Garment Workers' First

The 34-year-old International Ladies Garment Workers' Union last week pulled off another "first" in the labor movement.* I.L.G.W.U.'s 35,000 cloak & suit workers (one-eighth of its total membership) signed a new five-year contract in which the only major change was a provision for their employers to put $2,000,000 a year into an old-age insurance fund. Under the new agreement, each cloakmaker, at 65, will receive $600 a year--a good deal more than most of them can expect from Federal old-age benefits.

* Its most spectacular first came two years ago, when Manhattan dress manufacturers agreed to penalize themselves for inefficiency, as defined by the union (TIME, Feb. 24, 1941). Another, a union revue, Pins and Needles (1937), that became a Broadway hit.

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