LABOR: Family Quarrel

It looked like a holiday. In their Sabbath best, 57,000 ladies' dressmakers poured from their cubicle workrooms one day* last week and onto the pavement of twelve mid-Manhattan blocks along and around Seventh Avenue, the throbbing heart of the New York City garment trade that produces 72% of all U.S. dresses. Babbling happily in the accents of Poland, Puerto Rico, Italy and Brooklyn, they marched half a mile up Eighth

Avenue to Madison Square Garden. There, cherubic Union Boss Dave Dubinsky, his arms windmilling from atop a prizefight ring, officially proclaimed the garment industry's first general strike since 1933.

This strike bore no resemblance to earlier ones. Gone were the days, from 1909 to 1933, when dress workers staged ten of the bloodiest strikes in New York history to organize the industry. In the late 19203 and early 1930s strikers and shop owners had fought in the streets with shivs and sawed-off pool cues. Knife-wielding Communists ripped and clubbed workers in a vain attempt to run them into a Red-led splinter group. But in 1932, Dubinsky moved up to the presidency of the parent garment union, the International Ladies' Garment Workers, forced out the Communists, rallied the divided unionists, won concessions from management and steered labor into calm waters.

Ghettos to Gin Rummy. Last week's peaceful strike tied up the industry from Massachusetts to Delaware. In all, 105,000 workers walked out of 2,286 shops. Retailers howled. Although most shops have 80% or 85% of their Easter clothes in stock, many were caught short of supply, and no one will be able to reorder if a popular line sells out.

Dave Dubinsky's powerful (455,000 members, $225 million in shrewdly invested assets) I.L.G.W.U. wanted 315% boost in dressmakers' wages (Manhattan average: $2.10 an hour). It would be the first hike since 1953. Manufacturers, crying recession, offered 5%.

The biggest reason for the strike went much deeper than wages and was much harder to settle. It was, as one weary I.L.G.W.U. official said, that "we have just become too cozy with management." The top rulers in the union and management are old cronies. Together, they had streamed from the Eastern European ghettos to the garment district sweatshops 40 years ago; together, they still play gin rummy by summer and bake on the Miami beaches on vacations in winter. And together they fixed the wage scales. When a maker brought out a new dress, a joint management-union conclave decided what share of the wholesale price would go to the union's pieceworkers for cutting and sewing it.