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Subject Guide: Labor History

Archival and library highlights found at the Center relating to labor history and the individuals and organizations that fought for equal rights in the workplace.

Brochure for Labor and Peoples' ORT, [c.1942] (RG 380, YIVO)

Archival Material

American ORT Federation, 1922-1960 (RG 380)

Established in 1922 by Leon Bramson and Aron Syngalowski as the national organization of the ORT in the U.S. ORT, which was established in Russia in 1880, is an international Jewish organization for vocational training. In the U.S., ORT stands for Organization for Rehabilitation through Training. 

The records consist of correspondence, minutes, reports, financial and statistical records, printed materials relating to the activity of the AOF and to ORT work worldwide, 1922-1960.

Bund Archives (RG 1400) (This collection is currently closed)

The Bund archives was formed as a topical collection on the Bund's history, and on related topics such as Jewish and general socialist groups, other political movements, Yiddish culture, and the Holocaust. In addition, a large number of organizations and individuals donated their records and papers to the Bund Archives.

The collection is noted for the vast quantities of printed matter ranging from leaflets and pamphlets to complete runs of periodicals. Included are illegal propaganda pamphlets and periodicals of Bund's earliest period which were published abroad and smuggled into Russia, and proclamations and brochures printed in clandestine printing shops inside Russia. Printed materials, are richly represented in all other topical divisions of the Archives. The collection also includes photographs, posters, minutes, reports, correspondence, financial ledgers, manuscripts, biographical materials.

Starting February 20, 2023 this collection will be closed for the first phase of YIVO’s Jewish Labor and Political Archives Project in order to prepare them for digitization. Should you need materials during their closure, please contact reference@yivo.org for remote reference and reference photograph services.

Hebrew-American Typographical Union 1888-1961 (RG 445)

This union was local 83 of the International Typographical Union. It was founded in New York in 1888, incorporated in 1891 and covered typographical work in the Yiddish, Hebrew and Slavic languages. In 1961 the Union merged with the New York Typographical Union, Local 6. Collection contains. Certificate of incorporation, 1891. Manuscript of union by-laws, 1888. Minutes of regular and executive meetings, 1901-1959. Correspondence with unions, organizations and individuals. Financial records, 1948-1954. Membership register, 1898-1948. Scrapbooks, memorabilia, press clippings about the strike against the *Day*, 1941. 

John Mill Papers (RG 415)

John Mill was a founding member of the Jewish Labor Bund. The collection contains correspondence with leading figures in the Jewish Labor Bund, including Bronislaw Grosser, Moshe Gurevitch, M. Kopelson, Beinish Michalevich, Anna Rosental, Baruch Vladeck.

Oral History Collection on the Labor Movement (RG 113)

In 1963 the YIVO Institute sponsored an oral history project on the history of the Jewish community in America. Its objective was to carry out interviews on various themes with leaders and participants in the development of the American Jewish community and its institutions. The project's first theme was the American Jewish labor movement from the turn of the century to the period of the New Deal. The project director was Moses Kligsberg, sociologist and YIVO staff member. Forty-three persons were interviewed. The project lasted until 1968 but was not completed. The collection contains correspondence, reports, and printed materials relating to the progress of the project, as well as tapes of 43 interviews and typed transcripts of the interviews.

ORT Photograph Collection (RG 380)

The ORT Photograph Collection is part of a larger archival collection, the Records of the American ORT Federation. The photograph collection consists of photographs of ORT vocational programs in Europe (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, England, France, Germany, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Rumania, Spain, Switzerland), the United States, Canada, South Africa, the former Soviet countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus), the Middle East and northern Africa (Iran, Israel, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia), China, India, and Latin America (Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay). There are also photographs from Displaced Persons camps, of World ORT conferences and congresses and of various individuals connected with ORT.

Papers of Franz Kursky (RG 226)

Kursky was a leader of the Jewish Labor Bund, as well as the founder and director of the Bund Archives. The collection contains Correspondence, materials relating to the Victor ter-Henryk Erlich affair (leaders of the Bund party in land, executed in the Soviet Union in 1941).

