Local 65

The Communist-dominated Local 65, Wholesale and Warehouse Workers Union. was militant in its organizing efforts in 1946. Some claimed it was too aggressive. According to a New York Times story one woman employee of a glass shop that the union was attempting to organize complained to the police that she had been taken by force to union headquarters and made to sign a union card. As result one of the union's leaders was arrested on kidnapping charges. Several textile converters, also subject to intense organizing efforts, claimed that some of their employees had been followed home by union organizers who attempted to intimidate them into joining the union. District 65 spokesmen dismissed these accusations as typical red-baiting lies and setups by reactionary businessmen.

Marxists at this time were redefining the concept of the proletariat to encompass the majority of white collar, salaried office workers, who tended to think of themselves as middle class. In the new class structure members of upper level management were considered "institutional capitalists" because they controlled the flow of capital even though the money was not their own, while the rank-and-file clerical employees were oppressed workers whether they realized it or not. The members of Local 65 were not necessarily minimum wage workers. Many were white collar. The November 6 New York Times reported on a strike by wholesale drug salesmen belonging to the union at Shieffelin & Co. The story said the strikers had annual earnings between $7500 and $10,000, about $80,000 to $110,000 in today's dollars. The strikers wanted guaranteed minimum drawing accounts, expense allowances and sales territories. A strike called by the union against the textile converters, which was seen as potentially very damaging to the city's garment industry, was over union demands that all of the office workers at the firms be required to join the union as well as the blue collar employees.

Local 65 was a strong proponent of creating a working class culture that went beyond the everyday bread-and-butter union issues. Like other unions in the left wing of the CIO , they looked to transform American society, not just act as a collective bargaining unit. The union ran a "working man's" nightclub, Club 65, from its offices at 13 Astor Place, as well as a book shop. In the 1930s, like the ILGWU with its "Pins and Needles," the union had produced musicals for its members like "The Warehouse Mikado" in which the characters found happiness, fulfillment and romance by joining the union. It sponsored a wide range of social and cultural activities.

District 65 picketers also turned out to support other Left Wing causes. In March a group of veterans from the local joined comrades from local 125 of the Fur Floor and Shipping Clerks Union to march for more housing for veterans. About 175 picketers paraded for two hours at the construction site on Fifth Avenue where Best & Co was building a new department store and at an office building being built at 449 Park Avenue. They carried placards and shouted to passers-by demanding that commercial building construction be suspended and the building materials be made available for apartment houses. It provided one of the largest union contingents in the May Day parade that year , the first since the War.

A division between Communists and non-Communists within the CIO was growing sharper in 1946. The local had testy relation with the its parent union, the United Retail, Wholesale and Department Stores Employees of America, CIO, which District 65 leaders considered insufficiently radical or effective. Local 65 had filed a suit which would have allowed them to withdraw from the Retail Union and possibly align themselves with the more militant International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union, headed by Harry Bridges. However the local dropped its suit and remained within the department store union for the time being.

In 1946 one of the local's leaders, Kenneth Sherbell, won election to the state senate from Brooklyn as the American Labor Party candidate. He also had finagled the Republican party line,which happened surprisingly frequently at this time in districts that had few registered Republicans. By 1948 the rules had changed to prevent Left Wing candidates like Sherbell, from hijacking the Republican line. Under the new rules, the party organization had a veto power over who could run in its primaries. Sherbell had the endorsement of the Daily Worker and the Greater New York CIO Council. In 1948 he was a leading figure in the Wallace campaign. He lost the Republican line and subsequently his seat in the state senate in 1948. Within the union he was a strong advocate of continued participation in May Day and other Communist-led events over growing protests by many of the rank-and-file union members that marching around in support of Stalin was not helpful to the union's efforts to attract members. Sherbell insisted that May Day was an important recruitment tool to the union cause.