ILGWU David Dubinsky Foundation 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.

Shortly after ILGWU President David Dubinsky's retirement in 1966, the union's General Executive Board established the David Dubinsky Foundation. The foundation provided grants to organizations that worked on issues relating to labor, immigrants, and liberalism, as these were three of Dubinsky's and the ILGWU's outstanding interests. According to the foundation's statement of purpose, the David Dubinsky Foundation sought "to aid those whose undertakings that are regularly not included in the normal work of the Union," and found "preference in projects of an inventive and experimental character" (5780/104, box 2, folder 23). The foundation's Board of Trustees were George Meany (Chair), Shelley Appleton, Isador Lubin, E. Howard Molisani, John P. Roche, and Louis Stulberg, and Gus Tyler served as the foundation's administrator.



Over the course of its decade-long existence, the foundation provided grants to a variety of project, and grouped them thus: New Immigrant Projects, Hispanic Immigrant Projects, General Immigrant Aid Projects, Blacks as Facing Many of the Same Problems as Immigrants Projects, Women's Projects (Women as a Minority), Consumer Interest Projects (Consumers as a Minority), Helping Minorities Outside the U.S., Labor Projects, Labor Education Projects for Workers, Labor Studies, Scholarship Projects, Voter Registration Projects, History Projects as Reminders of Struggles of the Past, and Medical Projects (5780/104, box 2, folder 34). The organization made its last awards in 1976, and ended in 1977.



The records of the David Dubinsky Foundation document the routine business of receiving applications, board of trustees meetings to determine awardees, and related correspondence and reports. Included are materials relating to meetings of the foundation's board of trustees, such as invitations, agendas, correspondence, reminders, and news clippings. The foundation's records relating to organizations that received grants include proposals for programs, progress reports, related correspondence, and news clippings. In some instances, information about these organizations are synthesized in annual reports that detail the name of the organizations and projects funded that year and the amount awarded. Additionally, the foundation records include proposals for programs that were not ultimately funded, as well inquiries from potential applicants. Together, these records document the range of projects that the David Dubinsky Foundation did or did not fund. A summation and analysis of this range is provided in an unpublished manuscript ("David Dubinsky Foundation Book," Box 2, folder 34). The David Dubinsky Foundations provided grants to organizations with projects or programs addressing one of the following areas: labor, immigrants, or liberalism.