Rose Pesotta and the boundaries of management history

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to offer a critical biography of labor union organizer Rose Pesotta (1896–1965) as a case study attempt to extend management history’s boundaries of who is considered a model in the field to a woman who worked as a labor union organizer and who developed innovative inclusion strategies to bring new people into her union. The biography has importance to the field because it shows how contemporary concepts such as intersectionality and inclusion can help explain historical organizational conflicts and difficulties motivating workers. Design/methodology/approach The primary methodology involved close reading and analysis of unpublished primary sources such as letters and memos dealing with Rose Pesotta’s 1933–1941 career as an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) as well as contemporary analyses of garment unions and gender relations in the interwar period. Findings While positionality, intersectionality and inclusion are relatively new research terms, this analysis of ILGWU organizing in the 1930s and early 1940s shows the importance of these concepts in understanding the union’s politics at that time. Originality/value This paper, to the best of the author’s knowledge, is one of the first in the management history literature to present a biography of a labor leader who returned to the ranks at some point in her adult career and earned her living as a sewing machine operator. It thus expands the representativeness of the people whom the field sees as important for students of management to study and learn from.

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