June 20: Labor’s Lobbyist

Evelyn Dubrow, chief Washington lobbyist for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) for more than four decades, died on this date in 2006 at the age of 95. She worked under every president from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Bill Clinton, and among the bills she worked hard to see passed were the raising of the federal minimum wage to $1.15 an hour in 1961, the family and medical leave act, civil rights legislation, and fair trade laws. Dubrow, who was under five feet tall, was the only person on Capitol Hill allowed to share the congressional doorkeepers’ chairs outside the House chambers, a privilege afforded her by Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill. She was an organizer of Americans for Democratic Action in 1947, and a founder of the Coalition of Labor Union Women in the late 1970s. Dubrow reported wearing out twenty-four pairs of shoes (size 4) each year, from trudging through the halls of Congress. “I work for more than 350,000 union members and 250,000 retirees,” she said in 1997. “They’re far from fat cats. They’re hard-working citizens who can’t trot up to Capitol Hill and meet their representatives directly.”

“When I started this job, we were worried about sweatshops. Today we’re still worried about sweatshops.” —Evelyn Dubrow