Alliances across skill, gender, and ethnicity: A structural and identity-based analysis of two strikes in the New York City garment industry, 1885--1921

This study illustrates some of the factors that contributed to disparate workers joining together in strike activity for shared short term interests in two New York City garment industry strikes. The 1885 Cloakmakers Strike and the 1920–1921 American Clothing Workers of America Lockout and Strike are examined as two instances in which alliances across skill, ethnicity, and gender were possible in the labor movement. Whether fighting public anti-union rhetoric, loss of jobs, ethnic and gender discrimination, illegal piecework, and or changes in the structure of the workplace, both of these strikes brought temporary gains for workers, thus standing out from a history of lost strikes.; An integrative analysis is employed by combining the roles of identity through a developed conception of transformative solidarity with the model of structures and processes. Transformative Solidarity refers to the process of actors organizing together for short term goals, despite differences, with priority placed on selective incentives of organizing across difference. This integrative approach of structures and transformative solidarity benefits from an historical comparative framework. In this historical comparative framework the form of labor organizing in each strike, the large scale processes of immigration, the national economy, and the political economy of New York City are viewed as pivotal in understanding the alliances across gender, ethnicity, and skill.; The Irish and Jewish skilled and unskilled men and women workers in the 1885 Cloakmakers Strike organized through the principles of craft unionism, while the Jewish and Italian skilled and unskilled women and men of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America relied on New Unionism for their means of organizing. Despite temporal differences, the use of alternative means for the structure of labor organizing, and variance in the large scale processes, both strikes were successful. Emphasis is placed on the variation possible in socio historical conditions that aid in breaking down barriers between diverse workers, creating possibilities for temporary alliances.; The study grapples with a dualism inherent in sociology: the division of the individual and society from attention to agency and social structures. This dissertation seeks to overcome this dualism through an integrative approach that illustrates the interconnections and mutual reliance on the one hand, structures and processes, and on the other, identity in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of alliances in the labor movement across workers of varied skill, gender, and ethnicity.