Winifred “Winnie” Lippman, a retired leader of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and described as a “champion of female workers in all trades,” died Saturday, March 17, 2007 of complications from Alzheimer’s Disease, at the Cedars at the JCA in Chesterfield. She was 86.

For her many years of leadership in the labor union movement and her championship of women workers rights, Miss Lippman received a special tribute award from the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis in 1994, along with Rev. William Chapman of the Thompson Center, who received the 1994 Norman A. Stack Community Relations Award. Miss Lippman was serving as president of the St. Louis Chapter of the Jewish Labor Committee, and represented that organization for many years on the council of the JCRC.

Miss Lippman was a native of New York, and as a high school student working as a shipping clerk for a dress factory, became concerned for her fellow workers, which drew her to the labor movement and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Four decades after her intial interest in the welfare of women workers, she became a leader and champion of the rights of thousands of such workers as manager of the Missouri-Mississippi River Valley District Council of the ILGWU.

Originally from the East Coast, Miss Lippman eventually moved to the Midwest in the 1950s, and became active in organizing women in the labor movement in St. Louis, Kansas City and Southern Illinois. In the early 1970s, she joined forces with fellow labor leaders to establish the St. Louis Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974. the group represents women workers, and in the years since its founding has grown to 60 international and national unions across the United States and Canada. The CLUW has a network of more than 75 chapters in North America.

In 1978, Miss Lippman became the first woman elected vice president of the St. Louis Labor Council. She was a consultant for the Missouri AFL-CIO Retirees Group, and a board member of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which represents about 70 labor unions in the region.

Miss Lippman was an active member of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, a group that promotes environmental protection and enhancement through education, citizen action and litigation. In 1984, Miss Lippman was one of the founding members of Central Reform Congregation, and continued for many years to be an active member of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the St. Louis Chapter of the Jewish Labor Committee. She received a humanitarian award from the Israel Histadrut Campaign in 1983, from the Israeli labor movement organization,

Miss Lippman celebrated her 75th birthday by attending the 1995 Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) Forum on Women in Beijing, China, a precursor to the United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women.

Miss Lippman had worked closely with the late Congresswoman Bella Abzug, D-N.Y. to try to gain ratification of the original Equal Rights Amendment. In 1999, the AFL-CIO awarded her and Oral Lee Malone its first National Labor Women of Achievment Award, which continues to be named in their honor. Jews United for Justice and Central Reform Congregation honored Miss Lippman as part of a Social Action Sabbath in 2001, the first person JUJ honored after its founding.

Miss Lippman, affectionately known as “Winnie” is survived by many nieces and nephews on the East Coast, but has no immediate local survivors. “Winnie always considered the trade union movement her family,” said the St. Louis Labor Tribune in a tribute to her memory.