Flaxer, Abram, 1904-

Abram Flaxer was born in Vilna, Lithuania, September 12, 1904. At the age of six, he immigrated to the United States with his family, settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He was exposed to socialist ideas early on, first at the Rand School of Social Science in Manhattan and later at City College, where he was involved in a Marxist study group while earning his B.S. degree. After graduation he joined the radical "Pen and Hammer" club, where he further developed the ideological orientation that he was to maintain throughout his career in labor organizing. He also did graduate work at Columbia University in mathematics.

As a teacher in a Bronx vocational school, Flaxer organized unemployed teachers throughout the New York City school system at a time of widespread union discrimination against unemployed workers. He went on to work for the New York City Emergency Relief Bureau, where he organized the agency's workers against the opposition of Tammany Hall. He had joined the Communist Party by this point but his level of involvement throughout his life is not always clear; his attempt to gain support from the CP for ERB organization failed. After successfully organizing ERB workers in the Bronx, Flaxer took a position with the new union as assistant to the Executive Secretary and widened his scope to include efforts at citywide organizing. Eventually he became Executive Secretary and worked with Charlotte Carr to expand the ERB union, which then changed its name to the Association of Workers in Public Relief Agencies. It was at this time that Flaxer developed political relationships with Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio, often clashing with the former while working closely with the latter in the American Labor Party.

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