Vintage Clothing Tags - ILGWU - International Ladies Garment Workers Label Details

The Steel Zipper
Guide to ILGWU

International Ladies Garment Workers Union Vintage Clothing Tags

The following information is a guide to the labeling used to identify women's clothing that was manufactured by the International Ladies Garment Workers Union also known as ILGWU. Originally the tags were used as a means to identify that the garment was produced by pant known to be in conformance with the unions established bargaining agreement. The style of tag used through out the years services as an excellent reference to establish a time frame when the article of clothing was manufactured. Below you will find the ILGWU tags that we known have used with the approximate date of the first use and retirement. If you know an ILGWU tag that we are missing and would like to share this information on our website, please contact us.

Years	ILGWU Vintage Clothing Label Description	ILGWU Label / Tag Photo
1899 - 1913	No known labels used during this time period. Florence Kelly of The National Consumer League began an effort to make the acceptable "white list" of manufacturers known to the purchasing public and developed the White Protocol label during this time period which may have been sporadically used by some manufacturers including some locals of the ILGWU but was not officially adopted by for use by the entire ILGWU until 1913 as indicated below.	Photo Not Applicable
1913 -1918	White Protocol Label - ILGWU and the Dress and Waist Manufacturers'' Association agreed to use this label as the "Protocol of Peace" on January 12, 1913 as an indication that the garment was made in clean sanitary conditions by workers with wages above those of a sweatshop. Controlling the spread of tuberculosis was factor in the creation of this label. The agreement was published by the New York Times. This label was not exclusive to ILGWU but serves as a indication that a garment was from this time period. The NCL discontinued it's labeling program in 1918 due to a fall out with the United Garment Workers Union which also used the label sometime after 1913.
1918 - 1925	No known labels used during this time period	Photo Not Applicable
1925-1928	Prosanis Label - Introduced on April 20, 1925 by the Joint Board of Sanitary Control, JBSC, to fill the need left by the void created when the white protocol label was discontinued. ILGWU applied for Prosanis labels on August 4, 1925. and used this label until 1928 although it was not exclusive to ILGWU. The JBSC came under accusations of association with communism and the JBSC was disbanded by the end of 1928	1918
1928 - 1934	No known standard labels used during this time period. Manufacturers label may indicate that it was made by ILGWU if present, most garments will not have an indication that ILGWU manufactured these items .	Photo Not Applicable
1934 - 1935	Nation Recovery Administration, NRA label - Created by the National Industrial Recovery Act legislation on June 16, 1933 as an effort to help industry recover from the Great Depression. The NRA clothing label was first used on October 13, 1934 (By Eleanor Roosevelt), over a year after legislation introduced it. It was discontinued on May 27, 1935 when the Supreme Court ruled that the NIRA legislation that mandated it was unconstitutional. This label is identified by a identified with a blue or black eagle holding lightning bolts and a gear in it's talons. There will be a 3 letter code, which is the manufacturers liscense code and 6 or 7 digit number	Photo Coming Soon
	NRB label	Photo Coming Soon
1955-1963	First tag used after the AFL and CIO merged. Note the large AFL-CIO letter through the center
1963-1964	Note AFL-CIO changed to smaller letters and there is not a registered trade mark symbol. .
1964-1974	Same as the 1963 tag except the register trademark symbol is now present
1974-1995	First used in 1974, with wide spread use starting in 1975 as part of the "Made in the USA" campaign

History of ACWA

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America was formed in 1914 as a direct result of a bitter union strike in 1910 involving members of the AFL affiliated United Garment Workers (UGW), the AFL leadership, and their employer, Hart Schaffner and Marx. The strike expanded to city wide, 45,000 member garment workers strike in Chicago resulting in a division in the UGW membership. The union membership feeling that the union leadership did not reach a fair settlement on rejected the offer and continued striking. By 1914 the membership was ready for change and at the 1914 UGW convention 66 percent of the UGA membership defected to form Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America or ACWA. Shortly afterward, Sidney Hillman became president of the newly formed union and led it's membership for the first 30 years. As a result of this split, at its inception the AFL refused to recognize the ACWA as an AFL affiliate. Through a series of strikes in the late 1910's, ACWA continued to solidify its membership in garment industry and eventually established a stronghold in the key cities of Chicago, Baltimore, and Rochester, New York.

By the 1920's, ACWA was the largest men's clothing union in the United States and was responsible for manufacturing a staggering 85% of men's garment. Like all unions of the time, the great depression thinned the ranks of ACWA's membership. ACWA survived the downturn and much of it's membership returned thanks to the union's legal right to organize gained from the National Recovery Act of 1933. As a result, despite the 19 years of opposition with the AFL, ACWA finally gained the AFL recognition as an affiliate in 1933.

In 1935, while still leading the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and a member of the AFL, Sidney Hillman founded the Committee of Industrial Organizing (CIO) with the leaders of seven other AFL affiliate unions. At it's inception the CIO was not a rival of the AFL, but a part of the AFL that was focused on organizing labor in the mass production industries along industrial lines rather the by craft, skill, or trade. Other AFL leaders were opposed to organizing labor in this manner and in September, 1936 the eight founding unions including the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and two additional affiliates that joined the CIO were suspended from the AFL. In 1938 the CIO renamed itself the Congress of Industrial Organization and officially formed as a rival to the AFL. While other garment related unions such as ILGWU and the Millinery Workers returned to the AFL at this time, ACWA remained committed to the CIO until 1955 when the AFL and CIO finally merged back together forming the AFL-CIO.

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America continued to grow through the 1950's and remained a dominant union in the manufacturer of men' suit through the 1960's and early 1970's. In 1976 it ended 62 year of organizing labor under the name Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America when it merged with the Textile Workers of America and formed a new union known as the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU).