Rose Schneiderman
| Rose Schneiderman | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
April 6, 1882 Sawin, Congress Poland |
| Died | August 11, 1972 (aged 90) New York City |
| Occupation | U.S. labor union leader |
Rose Schneiderman (April 6, 1882 – August 11, 1972) was an American socialist and feminist, and one of the most prominent women labor union leaders.
As a member of the New York Women's Trade Union League (WTUL), she drew attention to unsafe workplace conditions, following the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, and helped to pass the New York state referendum of 1917 that gave women the right to vote. Schneiderman is credited with coining the phrase "Bread and Roses", to indicate a worker’s right to something higher than subsistence living. This was later used as the title of a poem and set to music.
Rose Schneiderman was born Rachel Schneiderman on April 6, 1882, the first of four children of a religious Jewish family, in the village of Sawin, 14 kilometres (9 miles) north of Chełm in Russian Poland. Her parents, Samuel and Deborah (Rothman) Schneiderman, worked in the sewing trades. Schneiderman first went to Hebrew school, normally reserved for boys, in Sawin, and then to a Russian public school in Chełm. In 1890 the family migrated to New York City's Lower East Side. Schneiderman's father died in the winter of 1892, leaving the family in poverty. Her mother worked as a seamstress, trying to keep the family together, but the financial strain forced her to put her children in a Jewish orphanage for some time. Schneiderman left school in 1895 after the sixth grade, although she would have liked to continue her education. She went to work, starting as a cashier in a department store and then in 1898 as a lining stitcher in a cap factory in the Lower East Side. In 1902 she and the rest of her family moved briefly to Montreal, where she developed an interest in both radical politics and trade unionism.
She returned to New York in 1903 and, with a partner worker, started organizing the women in her factory. When they applied for a charter to the United Cloth Hat and Cap Makers Union, the union told them to come back after they had succeeded in organizing twenty-five women. They did that within days and the union then chartered its first women's local.
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