DUBINSKY, DAVID

DUBINSKY, DAVID (1892–1982), U.S. labor leader. Born in Brest-Litovsk, Belorussia, Dubinsky was brought up in the Polish city of Lodz, where he became a master baker and secretary of the militant Lodz Bakers Union organized by the bund . He was arrested and imprisoned for organizing strikes against his father's bakery, and was exiled to Siberia in 1909 for making inflammatory speeches. He managed to escape en route, however, and at the end of 1910 immigrated to the United States. He joined his elder brother in New York and obtained work through the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) becoming an apprentice in Cutters' Local 10. He devoted more of his time to the Socialist party than to trade union affairs until larger numbers of East European Socialist Jews entered Local 10, but in 1918 he was elected to its executive board. In 1921 he was chosen president of the Cutters' Local. Dubinsky also rose rapidly in the ILGWU, where he joined the anti-Communist majority. He was elected to its general executive board in 1923. In 1928 he played a leading part in bringing back benjamin schlesinger as a compromise candidate for president to avoid a split in the union, and in the following year was himself elected secretary-treasurer. On Schlesinger's death in 1932 he became president, a position he held until 1966. During the 1930s Dubinsky dominated the ILGWU and was a powerful force in the American labor movement. He favored cooperation with the employers in rationalizing the complex structure of the garment industry and made his union a symbol of progressive unionism. In 1934 he was elected a vice president of the AFL. Almost immediately he became embroiled in the controversy between the proponents of industrial unionism and the supporters of the old-style craft union. He played a leading part in the CIO which he helped to found in 1935, his union being the second largest in the country. In 1936 he resigned his vice-presidency of the AFL in protest against their support of the craft unions against the industrial unions, and persuaded the ILGWU to give their backing to the latter. For two years from 1938 the ILGWU was isolated from the American labor movement, but in 1940 Dubinsky brought it back into the AFL. In his capacity as president of the ILGWU for more than 30 years, he transformed the union from a struggling entity to one with assets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Under his guidance, the union took on issues such as the provision of health insurance, severance pay, retirement benefits, and a 35-hour workweek. He also worked to abolish the sweatshops that were prevalent in the industry. An influential figure in United States politics, Dubinsky refused to endorse Tammany Hall, New York's political machine, and supported franklin d. roosevelt for president in 1932 and 1936. To this end he helped to create the American Labor Party (ALP) in 1936. In 1944, when Communists began to dominate the ALP, he helped to form the Liberal Party. After World War II Dubinsky was one of the founders of the anti-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. In 1945 he served once again as a vice president and member of the executive council of the AFL, even after it merged with the CIO in 1955. Due largely to his efforts to eliminate corrupt union leaders, the AFL-CIO adopted the anti-racket codes in 1957. In 1969 U.S. President Lyndon Johnson awarded Dubinsky the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which cited him as "a national leader of foresight and compassion. He has advanced the cause of the workingman in America – and the broader cause of social justice in the world, with unfailing skill and uncommon distinction." In 1993 Dubinsky was inducted into the Labor Hall of Fame. As a self-styled "Jewish worker," Dubinsky was concerned with the special problems facing the Jewish community as a consequence of events in Germany and World War II. He was a member of the executive council of the Jewish Labor Committee founded in 1933, engaged in relief efforts on behalf of refugees, and became a staunch supporter of Israel and in particular of the histadrut , Israel's General Federation of Labor. A hospital in Beersheba, financed by his union, carries his name. Dubinsky wrote David Dubinsky: A Life with Labor (1977). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: M.D. Danish, The World of David Dubinsky (1957); J. Dewey, David Dubinsky, a Pictorial Biography (1951); C.A. Madison, American Labor Leaders (1962), 199–231; R. Cook, Leaders of Labor (1966), 102–12. (Melvyn Dubofsky / Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)