A comrade demands that the T.U.U.L. unions make good on their commitment to create women’s departments in the new unions.

‘For Establishment of Women’s Departments in T.U.U.L.’s Industrial Unions’ by A.C. from Working Woman. Vol. 1 No. 11. August, 1930.

National Women’s Dept. T.U.U.L.

The first international Women’s Conference which will be held immediately after the Fifth World Congress of Red International of Labor Unions, in Moscow, should be of interest to every working woman in the United States.

For the first time in history of the working class–such a conference is to be held. Where the problems effecting women workers–special demands and program for future work will be adopted.

At this conference there will be present women delegates from every part of the world, the majority of whom will be delegates to the Fifth Congress of the Red International of Labor Unions, and the experiences of the various countries will be exchanged and plans worked out how best to carry on the work so that these millions of working women will become a real factor in the militant struggles of the revolutionary labor movement of the world.

Not until the R.I.L.U. began to pay attention to the organization of the women workers into the revolutionary trade unions had any attempts been made on the part of the Fascist A.F. of L. and other reactionary trade unions to organize these workers, who are the most exploited section of the working class. Only a few unions, such as the clothing workers were women taken into the unions. Those were not taken in because the misleaders were anxious to organize these women to improve their conditions and for equal pay for equal work and similar demands for the women in that particular trade, but because these women were the most militant workers and gained organization over the heads and desire of the leaders. None of these organizations made a real effort to organize the women workers, and to draw them into the life of the organization, with the result that in the clothing industries today there are thousands of women workers not organized and are being used by the bosses as a means to cut wages. Men are being replaced by women at half the wages the men were getting. But woman are not only employed in the light industries, such as clothing, but are being drawn into the Auto, Metal, etc., none of these women workers are organized.

The Trade Union Unity League has a women’s department to carry on work among the women in the various industries. Each affiliated union and league have been instructed to establish women departments for the purpose of developing activities among the women workers in the shops and factories. To date very few districts have responded. There are still many leading members of the T.U.U.L. in various districts who don’t see the need of establishing functioning women’s departments, and who even actively oppose it. With the result that no work is being carried on.

Only in San Francisco, Boston and Cleveland are some attempts being made at the organization of women into the T.U.U.L. unions. In San Francisco an industrial women’s conference takes place July 22: Delegates are expected from canning industries, needle, food, etc. At this conference plans will be worked out how to recruit these women into the industrial unions and leagues of the T.U.U.L. The Boston district has also worked out a plan of calling women’s industrial conferences to which they will get women workers from Textile, Needle, Food, Shoe, etc., and begin to carry out the instructions of recruiting women into the revolutionary unions. In Cleveland a Comrade writes that no cooperation is given her, but by herself she was successful in organizing a shop committee of women workers in a laundry and is now having contacts in a steel mill where women are employed and will have a shop committee organized there. Districts like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit should take notice. These districts I have not yet made a beginning to plan work among women, if they did no information has reached the national office.

Comrades: We are all aware of the fact that the capitalists of this country as well as the entire capitalist world is preparing for war against the Soviet Union and the entire working class. Women workers will play an important role during the coming war. The time is short, we must work overtime in order to make up for the lost time and organize functioning women’s departments in every district of the T.U.U.L., in every affiliated industrial union, in every shop and mill where women are employed.

Only a few weeks are left to the Fifth World Congress of the R.I.L.U. Only a few weeks to the First International Women’s Conference. All on the job for the 50,000 new members in the T.U.U.L. All for the final preparation for sending delegates to the Fifth World Congress of the R.I.L.U.

The Working Woman, ‘A Paper for Working Women, Farm Women, and Working-Class Housewives,’ was first published monthly by the Communist Party USA Central Committee Women’s Department from 1929 to 1935, continuing until 1937. It was the first official English-language paper of a Socialist or Communist Party specifically for women (there had been many independent such papers). At first a newspaper and very much an exponent of ‘Third Period’ politics, it played particular attention to Black women, long invisible in the left press. In addition, the magazine covered home-life, women’s health and women’s history, trade union and unemployment struggles, Party activities, as well poems and short stories. The newspaper became a magazine in 1933, and in late 1935 it was folded into The Woman Today which sought to compete with bourgeois women’s magazines in the Popular Front era. The Woman today published until 1937. During its run editors included Isobel Walker Soule, Elinor Curtis, and Margaret Cowl among others.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/wt/v1n11-aug-1930-WW-R7414.pdf