Jewish Feminist Drew Latinas to Garment Union

Historically anti-union, Los Angeles once was described as the buckle on the scab belt.

But the city has had more than its share of labor heroes--and heroines--none more notable than the redoubtable Rose Pesotta, a Jewish immigrant who not only championed the cause of Latino workers, but also predicted that they would one day form the backbone of the city’s organized labor.

Pesotta, a philosophical anarchist, feminist and free-love advocate, also was a lifelong opponent of what later would come to be called sexism--both in the workplace and in her own union, The International Ladies Garment Workers (ILGWU).

In the 1930s and ‘40s, those qualities and her affinity for the Latina and black workers whom other organizers overlooked made her Los Angeles’ dominant labor leader.

Her penchant for showmanship and confrontation didn’t hurt, either. When a Spanish-language radio station in Los Angeles was pressured to stop carrying strike bulletins during one particularly bitter job action, Pesotta took her message across the border and broadcast from Mexico.

When the press ignored one of her garment workers’ strikes and fussed instead over the new spring fashion shows, she dressed her workers in the very evening gowns they had made and stole the headlines with a high-fashion picket line in front of the Biltmore Hotel.

Pesotta was, according to one admiring union colleague, “a torch that ignited everything she touched.”

Rose Pesotta left her native Ukraine at 16 to escape the marriage her father had arranged for her. She arrived in New York in 1911 and moved in with her elder sister, Esther. Rose, like many Jewish immigrants with anarchist convictions, drifted into the needle trades as a sewing machine operator and was appalled by the conditions she found.

Pesotta became active in the affairs of the ILGWU’s Local 25, an institution with a strong Yiddish accent and an equally strong tradition of male leadership. Undaunted, she began studying English and taking classes in union leadership.

After World War I, her anarchist boyfriend, an anti-war protester and draft resister, was among those deported to Russia in the “Red Scare” of 1919. In the years that followed, Pesotta’s affairs were many, reflecting her commitment to sexual freedom. The lack of a long-term relationship haunted her, but she found a community in her union, the anarchist movement and among her shop-floor companions.

“Buxom and effervescent, marching through the streets in boots and carrying a knapsack, on her way to yet another political meeting . . . she began cooking extravagant meals for her friends and took to hitchhiking as a means of transportation,” recalled her sister.

Her drive caught the eye of ILGWU President David Dubinsky, who took over the union in 1932 when it was $1 million in debt and convulsed by controversy over the number of Communists in influential positions. The union’s 45,000 members, mostly women, were among the worst paid in the nation and had few fringe benefits.

In 1933, Dubinsky promoted Pesotta to vice president--the sole woman member of the general executive board--and sent her to organize the growing garment center of Los Angeles, where the industry employed 7,500 workers scattered among 200 sweatshops.

Most manufacturers ignored the California minimum wage of $16 per week for women, while foremen distributed work unevenly, playing favorites with some women and ignoring others. Dressmakers were unpaid for off-the-clock hours.

“I come in the morning, punch my card, work for an hour, punch the card again. I wait for two hours, get another bundle, punch card, finish bundle, punch card again,” a worker complained.

Pesotta quickly began reaching out to the mostly Latino women in the sweatshops. Traditionally, they were skeptical of unionization. The organizer became a frequent visitor, not only to the workers’ shop floors, but also to their homes in the Belvedere and Boyle Heights communities. Soon, Pesotta had recruited more than 200 union members.

To educate herself on her new members’ culture, Pesotta hired a Latina, Concha Andrews, as her secretary; set up family social get-togethers; and held discussions with Latino shop owners on Olvera Street. She also began advertising on the Spanish-language radio station KELW.

As more Latinas signed up, she started English-language classes--like the ones she had attended as a “greenhorn” in New York. She also offered instruction on better operation of sewing machines and conducted citizenship drives.

In 1933, Pesotta led 1,500 dressmakers in a monthlong strike.

But the strongly anti-union Merchants and Manufacturers Assn., dedicated to keeping unions out of Los Angeles at any cost, pressed a new wrinkle into Pesotta’s rag trade strategy.

Carrying out orders to smash the strike, Capt. William Francis “Red” Hynes of the Los Angeles Police Department’s “Red squad” clubbed and arrested Pesotta and other pickets. His squad also offered police protection to strikebreakers who remained on the job.

When the mostly male coat and suit workers approved a separate settlement, Pesotta’s bargaining position was weakened. Still, she managed to win her workers a small wage increase and, perhaps more important, recognition of their union.

Leaving Los Angeles, Pesotta crisscrossed the country, organizing women in the garment industry, filling auditoriums and city squares with her fiery rhetoric.

She returned to Los Angeles in 1941, but soon found herself in conflict with the union’s West Coast director, Louis Levy, who made little attempt to hide his contempt for both Pesotta and the Latinas she had helped bring into the ILGWU.

As her first local target, Pesotta chose the giant Mode O’Day clothing store--run by the anti-Semitic and anti-union Malouf brothers, who owned a 12-story building downtown, as well as more than 300 retail outlets in 20 states.

With the support of glamorous Broadway-star-soon-to-be-Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas and her actor husband, Melvyn Douglas, Pesotta geared up for what would become a bitter struggle, increasing the tension with Levy.

While demanding improvements in the dressmakers’ miserable working conditions, she held rallies at the Embassy Hotel and published a weekly newsletter, which her members--Latino, black, and white Dust Bowl refugees--wrote and edited themselves.

By the spring of 1942, the Malouf brothers, fearing adverse publicity and declining sales, accepted a union contract. Local 484 was born.

Jealous of Pesotta’s success, Levy complained to Dubinsky that she had encouraged organized Latina hostility against him and that she had advanced herself through sexual manipulation. He also told Dubinsky that, after 37 years in the labor movement, he did not need to be told what to do by a woman.

That same year, after she was displaced by a man as head of Local 484, Pesotta decided she could no longer tolerate being the token woman on the board of a union whose rank and file was 85% female. Pesotta resigned in protest.

A post-war visit to Europe, still darkened by the shadow of the Holocaust, deepened Pesotta’s sense of Jewish identity and she undertook work on behalf of refugees of all creeds.

When that work was done, Pesotta returned to her sewing machine. She retired as a dressmaker and died in Miami in 1965.

Today, analysts evaluating the impact of Los Angeles’ burgeoning labor movement and its links to Latino social and economic progress can’t help but be impressed by Pesotta’s prophetic observation that the Latinas she helped to organize “might become the backbone of the union on the West Coast.”