Partial Settlement Reached in Dress Strike As Inside Manufacturers Sign Up

A partial settlement of the New York dressmakers’ strike was reached on Monday when the General Strike Committee of the Dressmakers’ Union reached an agreement with the “inside” manufacturers and contractors. As the Jewish Daily Bulletin goes to press negotiations for a settlement are also being conducted between the union and the jobbers in the dress trade. There are many points of disagreement between the contractors and jobbers, in which the union is concerned, but it is expected that the jobbers will also agree to a settlement.

With Lieutenant-Governor Herbert H. Lehman acting as mediator, the three parties in the dress strike who have already come to terms agreed on the following points:

1. A strictly closed union shop.

2. Manufacturers who issue work to contractors must distribute the work to strictly union shops. The manufacturers are strictly responsible for labor conditions and wages in those shops.

3. A permanent board of arbitration with an impartial chairman is to be chosen.

4. The insurance fund for unemployed will be taken up with the impartial chairman as soon as the latter will be appointed.

5. A 5-day 40-hour working week is to be established in the dress industry.

6. No employee may work more than one hour a day overtime. Week workers are to be paid double for overtime.

7. During the season employees may work only 4 Saturdays and workers will receive 50 percent extra pay for this overtime work.

8. The question of wage increases is to be taken up later.

A meeting of the shop chairmen Tuesday morning ratified the agreement. In the afternoon the strikers themselves met in 18 different halls to discuss the settlement terms.

As a result of the partial agreement which has already been reached, 15,000 strikers will be returning to work this morning. In the final ratification of the agreement Morris Hillquit, noted Socialist and union leader, negotiated on behalf of the union together with Benjamin Schlesinger, president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, and other union officials.

Jacob Rothenberg, a dress manufacturer of 1412 Broadway, died Monday noon as a result of a blow received a few hours earlier in a riot near his shop which felled him to the ground and broke his skull. A man by the name of Irving Ashkinazi, who said he was a chauffeur, was arrested on suspicion of having administered the blow to Rothenberg which caused the latter’s death.

Another serious riot occurred on 35th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, Monday, in which many workers were beaten. According to the police and the strike leaders, the riots were caused by several hundred Communists who were spread in small groups over the garment district and who are alleged to have attacked the strike pickets with knives and clubs.