Union label
New York Daily News
By MIKE SANTANGELO
Thursday, March 25th, 2004
Another typical New York ad job: The deadline was yesterday, the client said "I want it now" - and the client was the street-tough garment workers union chief Sol (Chic) Chaikin.
Advertising diva Paula Green - author of, among other things, Avis' famous "We Try Harder" slogan - had written some words for Chaikin. But she needed the music that would make them fly. So she called up her music man, Malcolm Dodds, a one-time Harlem street singer who had climbed up the ladder from grimy corners to gospel to Broadway.
"Help!" was all Green said into the phone.
Dodds didn't flinch. He hopped on his bicycle and zipped downtown in the August 1975 heat.
Green told him she needed something that was "not hip." In fact, she said, she needed something completely square, because the union was square.
Dodds took her lyrics and went home to play with his piano. The next morning, he brought a finished song to Green's office. She sipped iced coffee and nodded. She liked it.
After a few initial shakes of his head, so did Chaikin.
And so the ad lady and the Harlem composer and the labor leader together birthed an overnight hit for ILGWU, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.
Look for the union label
when you are buying that coat, dress or blouse.
Remember somewhere our union's sewing,
our wages going to feed the kids, and run the house.
We work hard, but who's complaining?
Thanks to the I.L.G. we're paying our way!
So always look for the union label,
it says we're able to make it in the U.S.A.!
It was Green's idea that this stirring union anthem should be sung by ILGWU members themselves, the everyday working folks who toiled in lofts with needles and sewing machines. So she put out a casting call, and word spread through little factories from Seventh Ave. to Brooklyn.
At a rented Manhattan rehearsal hall, Green and Dodds listened to church ladies who sang on Sundays and they listened to Asian ladies who spoke barely enough English to pronounce the words. Within a few weeks, Dodds, experienced with both church choirs and Broadway - he had done some of the vocal arrangements for "Sophisticated Ladies" - had molded the recruits into a 33-voice ILGWU chorus.
Being good labor people, each joined the musicians union and was duly paid scale for her work.
'Look for the Union Label" - written to mark the 75th anniversary of the union that had been given its first growth spurt by the disastrous Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of March 25, 1911 - was intended to make American consumers aware that cheap clothing made overseas or in nonunion Southern factories was hurting their hardworking neighbors.
And it did exactly that. The garment workers' theme song made its debut on national TV, "The Flip Wilson Show," on Nov. 11, 1975. Shortly, it was being hummed all over the U.S.A., and surveys showed that people who said they would be more inclined to buy clothes with a union label jumped from 17% to 27%.
At the 1976 Academy Awards telecast, the 60-second "Union Label" spots were talked about the next day almost as much as the Oscars themselves.
The song went on to appear in movies ("So Fine") and on numerous TV shows, Johnny Carson's and Carol Burnett's, among them. UNITE, the merged union that subsequently grew out of the old ILGWU, reports that usage of the song has always been given for free - but that Burnett insists on paying royalties and continues to send UNITE a small check each and every year.
In 1980, ILGWU's Chaikin was the man who seconded Jimmy Carter's second nomination for the U.S. presidency. The chorus serenaded their commander in chief, who listened appreciatively.
"Sometimes," Carter said, when the cheering delegates quieted down, "I have a hard time deciding which tune I like best - 'Hail to the Chief' or 'Look for the Union Label.'"
Today, as on every March 25, a garment workers' chorus will assemble at Washington and Greene Sts., where the Triangle Shirtwaist shop once stood, and sing "Look for the Union Label" for the 146 souls who perished there.
