreements should consult collections in Series VI, Contracts and Case Files (5780/075, 5780/075 mf, 5780/145, 5780/146, 5780/147, 5780/158, 5780/191). These records, and others throughout the ILGWU records, complement the records of the Operations Department.

In 1942, federal regulators prohibited homework in five industries--gloves and mittens, embroideries, buttons and buckles, handkerchiefs and jewelry production, as it was difficult to enforce federal wage and hour laws for work done in the home. After forty-five years, the ban was lifted, and this collection documents the ILGWU efforts to block the new homework rules. The collection contains reports, comments, testimonies, and statements submitted by the ILGWU and other interested organizations and individuals concerning revisions to the federal regulation of employment of homeworkers in certain industries, proposed between 1986 and 1989.