The bulk of this collection is 8x10 black and white copy prints. The images were shot by a variety of commercial photographers, but Alexander Archer and his studio are particularly well-represented. There is some overlap between the contents of the images in the different topical series.

More than half the images in the collection document the annual conventions of the New York State Union Label Trades and the conventions' associated activities, including an annual trade show of products and services produced in union shops (variously known as the Labor-Management Show, Empire State Labor-Management Show, Labor and Management Exhibit, Union Industry Show, and Union Label Exhibit), Union Label Week, and a Miss Union Maid contest. (Photocopied) clippings from scrapbooks of newsprint material provide additional background material on the conventions and activities sponsored by the Council. The convention shots focus on displays of union-made goods, of portraits of Council leadership, and the Miss Union Maid contestants and winners. Miss Union Maid and other women union members are shown in decorative poses, and modeling furs and stockings (and in one instance, a long rope of frankfurters around the neck). Also shown are performances (some of them colorful) at the trade show--from trick dogs and sheep-shearing (the latter with Governor Nelson Rockefeller in attendance), to live music with chanteuses.

Several prints are of special historic interest. These include images of the 1938 Union Label Week parade in New York City; a mass rally at Madison Square Garden with placards urging the President to "Veto the Taft-Hartley Slave Labor Bill"; the Bookkeepers, Stenographers and Accountant Union of the AFL staging a comical demonstration (in the 1930s) to organize office workers ("You have nothing to lose - organize," proclaim the placards of barrel-clad--and wearing nothing else--picketers); and a Cold War-era comparison of controlled and free enterprise, based on how many hours American workers versus workers in the Soviet Union work to pay for a suit and other commodities ("How Much Ivan Pays/How Much We Pay"). Other highlights include: images of "Little Miss Union Maid," the little girl who was also the Muscular Dystrophy Association "poster child" that year, being welcomed to the 1969 convention; a "Miss Union Label" (ca.1950s) wearing a scanty costume and remarkable headgear and posed perching on the bar of a union establishment (a sign confirms it); and a small series of workplace images ranging from the 1940s to the 1970s of butchers (Butcher's Union Local 174) and glaziers at work, and a bottling plant. Persons specifically pictured include: Harry Avrutin, Isidore Becker, Reverend Phillip A. Carey, Edward Cleary, Bertha J. Diggs, Nicholas Ferrante, Patrick Gorman, Vance Hartke, Reverend Joseph Lamanno, Frank Mercurio, Edward A. Nyegaard, Austin H. Perlow, John Scheier, Charles E. Sinnegan, Sam Talarico, Joseph Tuvim, Leo F. Zeller.