Women’s Trade Union League

Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL), American organization, the first national association dedicated to organizing women workers. Founded in 1903, the WTUL proved remarkably successful in uniting women from all classes to work toward better, fairer working conditions. The organization relied largely upon the resources of its own members, never receiving more than token financial support from the American Federation of Labor (AFL) or other major organized labour groups.

The WTUL came into existence as a result of a 1903 Boston meeting of the AFL, during which it became clear that the AFL had no intention of including women within its ranks. Later that year labour leaders Mary Kenney O’Sullivan and Leonora O’Reilly and settlement workers Lillian Wald and Jane Addams helped found the WTUL, and by 1904 the organization had branches in Chicago, New York City, and Boston. From the outset the organization had a strong reformist agenda, working in the tradition of social settlements to provide working women with educational opportunities while also striving to improve working conditions.

The organization achieved its greatest successes during the presidency of social reformer Margaret Dreier Robins. From 1907 to 1922, under Robins’s leadership, the organization fought for an eight-hour workday, the establishment of a minimum wage, the end of night work for women, and the abolition of child labour. During the garment industry strikes of 1909–11, league members marched side by side with striking workers and helped set up strike funds. Some of the wealthier members boycotted the clothing manufacturers who refused to settle with strikers. Following the disastrous 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire in New York City, league members conducted a four-year investigation of factory conditions that helped establish new regulations.

By the mid-1920s the league’s leadership had passed from the hands of affluent middle-class women to women with working-class backgrounds. During the late 1920s, however, and continuing through the Great Depression, the league suffered serious financial problems that permanently weakened the organization. In 1950 it was dissolved.