biography
| name: |
Pesotta, Rose
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originally Peisoty
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1896–1965)
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| biography:
| Labour leader, born in Derazhnya, Ukraine. The daughter of grain merchants, she was well educated, and as a young girl adopted anarchist views. In 1913 she emigrated to New York City and worked in a blouse factory, and soon joined a local branch of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). She worked to advance the education of the workers, and was elected to the ILGWU's executive board in 1920. In the late 1920s she was sent to Los Angeles to help organize garment workers there, and her success led to her being named a vice-president of the ILGWU (1934). For the next eight years she continued to organize workers from Seattle to San Juan, from San Francisco to Montreal. But in 1942, angry because she was the sole woman on the ILGWU's executive board (when 85% of the union's members were women), she went back to being a sewing-machine operator. She resigned from the ILGWU board (1944), but participated in some union activities. Her Bread Upon the Waters (1944) told of her union-organizing experiences, and her Days of Our Lives (1958) recounted her youth in Russia. |
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