ILGWU Local 22, Charles S Zimmerman Papers on Microfilm

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.

Charles Sasha Zimmerman was born in Russia in 1897. He arrived in the United States in 1913 and soon found work in garment shops. His career with the ILGWU began in 1916 when he went to work in a waist shop and joined Local 25. By 1925, Zimmerman was a member of the Executive Board for Dressmakers' Local 22. Throughout the 1920s, Zimmerman was an active member of the Communist Party, an affiliation that cost him his leadership positions within the union in 1925. He was involved with the bitter Communist infighting, and though he initially belonged to the Communist Party, he soon saw that they subverted the strike of 1926 for its own purposes which nearly decimated the ILGWU. With other members now opposed to Communism, Zimmerman worked to rid the Communist influence from the union and help reorganize the dress industry with his reinstatement in 1931. Even after his reinstatement in the ILGWU, he maintained close ties with the anti-Stalinist Lovestonites of the Communist Party.



Zimmerman was elected manager of Local 22 in 1933, and the next year became a vice president of the ILGWU. He became general manager of the New York Dress Joint Board and the Dressmakers' Joint Council in 1958. Zimmerman was involved with civil rights, social welfare and international labor organizations throughout his career. He was a trustee of the National Urban League, chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee's National Trade Union Council for Human Rights, and a member of New York City's first Human Rights Commission. Zimmerman helped found the Inter-American Federation of Textile and Garment Workers in 1966 and served as a U.S. representative to the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation. In 1969, Zimmerman was elected president of the Jewish Labor Committee and named to the Civil Rights and Social Security committees of the AFL-CIO. He resigned as a union vice president and general manager of the Dress Joint Council and New York Dress Joint Board in 1972. Zimmerman died in 1983.

Local 22 of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), also known as the Dressmakers' Union, was chartered in December 1920 and based in New York, New York.