National Women's Trade Union League of America founded, 1903
The National Women's Trade Union League of America (NWTUL) was founded in Boston in 1903 as a coalition of working-class women, professional reformers, and women from wealthy and prominent families. Its purpose was to "assist in the organization of women wage workers into trade unions and thereby to help them secure conditions necessary for healthful and efficient work and to obtain a just reward for such work."
The NWTUL viewed women workers primarily in their capacity as oppressed workers, but also recognized that all women, regardless of class, were united by the "bonds of womanhood." Thus upper class woman joined as the allies of working-class women, donating money, serving as spokespeople to the press, and arranging for legal representation. The wealthy woman members of the NWTUL were also willing to dirty their hands, and they participated in picket lines and sometimes got arrested during protests. In the process, the women of the NWTUL forged a new working-class feminism.
At a time when organized labor was devoted to a "family wage" concept—that is, a wage for men at which they could support an entire family without the contribution of a working wife—and when union leaders were worried that increased participation of women in labor markets would drive down men's wages, traditional unions were largely unwilling to allow women into their ranks. When women did form unions and strike, the NWTUL often provided support where other unions held back.
The NWTUL supported the women garment industry workers in New York and Chicago when they struck in 1909 and 1910. The Uprising of the 20,000 marked a turning point for the NWTUL, when the organization gained credibility after lending important support to the strikers. In the teens, the NWTUL organized working-class women to participate in the suffrage movement. Rose Schneiderman, who became an officer of the NWTUL, was an important figure of the Jewish left, and a key organizer in the New York Women's Suffrage Party and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. The organization dissolved in 1950.
OCP Resources
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