Murder in the Garment District

March 16, 2020
Witwer, a Penn State Harrisburg history professor, and his colleague Rios, a filmmaker and humanities professor, deliver an insightful analysis of the period in the 1950s when American labor unions acquired a reputation for corruption and criminality that lingers today. Discrediting accusations of widespread moral failures by union leaders, Witwer and Rios argue that long-standing relationships between businessmen and mobsters made it nearly impossible to organize workers in certain industries without engaging with gangsters. Organizers who resisted the mob, including William Lurye, whose brazen, broad-daylight murder in New York City’s Garment District the authors use as a framing device, found themselves vulnerable to violent attacks, with little redress from police or government officials. Witwer and Rios argue that accommodations worked out between labor and organized crime were part of the “operational codes” of the period, and document how such agreements enabled labor leaders to win rights and concessions for workers, but left them vulnerable to congressional investigations and anti-union legislation. Witwer and Rios amass a wealth of detail to complicate the prevailing narrative around the subject, and make a strong case that the reputation of labor unions as inherently corrupt is overblown. This granular, revisionist history will resonate with labor activists and history buffs.