Social Unionism Lives

On May 11 hundreds of workers rallied at a suburban Chicago Hart Schaffner & Marx factory, trying to preserve their jobs and the continued operation of the 122-year-old men's clothing company. Hartmarx Corporation, the parent company of Hart Schaffner & Marx, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. Workers fear that Wells Fargo, the main Hartmarx creditor, will force the company into liquidation or starve it of operating funds. The fact that the bank received $25 billion in federal bailout funds lends a special moral and political weight to the workers' campaign.

Their fight bridges the history of clothing worker unionism, from formative events a century ago to a current battle over its legacy. In the fall of 1910, a walkout by a handful of pants seamers at Hart Schaffner & Marx escalated into a five-month strike by nearly 40,000 Chicago clothing workers. Progressive reformers--including Jane Addams and future New Dealers Harold Ickes and Donald Richberg--backed the strikers. Out of the struggle came a settlement with Hart Schaffner & Marx, the seeds of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and a labor-liberal alliance that would blossom during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt.

Following the Hart Schaffner & Marx strike, unions transformed the lives of apparel makers by raising wages through industrywide agreements that stabilized hypercompetitive markets. They also provided workers and their families with innovative benefits, including unemployment insurance, union health clinics, nonprofit cooperative housing projects and even summer resorts. In 1923 the Amalgamated Clothing Workers founded its own bank, which continues to operate today. Needle-trade unionists played a central role in the New Deal; they believed that only through state action could economic security be assured and living and working conditions upgraded.

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