Collection Scope and Content Note

Taken together, the two collections comprising the records of the Department of Organization and Field Services provide a general sense of the work of the department, though they are not physically extensive. Organizing efforts by affiliate organizations of the ILGWU, and on which department staff assisted, may be documented in that affiliate's records or elsewhere in the ILGWU records.

Arranged alphabetically, these records (5780/144) include correspondence, memoranda, reports, printed material created or collected by the Organizing and Field Services Department, and other material relating to its activities dating from between 1961 and 1989. In addition to documenting routine operations of the department, these records also include documentation of efforts to roll back imports, including reports on congressional visits on a resolution on the subject. Also included are monthly reports on organizing activities from joint boards and regional departments, as well as periodic reports submitted by local unions', joint boards', and regional departments' organizing departments to the central organizing department; these reports include names of organizers and shops organized, and descriptions of current, future, and abandoned campaigns that were to be included in the Organizing Department's reports to the General Executive Board.

The ILGWU's company files (5780/205) contain Dun and Bradstreet Report on companies, reports on the companies' activities with non-ILGWU firms, memoranda on companies and efforts to organize workers therein, as well as some authorization cards.