[This statement is adapted from “The Textile Workers Union of America Papers,”
Library Bulletin No. 1 of the John R. Commons Labor Reference Center.]
The textile industry, one of the nation's oldest, has always been one of the most resistant
to unionism. The nature of both the industry and its work force may help explain this
situation. Traditionally, competition among small textile producers has been fierce, and
management often cut costs by slashing the wages of the mill hands. The nature of the labor
force has been another barrier to unionism. In contrast to the craftsmen who joined the
unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor, the textile workers were largely
unskilled and made up of groups with little background of labor solidarity. In addition,
many mills were located in the South, a region traditionally hostile to any form of
organized labor.
The United Textile Workers (UTW), AFL, founded in 1901, was the precursor of the Textile
Workers Union of America (TWUA). With little help from the AFL, the UTW struggled to stay
alive, but it could never gain enough members to be an effective voice for the textile
worker. In addition to fighting employer opposition and worker apathy, the UTW had to
contend with craft dissension within its own ranks. The skilled weavers and dyers were
reluctant to sacrifice their benefits for improving the lot of the unskilled factory hands.
But unless every worker in the mill joined a strike, the employer could easily win the
economic battle. Thus, although an AFL union, the UTW realized that organization on an
industrial basis would be the only salvation for the low-wage textile worker.
When industrial unionism became a reality in the 1930s, the leadership of the UTW saw their
chance to capitalize on the growing militancy of industrial workers. In September 1934, even
before the CIO's formation, the UTW called a general strike, and an unprecedented 400,000
textile workers walked off the job. But limited financial resources and President
Roosevelt's demand for settlement quashed the early enthusiasm for the strike, and the
resulting stalemate left the already weak UTW with depleted finances and lowered prestige.
At this juncture the UTW and the CIO joined forces. In return for financing a great
organizing campaign, the CIO insisted that the UTW relinquish control of the remaining UTW
locals to the CIO, which would map the campaign and control funds. The UTW accepted the
terms, and on March 9, 1937, the two organizations joined forces to form the Textile Workers
Organizing Committee (TWOC). CIO chief John L. Lewis named Sidney Hillman, head of the
powerful Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, to run the TWOC.
Hillman immediately launched a massive organizing drive. From the ranks of the UTW, the
United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and other unions, he recruited an
army of 650 paid organizers. Although TWOC organizers would hit all sectors of the industry,
Hillman chose initially to emphasize the synthetic fiber and woolen mills of the northern
states, where reasonably pro-union sentiments assured them of early gains.
The TWOC campaign was successful, especially in the northern states. Organizers' reports
from the southern states, however, were almost always discouraging. When the organizer came
to a southern mill, they reported, he was often greeted by a campaign of anti-union
propaganda, discrimination, and personal harassment. The people who worked in the mills were
often not receptive to unionism, especially when the employers branded the CIO as
integrationist and communistic. Indeed, the CIO was a threat to the community's traditional
institutions, and the employers, who had a vested interest in the status quo played upon the
workers' racial prejudices and natural suspicion of outsiders.
Internal dissension compounded the TWOC's problems. The uneasy peace between the
controlling CIO group and the old UTW officials erupted into open factionalism by the end of
1938. When it became clear that the ailing Hillman would not choose Francis Gorman, former
president of the UTW, as his successor in TWOC, Gorman looked for an opportunity to regain
his power in textile unionism. The disgruntled Gorman led 50 old UTW locals back to the AFL.
In May 1939, 131 delegates representing less than 2000 members reconstructed the old
AFL-affiliated union at a special convention.
One week later the TWOC and the remaining loyal UTW locals met in Philadelphia to create a
permanent, working union, the TWUA. Delegates chose Emil Rieve, of the American Federation
of Hosiery Workers (a semi-autonomous group with the UTW) as president, George Baldanzi of
the Dyers Federation as vice president, and William Pollock as secretary-treasurer.
When the United States entered World War II, the textile industry expanded dramatically and
workers joined the union as never before. As their contribution to the war effort, Rieve, a
member of the War Labor Board, pledged textile workers to a no-strike agreement. But this
agreement, coupled with stringent government controls, soon hindered the union's campaign
for better wages. Forbidden to press for higher wages without government permission, the
TWUA pleaded its case before the War Labor Board in March 1944. Eventually, the Board found
wages to be substandard and ordered both a higher minimum wage and a small hourly increase
so that the union achieved its wartime goals in the fall of 1945.
The post war years brought serious problems to textile unionism which were to continue
through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. A union can only be as strong as the industry for which
its members work, and the health of the textile industry was poor for all three decades.
