The Harwood Manufacturing Corporation and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union: A Case of Role Reversal

Abstract

In the 1940s, Alfred Marrow and the Harwood Manufacturing Corporation played a key role in laying the foundations of participative management. Concurrently, they were also accused of being antitrade union. These accusations resurfaced in the 1960s with the publication of five articles in Trans-Action, which were initiated by William Gomberg, a former International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) official. This paper examines those articles and Gomberg's relationship with Harwood. It draws particular attention to the “a role reversal in the running of factories” whereby Harwood sought to democratize many of its practices by giving some control to workers, whilst the ILGWU sought to act more like an employer by taking on the industrial engineering role of managers in determining methods and times for jobs. The paper concludes that there is little evidence of antitrade unionism, there was a clash between Harwood's worker-centered approach to industrial democracy and ILGWU's industrial engineering-centered approach.