Editor’s Note: This story by Matt Alley, BlueCollarWriter Labor Media here.
International Women’s Day always feels like a good excuse to pause and look honestly at labor history.
Not the cleaned-up, textbook version. The real one.
Because when you actually study the history of working people organizing in this country, you start noticing something pretty quickly: women have been at the center of it from the very beginning. Not as background characters. Not as symbolic figures. As leaders, agitators, strategists, and the people willing to push a movement forward when others were hesitating.
That’s not a modern talking point. That’s historical fact.
Long before labor had institutional power, long before contracts and legal protections, women were organizing some of the most dangerous and exploitative workplaces in America. In 1909, thousands of immigrant garment workers — most of them young women — launched what became known as the Uprising of the 20,000, demanding safer factories, fair pay, and dignity. Leaders like Clara Lemlich stood up in rooms full of cautious union leadership and lit the spark for one of the most important strikes in early labor history.
Then there was Mother Jones, who might be the most feared labor agitator this country ever saw. She marched miners’ children across state lines, stared down governors, and helped organize coal miners across Appalachia when the coal industry controlled entire regions like feudal kingdoms.
And we shouldn’t forget Rose Schneiderman, whose words still ring true after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. While politicians offered sympathy, she reminded them that working people didn’t need pity — they needed power.
Another name that belongs firmly in labor’s story is Frances Perkins. After witnessing the Triangle Fire firsthand, she dedicated her life to changing the system that allowed it to happen. As Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt, she became the first woman to serve in a U.S. presidential cabinet and helped architect some of the most important worker protections in American history — Social Security, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, and the 40-hour work week. Many of the protections workers still rely on today carry her fingerprints.
Later generations carried that same fight forward.
Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers, helped organize farmworkers who had been treated as disposable labor for generations. Her phrase “Sí, se puede” became a rallying cry that would echo far beyond the fields.
Karen Silkwood exposed nuclear safety violations at Kerr-McGee and died under circumstances that still raise serious questions decades later. Her story remains one of the starkest examples of corporate power colliding with worker courage.
And the story didn’t stop there.
Today, women are still leading some of the most important fights in the labor movement.
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, has become one of the clearest voices in modern labor. During the 2019 government shutdown she openly raised the possibility of a general strike if Washington didn’t reopen the government — a reminder that labor’s real power ultimately comes from workers themselves.
You see it in Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle fighting for teachers and public education.
You see it in Liz Shuler, the first woman elected president of the AFL-CIO.
You see it in the organizers leading Starbucks and Amazon campaigns — many of them young women refusing to accept the idea that billion-dollar corporations get to dictate the rules forever.
And you see it in the everyday fights that don’t always make headlines: nurses on picket lines, teachers defending their students, public workers protecting the services communities depend on.
One thing history shows again and again is this:
The labor movement moves forward when women organize.
Not because it’s symbolic. Not because it’s fashionable. But because women have repeatedly proven willing to confront power, build solidarity, and move the fight forward when others hesitate.
Labor history is filled with their names.
And the future of the movement will be shaped by many more.
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