Murder in the Garment District

Murder in the Garment District: The Grip of Organized Crime and the Decline of Labor in the United States by David Witwer and Catherine Rios (New York: The New Press, 2020)

David Witwer is a leading student of labor racketeering.  As demonstrated in previous works, his integrity and thoroughness are beyond reproach.  In Murder in the Garment District, coauthored by Catherine Rios, he applies his scholarship to a familiar subject still worthy of critical investigation, the garment industry.  Armed with an abundance of primary and secondary materials, including government and union files, the authors illuminate not only the dark side of one trade, but also a disease that continues to debilitate the American labor movement.

The book’s title refers to an assassination.  Shortly before four p.m., on May 9, 1949, William Lurye, an organizer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, was stabbed to death by two thugs in a mid- Manhattan telephone booth. The ILGWU initially mourned Lurye as a martyr, but Witwer and Rios present another image, a corrupt unionist who suffered retaliation after he had slashed dresses in an employer’s warehouse.

This killing helped usher in a downturn for the labor movement.  The 1950s, as Witwer and Rios contend, “marked a pivotal turning point for organized labor.”  It was when unions enjoyed the allegiance of more than a third of the American workforce, but that loyalty soon faded.  Revelations of corruption led to “significant shifts in public opinion … accompanied by a significant legislative defeat,” the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959, designed to protect the rights of union members within their organizations.  “Tarred with a lasting stain of impropriety and corruption,” the labor movement’s appeal to American workers has suffered to the present day.

Labor violence was not one-sided or usually initiated by unions, as evidenced at least by the experiences of the United Auto Workers and Teamsters Unions.  Beginning in the 1920s and continuing for three decades, union leaders were often physically attacked.  The Ford Motor Company’s Service Department was “a kind of police force” notorious for its strongarm methods.  In 1938 UAW president Walter Reuther was blackjacked.  During the next twelve years both Walter and his brother Victor were shot and wounded.  In 1951-52 Teamsters Union officials were targets of eight bombings.  Law enforcers, including the FBI, had difficulty bringing the assailants to justice.  In the spirit of the Cold War the authorities preferred to blame communists rather than mobsters.

The latter were an abundant and even legendary presence.  In a chilling chapter on the 1940s and ‘50s, Witwer and Rios display an amazing knowledge of the intricate operation of the garment industry as they describe the relationships between mobsters, employers, and unionists in New York.  The “organized crime figures” were businessmen—and sometimes—union officials.”  “They were Garment District fixtures with deeply embedded functions.”  Louis (“Lepke”) Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro (“Gurrah”) were the most prominent names, but the list also came to include such figures as Abe Chait (the “boss trucker”) and John DioGuardi (“Johnny Dio”).  Following Buchalter’s execution for murder in 1944 and Shapiro’s death in prison a few years later, “Chait became the dominant Jewish gangster in the Garment District.”  According to the FBI, he “controlled” Sam Berger, the head of ILGWU Local 102, and as businessman and racketeer came to monopolize the hauling of garments from northeast Pennsylvania to New York City.

Victor Riesel was a conservative newspaper columnist and critic of organized labor.  After years of crusading against communists and racketeers in the labor movement, he, too, encountered violence.  On April 5, 1956, he was permanently blinded when a thug splattered his face with sulphuric acid.  This attack gained Riesel martyrdom as a victim of labor crime, but as Witwer and Rios reveal, his connections were less than honorable, and included Johnny Dio, who ordered the assault on him.  In an extended discussion, the authors construct a fascinating account of a questionable relationship between Riesel and Dio, and say that the “acid attack had nothing at all to do with any selfless, anti-racketeering crusade.”

In 1957, labor corruption made huge headlines when Senator John McClellan of Arkansas, chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation, held well-publicized hearings. Though the Committee’s primary focus was on the Teamsters Union, it also investigated Johnny Dio‘s ties to the   ILGWU.  The National Association of Manufacturers rejoiced at the McClellan Committee’s attention to the labor movement.  Exploiting an opportunity, the NAM campaigned for new legislation to curb labor abuses.  Success came with the passage of Landrum-Griffin and a more deeply ingrained negative public image of organized labor.

The McClellan Committee could not resist the temptation to solicit testimony from David Dubinsky, the president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.  A member of the AFL-CIO’s Ethical Practices Committee, Dubinsky was an inviting target for anyone wishing to discredit union leadership.  Aware of problems with the ILGWU truckers’ local in particular, Dubinsky had decried union corruption and sought government help to combat it.  Now he was confronted with a focus on Johnny Dio, who, as Witwer and Rios note, “had done organizing work for the union.” Pressed by the Committee for a personal connection to Dio, Dubinsky claimed to have not known of his employment by the ILGWU.  “Although he publicly denied it,” the ILGWU president  “led a union that had employed a notorious gangster.”

Witwer and Rios also shed light on often overlooked racial victims of union corruption, “black and Puerto Rican workers toiling in low-wage sectors of the economy that had little appeal to mainstream organized labor.” Financial pressure on employers translated into depressed wages and benefits for their employees, who consequently could not afford union dues.  All too often the representatives of these workers were “unscrupulous operators, in essence the slumlords of the labor movement.”  Not all unions neglected their minority members, notably District 65 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

Min Lurye Matheson was an exception.  The sister of the slain William Lurye, for many years she devoted herself to organizing workers in northeast Pennsylvania, an area notorious for its “runaway,” non-union garment shops as well as its racketeers.  A kindred spirit with Charles “Sasha” Zimmerman, the manager of Dressmakers’ Local 22, and another victim of labor violence, she stood up for union democracy, but sometimes found herself “reaching accommodations” with the criminal element.

Murder in the Garment District is well-documented, well-written, and altogether terrific. Its honesty is refreshing, reminding us that even before the forces of globalization and technology battered the American labor movement there was a serious disease that contributed to its decline.  The persistence of that malady, and its impact on workers, must continue to be addressed.

Reviewed by Robert D. Parmet, Professor of History, York College, The City University