Word: wolchok
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Dates: during 1948-1948
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...pulled the rug out from under Samuel Wolchok, boss of the strife-torn Retail, Wholesale & Department Store Union, and ordered the C.I.O.'s powerful Amalgamated Clothing Workers to take over Wolchok's territory...
...Bargain Basement. It was not an altogether deserved fate for Wolchok. A onetime grocery clerk, an earnest and unpolished man, he had been president of the department store union since its founding in New York in 1937. From the very beginning the union was ridden by Communists. Department store clerks -sometimes college-educated, generally low-paid, and frequently resentful-were susceptible to Communist colonizing. It was once said: "When the revolution comes it will start in a bargain basement...
...Wolchok and his organizing director, an oldtime Socialist named Jack Altman, had to spend a good deal of their time fighting the Communist Party. Last year, Altman organized a trade union group in New York to fight the Communists who dominated the Greater New York C.I.O. Council. At that time, Murray was pussyfooting around the Communist-C.I.O. situation. Instead of supporting Altman, Murray ordered him to disband his anti-Red group. Meanwhile, the Communists in hapless Sam Wolchok's union went their own defiant way; one Red local after another seceded...
Fine Opportunity. Nevertheless, Murray's action came as a shock to Wolchok and Altman, who had hoped for aid and sympathy from Murray, not liquidation. Murray's order did not dissolve Wolchok's union; Sam would be allowed to hang on to as many of his members as he could. But in the face of an organizing drive by the Amalgamated, that probably wouldn't be very many or for very long. The Amalgamated has a membership of 375,000, a treasury of $6,000,000, and a hustling set of hard-nosed organizers...
...simply in the interests of good trade unionism. He pointed an accusing finger at three unions which he said were falling down on the job of organizing the unorganized. They were Durkin's (office workers), Abram Flaxer's (federal workers), both left wing, and Samuel Wolchok's unruly department-store workers' union. Murray's denunciation was taken as a demand that the three union presidents resign. Said a surprised Wolchok, who has bitterly fought the Communists but has been unable to control them in his union: "He was not talking about me." But obviously...