The Day of Workers in America is the necessary celebration of the continuous struggle for workers’ rights. While some know the pivotal role of Jewish immigrant women On this date, many do not. They were the backbone of our labor movement, which paves the way for the protection we enjoy today.
This school year, New York City students can get to know one of them, Rose Schneiderman during “Hidden voices: Jewish Americans“A new curriculum supplier by NYC Doe, which he defended The Jewish Community Relations Council in New York (JCRC-NY). R.The supplier is the first type of the largest educational areas in the country.
At the time of high anti -Semitism, raising the contributions of these young Jewish women – who fought for the rights of all workers – provides a broader and richer understanding of the Jewish identity that will help prevent hatred before they are rooted. Here is how they started fighting for workers’ rights more than a century ago.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the waves of Jewish immigrants fled anti -Semitic violence and economic ruin in Eastern Europe in search of a better life in America. With the absence of a homeland to return to it, these immigrants understood that their future depends on their ability to live and work here in dignity, as is the case for many immigrants today. For many Jewish women who reach New York, this future was forged in clothing factories on the eastern side, weakening the fabric of the growing economy in America.
Many of these young women worked 14 hours To get meager wages in dangerous conditions. In response to this injustice, organized. Clara Limlich, leader of the Jewish clothing workers and women workers, led the women’s, 1909 “1909”20,000 uprising“One of the biggest strikes led by women in the history of the United States.
Two years later, the triangle shirt factory fire killed 146 Jewish girls, women and Italian women trapped behind the closed doors. The owners of the factory were overlandPrioritized by a system of priority for profits on workers ’life. However, the tragedy led to a wave of repairs supporting the icon thanks to the courage and design of Jewish immigrant women.
Rose Schneiderman, a fiery Jewish immigrant organizer in the New York Women’s Syndicate, and Francis Perkins, a social worker and the fire, joined the newly formed investigation committee in the state. Besides LEMLICH and other unions, they won comprehensive reforms for the state: fire safety regulations, protect women and children, and restructuring the Ministry of Labor in the state to impose new laws that have become The nation is planned.
Based on New York’s successes, Schneiderman has advanced federal labor laws. As the only woman in the FDR National Employment Advisory Council, she fought to include domestic workers in the Social Security Law and the work rules made Female industries. Berkins, the first acting woman of the Labor Party, is called a triangle fire.The day the new deal started“
These gains were formed on the sit -in lines and in the union halls through the uncompromising courage for women immigrants who have long understood the value of the intersection in leading social and political progress. Lemlich, Schneiderman and Pauline Newman and many lives in every modern battle for equal opportunities.
We see this in battles to finance fair school and the sizes of smaller classes. We see it in the successful Sag-Aftra blow by Fran Drashir-a New York Jew of Queens. We see this in the leadership that does not know the fear of Dr. Linda Mills, the first Jewish president and the first woman at New York University, the university where students are now taught in the triangle shirt factory building that once stolen the future of many young women.
From the classroom to studios, factories to offices and farms to retail stores, the struggle for workers’ rights that started in the clothing factories in Lower East Side, which was implemented through government cabetol and the White House, today.
We must stand with the Labor Party and maintain the basic principles behind the movement that started long ago: there is no consuming life, regardless of their race, religion, or immigration situation. Founding work rights have not been presented from charitable employers or a corrupt legal system. They have been won by Jewish immigrants without any unusual determination to make America more for workers only.
Today we are writing a new chapter on Jewish leaders who inspire future generations. This is a lesson worth teaching: in the classroom, and every day of work is coming.
Treyger, a former council member and a public school teacher, is the CEO of JCRC-Ny. Rozic represents the twenty -fifth association area in East Queens.