Jewish Daily Forward: Former ILGWU Workers Battle Their Own Union

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.forward.com/articles/131100/

Last Staffers From a Legendary Labor Group Fight For Lost Benefits Remains
By Josh Nathan-Kazis
Published September 07, 2010, issue of September 17, 2010.

Twelve years into Aaron Adler’s retirement, the value of his life insurance policy was cut by $95,000.

Adler, a former staff member of the historic International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was not alone. In 2003, life insurance policies of all the union’s former officers and staff were slashed from upward of $100,000, to a flat rate of $5,000. Now, after seven years of legal wrangling, some of the former union employees believe that their benefits may be reinstated as soon as September 15, at a meeting with the leadership of one of their now-defunct union’s institutional successors.


ILGWU: Retired union staffer Aaron Adler, whose life insurance plan was cut by $95,000.


“They have to promise us something at that time,” said Adler, 81, sitting on a couch at his home in the Kew Gardens section of Queens. “They can’t just sit there and say, ‘We’re going to have more of the same, no end in sight.’”

Adler lives alone, in a studio apartment with art-covered walls. In his closet he keeps an old ILGWU baseball cap. He began working for the union as a clerk soon after returning from the Korean conflict, and eventually retired as a benefits adviser at a union local that represented workers making undergarments, negligees, brassieres and girdles. Like many of the former employees, he said that the salaries the union paid were low — lower, even, than those paid by other unions.

Union staffers’ salaries were “dependent on the dues,” Adler said. “The dues came from the members. They paid as much as they could; it was hard for them to even pay the dues. They were working women. They worked very hard for their buck. It couldn’t be a high salary; it wasn’t a high-paying industry.”

Once among the most prominent American labor unions, the ILGWU has long since disintegrated in a succession of mergers and splits. In its heyday, its rank and file was dominated by Jewish and Italian women; its leadership by moderates like David Dubinsky. Today, what remains of the domestic clothing manufacturing industry is split between two of the ILGWU’s institutional successors, UNITE HERE and Workers United, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union. A high-profile internecine battle between UNITE HERE and Workers United was settled in July, leaving Adler and his colleagues hopeful that their own concerns will soon be resolved.

FULL story at link.