Background
Born in Brest-Litovsk, then Russia, Dubinsky grew up in Lodz, a predominantly industrial, slum-ridden city in Poland, where he became acutely aware of the exploitation of works in the industrial community. His father was the owner of a small basement bakery.
Education
David attended school for three full terms (considered fortunate in his poverty-ridden Jewish neighborhood) until the age of eleven when, like his eight elder brothers before him, David began to work as a baker. He learned the trade so quickly that within three years he was considered a master baker.
Career
The Lodz bakers’ conditions were difficult. Thus, when the possibility of having a bakers’ union within the newly created General Jewish Workers’ Union began to spread among Jewish laboring masses, the young Dubinsky quickly embraced the idea. He not only joined the bakers’ union, but also became its secretary since he was one of the few bakers who could read and write both Polish and Yiddish. Following their first strike when bakers’ wages were increased, the organizers of the union, including Dubinsky, were arrested. This event marked the beginning of a long career of political involvement.
In 1911, after having been in and out of several Polish and Russian political jails, Dubinsky — a nineteen-year-old escapee from banishment to Siberia — arrived in New York. After only ten weeks in the United States, he became involved in the public outcry that followed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire. He began working as a cloak cutter, a craft of substantial skill rated highly in the Jewish working community and one of the best paid of all garment crafts.
Six months after arriving in New York, Dubinsky received a membership card in the Cutters’ Union of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He soon overcame the language barrier and rose very rapidly to a position of leadership within the ILGWU; in a period of a few years he went from union member to being a member of Local 10’s executive board to being elected to the ILGWU’s general executive board. In 1932, Dubinsky reluctantly accepted the presidency of the union, which was much divided internally in the midst of a national economic crisis, facing bankruptcy along with an increasing loss of power among the garment workers.
The new president and four other executives pledged all their personal assets as security for a loan to commence the union’s first organizing drive during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. By the time Dubinsky left his position as president in 1966, the ILGWU had not merely overcome its financial difficulties but had become a flourishing welfare organization that was to set the pattern for labor in general. The ILGWU was a pioneer in pensions, welfare, and paid vacations, among other workers’ benefits. Its membership having grown twentyfold, the ILGWU became a stabilizing force in a very volatile industry.