Workers in Greater Pittston's Garment Industry
Pittston, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
From the 1930s to the 1980s Pittston emerged as a national center for clothing manufacturing. Thousands of workers, mainly women, labored in many factories throughout the Greater Pittston area. Most were members of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) that gained higher wages, workplace health & safety improvements, and employee rights. The ILGWU was active in civic and political life throughout Pennsylvania.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
From the 1930s through the 1980s, the mills of Greater Pittston stitched the region into a national center of clothing manufacturing. Thousands of workers, most of them women, ran the sewing floors, and their membership in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union won higher wages, safer workplaces, and stronger employee rights. The ILGWU became a force in the civic and political life of Pennsylvania.
Why it matters
This marker honors the largely female workforce whose union organizing helped define modern American labor standards and gave working women a powerful public voice.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
From the 1930s through the 1980s, the Greater Pittston area of Luzerne County became something few small Pennsylvania towns ever become: a national center of an American industry. The industry was clothing manufacturing, and the factories that made it hummed with the work of thousands of people—most of them women.
To understand why, it helps to remember what northeastern Pennsylvania was in those years. This was anthracite coal country, where the mines had long defined the economy and the rhythm of family life. As mining's fortunes shifted across the twentieth century, the garment factories offered steady work and, crucially, offered it to women, whose wages became essential to households throughout the region.
The decades this marker spans were also the great age of American organized labor. The 1930s brought landmark protections for workers' right to organize, and unions grew into powerful forces in the nation's industrial life. In Pittston's sewing rooms, that national story took a distinctly local and largely female shape.
People & events
The people at the center of this marker are not famous individuals but a workforce—thousands of workers, mainly women, who ran the sewing floors of the many factories across Greater Pittston. Their story is one of skilled, demanding labor done in large numbers, day after day, season after season.
What gave that workforce its lasting power was the union. Most of these workers belonged to the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, the ILGWU, one of the most important unions in American history. Through the union, workers who might have stood alone bargained together—and won real, tangible improvements: higher wages, better health and safety conditions on the factory floor, and stronger rights on the job.
The union's reach did not stop at the shop door. The ILGWU became active in the civic and political life of Pennsylvania, giving working women a public voice in matters far beyond the sewing machine. For many families, union membership was not just an economic arrangement; it was an education in citizenship and collective action.
Its place in the American story
The Pittston garment story is a window onto a much larger chapter of American life: the rise of women in the industrial workforce and their central role in the labor movement. The ILGWU is a landmark name in that history, and the improvements it won—safer workplaces, better pay, dignified treatment—helped define the standards that many American workers came to expect.
There is a hard-won lesson embedded in this history. The garment trade in America had earlier known terrible tragedy, and the push for workplace health and safety was born of real dangers. When a marker credits a union with winning "workplace health & safety improvements," it is pointing to one of the great achievements of twentieth-century labor: the idea that a paycheck should not cost a worker their well-being.
Just as important is whose voice this represents. In an era when women were often shut out of public and economic power, the largely female garment workforce and its union gave working women real leverage and a real presence in civic life. That is a national story about who gets to shape the terms of their own work—told here through the factories of one Pennsylvania valley.
If you visit
This marker stands in Pittston, between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in the Wyoming Valley. When you read it, picture the neighborhoods around you filled, for half a century, with the daily comings and goings of thousands of workers heading to and from the sewing floors.
Let it change how you see the ordinary buildings of a small industrial city. Many of the region's older commercial and factory structures once held enterprises like these. You may not find a grand monument—this is a marker to everyday working people—but that is precisely its power. It asks you to honor labor that rarely gets a statue.
If you're touring northeastern Pennsylvania's industrial heritage, this stop adds an essential dimension to the more familiar coal-and-railroad narrative. It's a chance to talk with your family about where clothes come from, about the people—especially the women—who made them, and about how workers banding together changed the terms of their work. Round it out with the Wyoming Valley's broader mining and immigration history, and you'll come away with a fuller picture of how this region actually lived and labored.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Min L. Matheson (1909-1992)
Wilkes-Barre, PA · est. 1999
Min L. Matheson led the Wyoming Valley District of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union from 1944 to 1963, building a membership of 11,000 in the region's garment shops alongside her husband Bill. Facing down corruption and intimidation, the Mathesons created a model workers' education program, a health center, and even a traveling chorus—and in 1972 she rallied relief efforts for victims of Tropical Storm Agnes.
Mary Harris “Mother” Jones
Coaldale, PA
Mary Harris "Mother" Jones was among the most fearless labor organizers of her age, and in October 1900 she led a march of some 2,000 women from McAdoo to Coaldale to bolster a strike the United Mine Workers had called that September for higher wages, union recognition, and a grievance process. Many mineworkers joined the walkout and the union. The pressure helped set the stage for the great anthracite coal strike of 1902.
Knox Mine Disaster
Jenkins Township, PA · est. 1999
On January 22, 1959, the anthracite fields of the Wyoming Valley met their reckoning when the Knox Coal Company's illegal mining beneath the Susquehanna River breached the riverbed. More than ten billion gallons of icy water poured into the workings, killing twelve men and effectively ending deep mining across much of the valley.
Twin Shaft Disaster
Pittston, PA · est. 1992
On June 28, 1896, a massive cave-in of rock and coal in the Newton Coal Company's Twin Shaft Colliery killed fifty-eight men in an instant. A commission appointed by the governor investigated and issued safety recommendations that September—advice that would too often be ignored. The tragedy hardened the resolve of anthracite miners and helped fuel the region's turn toward stronger unions under John Mitchell after 1900.