Clara Lemlich

Clara Lemlich Shavelson (born 1 January 1886 in Chisinau, † 12 July 1982) was a leader of the rebellion of 20,000, the great strike of the New York cuff makers of 1909 for their union work she was put on the black list of entrepreneurs and entered. later when the Communist Party. Even in the nursing home she helped to organize the nurses union.

Lemlich Clara was born in the Ukraine, in Kishinev. As a child she learned against the will of their parents read in Russian. By buttonhole sewing and writing letters to the neighbors, she earned money to buy books. The family after the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 fled to the USA.

Lemlich found work in New York's textile industry. Together with her colleagues, she rebelled against the long hours, low pay, lack of advancement opportunities and degrading treatment by the guards. She was a member of the Trade Union International Ladies ' Garment Workers ' Union and became a leader.

They soon made ​​a name for himself by organizing several strikes and the male union members challenged, but also by her courage and her charm and her beautiful singing voice. 1909 her ribs were broken by strikebreakers, yet they returned to their Sreikposten.

Nationally known it was her speech at the mass meeting on 22 November 1909 to support the strikers against the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, and the Company Leiserson:

" I have listened to all the speakers and I have no more patience for words. I am a working girl, one of those who are on strike against intolerable conditions., I am tired of listening to the speakers with their platitudes. , We are here to help you decide whether we strike or not. I propose a resolution before the proclamation of a general strike! "

The amount agreed with her enthusiastic and after they had taken the traditional Jewish oath " if I tell the thing that I vow here, the hand may fall from the arm that I raise here," she called a general strike. Approx. 20,000 of the 32,000 cuff seamstresses from New York went in the next few days on the road; that was the revolt of 20,000 ( New York shirtwaist strike of 1909), which lasted until 10 February 1910 and to pay settlements in almost all plants, but not in the Triangle Shirtwaist Comp led. This factory burned on March 25, 1911 with 129 girls and women 13-25 years died. Clara Lemlich lost a cousin and suffered a nervous breakdown when she in the ruins looked in vain for her. The entrepreneurs had locked the exits of the workspaces.

Ostracized by the entrepreneurs and the conservative union leadership, Lemlich dedicated to the women's suffrage movement. Like her fellow Rose Schneiderman and Pauline Newman held the right to vote for a prerequisite for social change. But even with the civic leaders of the women's suffrage movement, they came into conflict. She then founded the Wage Earners League, a constituency organization for workers.

In 1913 she married Joe Shavelson. Their children were Charles Irving Velson ( he later worked for the Soviet secret service ), Martha Shavelson Schaffer and Shavelson Rita Margules. After the birth of her children, she went on to part-time work and founded a union for housewives (United Council of Working Class Housewives ), which occurred mainly for consumer protection, but also for better housing and education.