ILGWU Health and Safety Department Records

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.

The Health and Safety Department was established in 1980 by the ILGWU to research health and safety hazards in the workplace, lead training programs on occupational safety for members as well as unorganized workers, and provide technical assistance relating to workplace safety. With partial financial support from the Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Health and Safety Department offered programming to ILGWU regions, locals, and affiliates, as well as for unorganized workers in the garment industry.

Arranged alphabetically by name, the company files document the Health and Safety Department's participation in the investigation and improvement of conditions in workplaces around the country, including correspondence, memoranda, and reports on shops. The Health and Safety Department also maintains several subseries of subject files: one was on workplace hazards; these are arranged alphabetically by industry. A second was a general subject file that included topics relating to the routine business and research of the department; these are arranged alphabetically by topic. The third is constituted of the health and safety organizations of other unions, as well as unions outside of the United States. The final series contains training materials, including files pertaining to specific trainings, files of handouts on specific workplace hazards, and files of graphics and originals used in the production of the department's training materials and publications.

Related Collections:
5780: ILGWU records