Jewish members of the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) were prejudiced against Italians for allegedly undercutting wages.
Green's study of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in New York and the Federation de l'habillement in Paris shows that when labor disputes erupted, they were often grounded in workers' attempts to achieve a modicum of stability within this unpredictable field.
For example, she reports, "Barney's [department store] in New York City, in the 1990s, was the gayest union workplace ever"; as one worker told her, "The whole store was out." They were members of the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Frank also describes the painful and challenging efforts to unionize the mostly gay and lesbian workers in community-based clinics in San Francisco in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS crisis.
Amalgamated Bank, based in New York, was founded in 1923 by the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. It serves working-class consumers, trade unions, and businesses through about 20 branches in and around New York City, as well as locations in California, New Jersey, Nevada, and Washington, DC.
However, after 1930 the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, embraced new forms of trade unionism that stressed tripartite cooperation among labour, capital, and the State.
But the Hillman approach, as practiced by the union he led, the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), also promised workers freedom from arbitrary managerial hiring and firing decisions, ended pre-employment physical examinations, and banned unilaterally established piece rates and production standards.
Eventually, the Italian women joined one of the three garment unions that survived the 1919 Red Scare's antiradical fervor--the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, the United Garment Workers Union, or the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
The story begins in Chapters One and Two with the success of the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) in a 1945 contest with the United Garment Workers Union (GMU) and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) for the loyalty of workers in the men's clothing industry in Winnipeg.