It is no coincidence that the garment industry gained a foothold in Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region as mines were closing or reducing operations. "Runaway" factories, especially ones from Manhattan, set up shop in mining towns where labor was plentiful and unions scarce. By the 1930s, garment factories employed thousands of wives and daughters of unemployed or underemployed coal miners in the Wyoming Valley. Organizing workers would prove difficult for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU). 
Fighting for the Union Label tells the story of how workers in the Wyoming Valley, led by Min Lurye Matheson and her husband, Bill, banded together and built one of the largest and most activist movements of garment workers in the ILGWU’s vast network. Workers’ education, political activism, a health care center, and a widely recognized chorus were among the union’s trademarks. Despite the union’s influence, however, the apparel industry migrated to the American South and then overseas in the 1970s and 1980s. Tens of thousands of workers throughout the state and nation would loose their jobs, and sweatshops would become part of the economic landscape in countries like Guatemala. 
The first major work on the garment industry and its workers in Pennsylvania, Fighting for the Union Label draws extensively upon the Wyoming Valley Oral History Project (co-directed by Ken and Robert Wolensky) which has collected the reminiscences of more than 325 workers, factory owners, public officials, and others. The story of the dynamic Min Matheson and the rise and fall of the garment industry provides key insights into the deindustrialization of northeastern Pennsylvania.

Fighting for the Union Label: The Women’s Garment Industry and the ILGWU in Pennsylvania

History

Wolensky, Robert P.

Wolensky, Kenneth C.

Wolensky, Nicole H.

Americas

Penn State University Press

It is no coincidence that the garment industry gained a foothold in Pennsylvania’s hard-coal region as mines were closing or reducing operations. "Runaway" factories, especially ones from Manhattan, set up shop in mining towns where labor was plentiful and unions scarce. By the 1930s, garment factories employed thousands of wives and daughters of unemployed or underemployed coal miners in the Wyoming Valley. Organizing workers would prove difficult for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU). Fighting for the Union Label tells the story of how workers in the Wyoming Valley, led by Min Lurye Matheson and her husband, Bill, banded together and built one of the largest and most activist movements of garment workers in the ILGWU’s vast network. Workers’ education, political activism, a health care center, and a widely recognized chorus were among the union’s trademarks. Despite the union’s influence, however, the apparel industry migrated to the American South and then overseas in the 1970s and 1980s. Tens of thousands of workers throughout the state and nation would loose their jobs, and sweatshops would become part of the economic landscape in countries like Guatemala. The first major work on the garment industry and its workers in Pennsylvania, Fighting for the Union Label draws extensively upon the Wyoming Valley Oral History Project (co-directed by Ken and Robert Wolensky) which has collected the reminiscences of more than 325 workers, factory owners, public officials, and others. The story of the dynamic Min Matheson and the rise and fall of the garment industry provides key insights into the deindustrialization of northeastern Pennsylvania.

Fighting for the Union Label: The Women's Garment Industry and the ILGWU in Pennsylvania

Business & Money

Economics

Relive the drama of the Knox Mine Disaster of January 22, 1959, through the voices of survivors, the victims’ families, contemporary newspaper accounts, and the literature and music generated by the tragedy. Read the poignant and often shocking first-person accounts of those who lived through one of the most devastating disasters in American mining history. This companion volume to the best-selling book The Knox Mine Disaster, published in 1999 by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, also offers a detailed study on how the citizens of northeastern Pennsylvania have memorialized and remembered the last major catastrophe to strike Pennsylvania’s anthracite industry.

Voices of the Knox Mine Disaster: Stories, Remembrances, and Reflections on the Anthracite Coal Industry’s Last Major Catastrophe, January 22, 1959

The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission

When Keating (1937-2006) retired from construction work and truck driving in the early 1990s, he redoubled the time and energy he was spending as a historian and preservationist of the anthracite coal industry, founding the Anthracite Living History Group and the Avondale Disaster Site Preservation Committee. Gradually he convinced Wolensky (sociology, U. of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and sociology and history, King's College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) that the conventional version of the disaster was wrong, and to help him find the facts. The topics include accident or arson, labor and regional conflicts, the Welsh-Irish and the Molly Maguires, mine safety and other legacies, and memorializing and reinterpreting. Appended are a glossary, timeline, and ballads and poems. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Tragedy at Avondale: The Causes, Consequences, and Legacy of the Pennsylvania Anthracite Industry's Most Deadly Mining Disaster, September 6, 1869

Keating, Joseph M.

Center for Canal History &

Anthracite Labor Wars: Tenancy, Italians, and Organized Crime in the Northern Coalfield of Pennsylvania, 1895-1959

Hastie, William A., Sr.

Better than ever: The Flood Recovery Task Force and the 1972 Agnes Disaster

Foundation Press

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Books by Wolensky, Robert P.