Jennie Matyas was a labor activist and union leader who became the vice president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in the 1940s. Born in 1895 in Transylvania, then considered a region of Hungary, she moved with her family to New York at age 10 and began working in the garment industry to support her family at age 14. At this young age, she became involved with the ILGWU and the Socialist Party, participating in strikes and union activities in the 1910s and 1930s and eventually taking on the union’s vice presidency. In the 1920s, she continued her education at universities in Ohio, Wisconsin, and Colorado and later began studying economics at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating cum laude while simultaneously serving on the War Manpower Commission in the 1940s. In this interview, Matyas discusses her childhood in Hungary, early years in the ILGWU, labor divisions between Communists and Socialists, and her political involvement during the Roosevelt era and the war years.