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  • For All White-Collar Workers: The Possibilities of Radicalism in New York City’s Department Store Unions, 1934–1953
  • Eric R. Smith
For All White-Collar Workers: The Possibilities of Radicalism in New York City’s Department Store Unions, 1934–1953Daniel J. Opler Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2007, 270 pp. ISBN 0814210635 (hardcover), $49.95.

With the rise of the service economy, the demise of organized labor, and now an economic downturn comparable to the one Opler writes about, this history of the unskilled labor of the service economy provides some necessary perspective. Opler’s six chapters cover the roughly two decades between the early Roosevelt years to the McCarthy era and center mostly on Local 1250 in New York. Because the labor force of primary concern in For All White-Collar Workers is a mostly female one, and over half of the book covers the 1930s, Opler also provides new insight into the experiences of women in this era.

Opler explores a sub-theme of public space that seems to derive from his thorough understanding of the dynamics of labor organizing. As Opler points out, space was (and is) a crucial aspect to union campaigns. The organizers and workers themselves recognized the need to occupy or claim public space. The later failure to appropriate space for the union in part doomed the efforts of organizers in the 1950s. In Opler’s research this plays out both within the setting of the retail stores and on the sidewalks outside and in the parks.

Opler’s treatment of Communist involvement is also commendable. As the Cold War continues to be fought in some academic circles, Opler has aligned himself with the “localists,” who find in local circumstances the motivations for Communist political positioning. Opler offers a number of examples where local activities ran counter to official Communist policy, though he might have offered a more direct response to critics of this approach with more detailed references to breaks between policy and action.

Many of the primary fault lines between Communists and non-Communists (some of them anti-) occur between the local unions and the national AFL body. This local versus national dynamic is critical to Opler’s story in explaining both successes and failures. Militancy of the retail unions, either from the national or the local body, was critical to success through World War II. National-local cooperation fostered a thriving international union.

Opler also attends to smaller details. His sources include management as well as worker publications. In his treatment of space, he considers marketing [End Page 170] inside and outside the store. His inclusion of labor culture, especially within a context of space not only during the Popular Front but later as well, also offers a new perspective on labor’s struggles. Opler’s inclusion of the historically ignored anti–chain store movement and its relationship to organized labor also suggests a point for future research.

Ultimately, a classic explanation is at the heart of Opler’s conclusions. Anticommunism and antilabor legislation undermined the local leadership and marked the demise of retail union organizing. By 1948, “the drive to expand the department store unions barely ever began,” Opler declares, and its retraction was already underway. Suburbanization and postwar retail growth intersected antiunion legislation and anticommunism, both robbing unions of their effective organizers and leadership. Class warfare gave way to a middle-class ethos, and the public space of antiradicalism and interior space of self-service all undermined labor advances on the retail front and this particular demographic.

Commendable in its research, Opler nonetheless might have also offered further perspective on the demise of retail unions as he criticizes today’s labor leaders. Growth in self-service and the 1950s consumer society posed real challenges to store owners and management. Very real economic concerns did exist. To sustain labor amid these changes would have required an industry-wide organizing drive that leveled the labor-force playing field among retail competitors. Accompanying legal protections akin to those in Europe might also have sustained such an effort. The former was not undertaken; the latter was impossible. At the outset, Opler seems to lay blame on external forces; by...

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