In 1926, a communist-led 17-week strike of 12,000 New York City fur workers fought and won significant reforms beating back the bosses’ association, the cops, Mafia gangsters, thugs, and the reactionary International union leadership. They were led by Ben Gold, a member of the Communist Party and leader of the union’s N.Y. Joint Board. The very next year the fur industry bosses were disregarding the gains won by the workers. Gold had to organize the workers to strike again. They did and they won again.
Gold went on to organize many more strikes. Many of them were successful. So the workers won the 40-hour, five-day workweek, a 10 percent raise, 10 paid holidays and more. Then they went on strike again and again to maintain their gains. Today workers around the world are still protesting and striking for a decent life. However it is only when the international working class organizes to take power and destroy capitalism with communist revolution, that we can finally free ourselves from this capitalist nightmare.
It all started on January 23, when over 6000 workers attended a mass union meeting and authorized a strike. The head of the bosses’ association, called these demands a “conspiracy” to “Bolshevize” (spread communist ideas in) the fur industry. At a January 30 mass meeting Gold declared, “All the forces of the union must be concentrated for this effort.” A sea of hands went up to volunteer for a General Picketing Committee.” The bosses urged workers to reject their leadership and defeat the “Communist conspiracy.” Instead, the workers voted by over 90 percent to authorize a strike. This was a good time to talk about a government totally controlled by the capitalists. A government that would violently attack the workers. A government that had to be overthrown by a communist-led working class. Instead the communists were running and even winning elections for some low-level government positions.
Mass picketing beats back
 scabs, gangsters, cops
The strike began on Feb. 16. The General Picketing Committee of 1,000 kept out scabs and strikebreakers. The strike was an historic struggle by U.S. workers. On the following Monday, 10,000 strikers marched through the fur district. The cops charged, but the workers maintained solid ranks, beating back the police, scabs and hired thugs. The cops repeated their attacks on every march. But the unity of these communist-led, Jewish, Black and Greek, women and men workers was unshakeable. When hired Mafia thugs attacked the strike hall, hundreds of strikers overwhelmed them, stripping them of their guns, blackjacks, knives and clubs as they fled. After several weeks of such battles, no gang was willing to attack.
Many bosses now faced bankruptcy and were ready to grant the union’s demands. But the sellout International union officers were meeting secretly with the bosses to betray the workers and to stop the rising influence of the communist-led New York union. Gold and the General Strike Committee urged workers to go to a union meeting at Carnegie Hall and tell the sellouts: “Hands off our strike! Get out of the way!” When workers learned that Ben Gold had been barred from the meeting, they began chanting, “We want Gold!” The four union sellouts gave up and left. The workers went wild. Gold told the strikers: “This meeting … proves that the fur strikers are fighting...for the cause of organized labor in America…All this wealth we, the workers, created ….”  The workers carried Gold out of the hall on their shoulders. This event demonstrated that the working class can understand communist ideas and will defend communist leaders.
Mass picketing intensified, as did police attacks. One arrested striker wrote to the General Strike Committee:  “… do not spend any money in trying to obtain my release.... the money is necessary for more important matters... I hope that when I come back, I will find...a great victory.”
On May 17, the General Strike Committee called for a giant rally in Madison Square Garden. Support wires came from across the U.S. But the union was broke and needed at least $50,000 to cover strike relief. In one of the greatest acts of sharing in U.S. labor history, more than $100,000 was raised. On June 11, at 3:00 a.m. the strike was settled. The workers won significant reforms.
The communist-led, largely immigrant furriers’ union was a beacon to the U.S. working class. Over two decades, they would beat down Mafia goons; confront the Nazi Bund in the streets of New York; fight in the Spanish Civil War and donate trucks and ambulances to the anti-fascist fighters. They provided security for Paul Robeson’s Peekskill concerts that were attacked in 1949 by racist, anti-communist mobs. But the Communist Party did not call on these heroic workers to organize a revolutionary movement to overthrow the capitalist class and build a communist society run by the working class.
Thousands of fur and garment workers joined the old Communist Party, and for some time, had some vision of overthrowing capitalism and building a communist future. But that vision was clouded and eventually buried as the Communist Party gave up the fight for revolution. Today it is our task in the Progressive Labor Party, to have confidence in the working class to join us in the fight for a communist world.