Abram Flaxer

Abram Flaxer (1904-1989) was an American union leader who founded the State, County, and Municipal Workers of America (SCMWA), which merged with the United Federal Workers of America (UFWA) to form the United Public Workers of America (UPWA), of which he became president.

Early life

Abram Flaxer was born "Abraham Flaxer" on September 11, 1904, in Vilnius, Russian Empire (now Lithuania). Around 1910, his family immigrated to the United States, where they settled in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn area of New York City. He studied at the Rand School of Social Science and then the City College of New York, where he received a BS (or AB). He joined the "Pen and Hammer" (Marxist) club and supported the defense of professor Morris Schappes. In 1932, he obtained a degree from New York University Law School; that summer, he also studied mathematics at Columbia University. In 1935, he told his first wife Victoria that he would be joining the Communist Party USA under the Party name "John Brant." On January 26, 1948, UPWA negotiations director Alfred Bernstein (father of Carl Bernstein), charged that House committee agents had raided the union's offices. During January, William S. Tyson, solicitor for the Labor Department, and Robert N. Denham, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, both agreed that nothing in the Taft-Hartley Act prohibited GSI from bargaining with a non-complying union. However, Denham added, the Act intended to "eliminate Communist influence from unions by denying to such unions the services of NLRB."

On November 24, 1948, Flaxer sent a letter to Truman decrying the tendency to brand a person disloyal simply because they advocated for improvements in civil rights.

In November 1949, attack on the UPWA culminated at a CIO convention. The CIO passed resolutions barring Communist Party members from holding leadership positions. CIO convention delegates then charged 10 unions, the UPWA among them, of being communist-controlled. A committee of anti-communist CIO vice presidents, The UPWA immediately ceased paying its member dues to the CIO, and denounced the committee as biased due to the strong anti-communist feelings of its members. As the trial approached in January 1950, the UPWA issued a lengthy document which purported to show that it had not parroted the Communist Party line and had upheld the CIO political platform. When the informal trial opened on January 9, the UPWA attempted to bring more than 250 witnesses in its defense, but the crowd was barred on the grounds it would intimidate the committee. At the hearing, Transport Workers Union of America President and communist Mike Quill (who had broken with the Communist Party USA some years earlier but not abandoned his communist beliefs), testified that Flaxer had coordinated his organizing efforts and criticism of the CIO with CPUSA leaders. On March 1, 1950, the CIO expelled UPWA in a purge of Communist dominated unions.

Flaxer joined many radicals in opposing Executive Order 9835, signed by US President Harry S. Truman in 1947 (here, page 1) Flaxer opposed anti-subversive (anti-communist) witch-hunts. He debated US Representative Richard Nixon on the radio regarding the federal loyalty program under Executive Order 9835. By 1950, he found himself accused of CPUSA membership. In 1958, David Rein (partner of Joseph Forer) defended in Flaxer v. United States, 358 U.S. 147 ), which ruled in Flaxer's favor.

Personal life and death

In June 1928, Flaxer married Victoria White of Exeter, New Hampshire; they stayed married "exactly ten years." Some time after 1940, Flaxer married Charlotte Rosswaag, who served in the SCMWA as a welfare investigator as well as chair of its Lower Manhattan subgroup.

Flaxer had a bank account at the Emigrant Savings Bank (listed in 1951 testimony as the "Immigrant Savings Industrial Bank"), as well as the Corn Exchange Bank, East River Savings Bank, and Bankers Trust.

Abram Flaxer died on January 11, 1989.

Works

Abram Flaxer wrote an unpublished memoir, A View from the Left Field Bleachers.