Bensh, Anna Panoramic Anniversary and Convention Photographs, 1948- 1953
Collection Number: 6036/088 P

The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States founded in 1900 by local union delegates representing about 2,000 members in cities in the northeastern United States. It was one of the first U.S. Unions to have a membership consisting of mostly females, and it played a key role in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. The union is generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG". The ILGWU grew in geographical scope, membership size, and 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. The ILGWU merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1995 to form the Union of Needle trades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented only 250,000 workers between them, down from the ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969.

Anna Bensh was born on June 17, 1907 in Mahanoy City, PA, and resided in Coaldale, PA, and Nanticoke, PA. According to the 1930 census, she worked as a seamstress in a shirt factory in Morea, PA.

By the mid 1930s, she had moved to New York, living first in the Bronx and then Queens while working again as a seamstress in the garment district. She was able to purchse a 3-family townhouse in Astoria, NY, in the 1950s. She was last employed as an operator at Bruck's Uniform Company in New York and was also a member of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and attended several conventions.

Family lore indicates that her boss asked her to go into business with him but she didn't have the money to do so. Lore also indicates that she saw/met Eleanor Roosevelt at a union dinner.

In 1967, she sold her town home and purchased a house in Boonton, NJ. She retired shortly after from Bruck's. She continued to sew and create draperies and slipcovers for her home and clothing for herself and relatives. She died at home on December 22, 1995 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Boonton, NJ.

Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.

This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.

Anna Bensh Panoramic Anniversary and Convention Photographs #6036/088 P. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library.

Related Collections: 5780: ILGWU records