Over-inflated by the war production boom, the textile industry suffered greatly from the
economic slump which followed the war. In addition, synthetic fibers developed during the
war remained popular and caused shifts in employment patterns, and the industry as a whole
faced greatly increased competition from abroad. All these factors contributed to a drastic
shrinkage of textile employment from a peak of 1,342,000 in 1942 to only 800,000 in 1964.
Union strength dropped even more drastically, from 400,000 workers covered by contract in
1946 to 205,000 in 1963.
The fragile economic condition of the textile industry and the open hostility of many
manufacturers have continually frustrated the TWUA. If the union became the recognized
bargaining agent and aggressively pressed for higher wages, it risked forcing smaller
manufacturers out of business, leaving the workers jobless. On the other hand, many larger
textile employers moved to the South to avoid unionization. When threatened with the union
at one plant some large textile chains have found it more profitable to shut down that plant
and transfer operations to another non-union mill.
To combat these problems the TWUA turned increasingly toward less militant methods. Because
a prosperous industry meant well-paid workers, programs to aid the ailing textile industry
were first on the agenda. The TWUA urged Congress to enact import quotas to protect the
domestic producer from disastrous foreign competition, and to push for favorable tax laws
for the industry. Many of these ideas later became part of President Kennedy's Seven Point
Program for textiles. The union also offered to cooperate with the industry to develop new
ideas in marketing and promotion to widen the markets for textiles.
Energy that might have been directed to the problems of organizing was no doubt diverted by
the internal dissension that has plagued the TWUA. The first overt indication of this
factionalism was Gorman's bolt in 1938. The second fight erupted in the early 1950s.
Executive vice president George Baldanzi, director of southern organization, successfully
withstood a challenge to his office in 1950 by Mariano S. Bishop, who had the support of the
other general officers and most of the Executive Council. Recognizing his perilous position,
Baldanzi began to unite his forces. At the 1952 convention, he presented a slate of
candidates to oppose the incumbent Rieve administration, the first time an opposition slate
had been placed before the convention. With Rieve's victory, however, the bitter Baldanzi
bolted to the rival UTW-AFL, taking many of his supporters with him. Soon he declared open
warfare on the TWUA. Armed with the Baldanzi reinforcements, the UTW now felt strong enough
to seriously challenge the dominant TWUA, and launched an intensive raiding campaign.
Although the UTW captured less than 10 percent of the TWUA membership, the raid took its
toll in TWUA financial reserves, bargaining power, and staff morale. The factionalism did
not end when Rieve retired in 1956. Rieve's successor as general president, William Pollock,
also contended with dissension among the union's officers and staff. An open break between
the president and twelve of the twenty-two members of the TWUA Executive Council, which
occurred in 1963, came to a head at the 1964 convention where the Pollock administration
retained control of the union's leadership by a decisive margin.
Since 1963 the campaign to organize the J.P. Stevens Company has come to dominate TWUA's
history. In that year, the TWUA, in conjunction with the AFL-CIO's Industrial Union
Department, chose the Stevens Company, the industry's second largest, as the main target of
textile organizing. The battle with Stevens, unlike traditional labor struggles, has been
fought in the courts and before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and not on the
picket line. The union has won most of the battles; the Stevens Company has been found
guilty of violating the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) numerous times and has paid
nearly 1.5 million dollars in fines and back pay to illegally discharged union supporters.
Yet, Stevens remains virtually unorganized and has refused to negotiate contracts in even
those few mills where the TWUA has been recognized as the bargaining agent. After years of
fighting Stevens through the time-consuming and consequently ineffective legal system, in
1976 the union decided to attack Stevens through a nationwide boycott of the company's
retail products.
Also in 1976 the TWUA merged with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers to form the Amalgamated
Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). The merger produced a union with a combined
membership approaching 500,000, but the Textile Workers are definitely the junior partner in
terms of members represented. Since the early 1950s the TWUA's membership has declined at an
erratic but generally steady pace. While new organizing attempts have not been entirely
fruitless, plant closings and automation have more than offset hard-won organizing gains.
While agitation for wage increases and for new members has produced results during economic
upturns (70,000 new members were added during the 1965-1972 boom years of the Vietnam War),
often as not such agitation was more effective in producing raises for non-union workers
than it was in producing new members. Meanwhile, economic downturns have inevitably
accelerated the union's membership losses. At the time of merger TWUA dues-paying membership
was down to 100,000, out of its total of 160,000 workers under contract.
