Abram Flaxer

Around 1910, his family immigrated to the United States, where they settled in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn area of New York City.

He studied at the Rand School of Social Science and then the City College of New York, where he received a BS (or AB).

"[1][5] Flaxer was a social worker who in the early 1930s joined radical "Rank and File" movements like the Communist Party USA or the Socialist Party of America along with others like Mary van Kleeck, Jacob Fischer, Bertha Capen Reynolds, and Lewis Merrill.

[1] In 1937, Flaxer broke with the AFSCME to form the New York-based State, County and Municipal Workers of America (SCMWA) union as member of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).

That same year, Lewis G. Hines, secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's Department of Labor and Industry stated that Flaxer had "been singled out on a number of occasions as one of the leader members of the Communist Party in this country."

[1] In 1941 at a SCMWA convention, Flaxer said and, again in 1942, wrote in Survey Magazine that government employees should reserved the right to strike during war.

He had been a "general manager" of the "American Federation of Government Employees" AFL, a member of which (John P. Frey) testified to his Communist links.

UPWA had an overtly pro-Soviet foreign policy, which contributed to a severe drop in members, who moved to rival AFSCME.

[1] On January 26–28 and February 2, 1948, a hearing of the House Education and Labor Subcommittee, chaired by U.S. Representative Clare E. Hoffman, occurred on the topic of a strike by United Cafeteria and Restaurant Workers (Local 471) and its parent, the United Public Workers of America (UPWA), CIO, against Government Services, Inc. (GSI), which had already lasted nearly a month.

"[10] On November 24, 1948, Flaxer sent a letter to Truman decrying the tendency to brand a person disloyal simply because they advocated for improvements in civil rights.

[19] As the trial approached in January 1950, the UPWA issued a lengthy document which purported to show that it had not parroted the Communist Party line and had upheld the CIO political platform.

[20] When the informal trial opened on January 9, the UPWA attempted to bring more than 250 witnesses in its defense, but the crowd was barred on the grounds it would intimidate the committee.

"[5] Some time after 1940, Flaxer married Charlotte Rosswaag, who served in the SCMWA as a welfare investigator as well as chair of its Lower Manhattan subgroup.