Office workers demonstrate in style, with men wearing only barrels and white collars carrying signs reading “Office workers!  Your white collar is all you have!” 

The Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountants’ Union, an affiliate of the AF of L, attempted to organize office workers who had only recently won legal protections for their right to organize.  The right was guaranteed with the passage of Roosevelt’s National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933.  The Act’s famous Section 7(a) recognized for the first time the right of workers to organize into unions of their own choosing to represent their interests.

The photograph includes Harry Avrutin (1916 – 1988), who four decades later would serve as secretary of the New York City Central Labor Council.  He is second from left, with mustache.

Image from the Union Label Collection, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.

See this image in the Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives exhibit.