Records of the Hebrew Actors Union (RG 1843)

This collection contains the administrative records of the Hebrew Actors’ Union (HAU), the professional union of Yiddish theater performers, which was based in New York City. Materials include correspondence, membership materials, financial records and members’ dues information, meeting minutes, and a great deal of sheet music and play scripts of performances from the Yiddish theater. A majority of these performances were in New York City, but there are also materials from Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Toronto, and Montreal, as well as various locations in Israel and South America.

Records of the ORT Society, Vilna (RG 47) (Digitized)

The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia, known by its Russian acronym, "ORT," was founded in St. Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, in 1880. Its aim was the promotion and development of skilled trades and agriculture among Jews, especially through support of vocational and agricultural training.

The collection comprises records of the ORT Society in Vilna that, despite their fragmentary nature, broadly reflect the society's activities from its beginnings until its dissolution by the authorities in Soviet-occupied Lithuania, in 1940, with inclusion of two items from an earlier period, a letter dated 1898, from the ORT Provisional Committee, St. Petersburg, to an addressee in Vilna, and a postcard, 1912, from Riga, addressed to engineer L. Frenkel, in Vilna.

Records of the Yidisher Lerer Fareyn (Yiddish Teachers' Union), Vilna (RG 50) (Digitzed)

The Yidisher Lerer Fareyn was a professional association in Vilna which promoted the interests of its member teachers. Founded in 1915, it was ideologically associated with the Yiddish secular schools known as the TSYSHO schools. This collection consists of the administrative records of the Yiddish Teachers’ Union. Though incomplete, the records indicate the size of the union; the schools and teachers under its aegis; its activities and concerns; forms of support provided to teachers; collaboration with other organizations, including supplying teachers to summer camps; economic difficulties in Vilna as a whole and for teachers in particular.

United Hebrew Trades Records (RG 434)

A federation of Jewish labor unions, organized in New York in 1888 under the leadership of Jacob Magidoff, Morris Hillquit, Abraham Cahan and Philip Weinstein. The UHT supported labor demands such as the eight hour day, regulation of child labor and the abolition of the sweatshop. In 1910, 89 unions were affiliated with the UHT with a membership of 100,000. By 1914, there were 250,000 members. The collection contains minutes of meetings, tapes of meetings, albums of clippings, including a scrapbook about Morris Feinstone, UHT secretary, photographs of members, families, events, financial materials, and materials on the 80th convention, 1968.

World ORT Union 1923-1955 (RG 252)

These are fragmentary records which consist of the following: General files: minutes of WOU meetings, 1934-1939; reports of ORT activities; reports about ORT-OSE-EMIGDIRECT joint relief campaign. Geographical files: correspondence, minutes of meetings, reports, clippings sent to WOU office from ORT branches in Australia, France, Latvia, Lithuania, Palestine, Poland, Rumania, Soviet Union, United States. Publicity files: clippings, press releases, brochures, posters.

David Dubinsky visits ORT School 1951 (RG 380, YIVO)

Library Materials

A Union of Many Cultures : Yiddish Socialism and Interracial Organizing in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, 1913-1941 / by Daniel Lawrence Katz. 2003.

Democracy and the Free Labor Movement. Washington: Amer. Federation of Labor, 1943. Print.

Labor and nation. Inter-Union Institute for Labor and Democracy. New York, 1945-1952.

Labor Looks at the Crisis in Civil Rights / Harry Golden [and Others]. New York: Jewish Labor Committee, 1959.

Labor Zionist / Labor Zionist Organization of America - Poale Zion. (New York, N.Y.) (1949). Print.

The Ballot and the Class Struggle / De Leon, Daniel, and Socialist Labor Party. New York: New York Labor News, 1947.

The House of Labor; : Internal Operations of American Unions / Edited by J. B. S. Hardman [and] Maurice F. Neufeld. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1951. Print. Prentice-Hall Industrial Relations and Personnel Ser.

They Were Not Silent the Jewish Labor Movement and the Holocaust / Roland Millman ; Wagner Labor Archives, NYU. (1998). Print.

The Women's Garment Workers : A History of the International Ladies' Garment Worker's Union / by Louis Levine. New York: B.W. Huebsch, 1924. Print