International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
（重定向自ILGWU）
![](/Images/godic/202502/08/International_Ladies_Garment_Workers_Union_logo3623.jpg"){kind=logo}
![Lyndon Johnson meets with ILGWU members](/Images/godic/202502/08/ILGWU_workers_meet_Lyndon_B._Johnson3623.jpg")
![The Garment Worker (1984) by Judith Weller was commissioned by the ILGWU and the Public Art Fund, and donated to the City of New York. It is on permanent display outside 555 Seventh Avenue, between West 39th and 40th Streets in the Garment District of Midtown Manhattan. It portrays a garment worker at a sewing machine and is intended as a reminder of the role of the ILGWU's members in making New York one of the garment and fashion centers of the world.](/Images/godic/202502/08/The_Garment_Worker3623.jpg")
The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) was once one of the largest labor unions in the United States, one of the first U.S. unions to have a primarily female membership, and a key player in the labor history of the 1920s and 1930s. The union, generally referred to as the "ILGWU" or the "ILG," merged with the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in 1995 to form the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). UNITE merged with the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) in 2004 to create a new union known as UNITE HERE. The two unions that formed UNITE in 1995 represented only 250,000 workers between them, down from the ILGWU's peak membership of 450,000 in 1969.