ILGWU Archives Department Records
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Scope and Contents
The records of the Archives Department include administrative records files relating to the establishment and operation of the unit, subject files containing photocopies of archival material, archival records maintained by the department, and publications.
Administrative records document how the archive was built, operated, and used. They include inventory and accession forms, correspondence with union officials and donors, financial records, and guidelines for the processing and care of archival records. These also include procedures for using the collections, guidelines for donating materials, and signed forms by researchers who accessed the archives. Materials relating to the archives' oral history project are also contained in these administrative files. These oral history audio recordings and transcripts (5780 OH and 5780/110 OHT) are available at the Kheel Center.
Subject files include prominent figures in the union, local unions, and other ILGWU affiliates and contain photocopies of records documenting the work of these individuals and organizations. Among the subject files and archival records are the ILGWU's founding meeting minutes (5780/111, box 1, folder 13), as well as minutes of the ILGWU predecessor union Sanctuary Local Assembly 3038 of the Knights of Labor.
Archival records include union correspondence, accounting ledgers, local union meeting minutes, and other material. The accounting ledgers of the Central States region are among the relatively few records held at the Kheel Center that document the activities of that department. The meeting minutes of Local 89, Local 48, Local 414, and Local 2585/414 fill out gaps in other series. These records from the Archives Department complement those in other series of the ILGWU Records
The Archives Department Publications (5780/121 PUBS) consist of printed material collected by the unit. They include newsletters and newspapers from local unions, collective bargaining agreements, membership censuses, financial and statistical reports, information welfare funds, legal records, and some material related to arbitration. Included in the papers of longtime ILGWU Archivist Robert Lazar (5780/121) is published sheet music.
Dates
- 1900-1987
Language of Materials
Collection material in English, French, Spanish, Yiddish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese
Conditions Governing Access
Access to the collections in the Kheel Center is restricted. Please contact a reference archivist for access to these materials.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection must be used in keeping with the Kheel Center Information Sheet and Procedures for Document Use.
Biographical / Historical
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.
Biographical / Historical
The ILGWU Archives were established in New York City in 1973, under the direction of Henoch Mendelsund. Robert Lazar served as archivist. The archives sought to collect union correspondence, meeting minutes, collective bargaining agreements, publications, photographs, audio recordings, film, and memorabilia. In 1987, the ILGWU Archives were transferred to the Kheel Center.
Extent
4 cubic feet
Abstract
Contains correspondence, forms, and other files pertaining to the archives' everyday operation, as well as photocopies of materials from the ILGWU records on a variety of topics and local unions, and collected printed material about the ILGWU.
Quantity:
4 linear ft.
Forms of Material:
Records (documents) .
General
- Contact Information:
- Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives Martin P. Catherwood Library 227 Ives Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853 (607) 255-3183 kheel_center@cornell.edu http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/library/kheel-center
- Compiled by:
- Z. Guttendorf, May 28, 2009
- EAD encoding:
- Kheel Staff, April 15, 2019
- Title
- ILGWU Archives Department Records
- Status
- Completed
- Author
- Compiled by Z. Guttendorf
- Date
- April 15, 2019
- Language of description
- Undetermined
- Script of description
- Code for undetermined script
Revision Statements
- 02/23/2024: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
Repository Details
Part of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives Repository
227 Ives Hall
Ithaca NY 14853