Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following his recent departure from Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a result of its purge of Communist Party members and fellow travelers. From 1936 to 1948, he represented the CIO and member unions in landmark collective bargaining deals with major corporations including General Motors and U.S. Steel. According to journalist Murray Kempton, anti-communists referred to him as "Comrade Big."
Background
Pressman was born Leon Pressman on July 1, 1906, on the Lower East Side of in New York City, first of two sons of immigrants Harry and Clara Pressman of Minsk. His father was a milliner on the Lower East Side of New York City. As a child, Leon survived polio. In his teens, the family moved out to the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. In 1922, he entered Washington Square College of New York University, where classmates included Nathan Witt and possibly Charles Kramer (later, fellow AAA and Ware Group members), then transferred to Cornell University, where he studied under labor economist Sumner Slichter.
In 1926, Pressman received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1929, he received a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School.Marion Dickerman and Ruth Taylor (eds.), Who's Who In Labor: The Authorized Biographies of the Men and Women Who Lead Labor in the United States and Canada and of Those Who Deal with Labor. New York: The Dryden Press, 1946; pg.286. At Harvard, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was in the same class as Alger Hiss. With future defending lawyer Edward Cochrane McLean, they served on the Harvard Law Review:
Mr. Hiss: ... Lee Pressman was in my class at the Harvard Law School, and we were both on the Harvard Law Review at the same time.
Career
After graduation, he joined the law firm of Chadbourne, Stanchfield & Levy (currently Chadbourne & Parke) in New York City. (During the Great Depression, founder Thomas Chadbourne asserted that the capitalist system itself was "on trial" and became an early champion of both collective bargaining rights and profit sharing for workers.) There, he worked for Jerome Frank (future chair of the SEC). When Jerome left in 1933 to work in FDR's New Deal, Pressman joined a small firm called Liebman, Blumenthal & Levy, to handle Jerome's clients.
New Deal service 1933–1936
In 1933, Pressman joined the Ware Group at the invitation of Harold Ware, a Communist agricultural journalist in Washington, DC: "I was asked to join by a man named Harold Ware" (See "Ware Group" sub-section, below)
AAA
In July 1933, Pressman received appointment as assistant general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) by Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace. He reported to Jerome Frank, who was general counsel. The New Dealers saw the AAA as complementing the National Recovery Act (NRA – where fellow Ware Group member and lifelong Hiss friend Henry Collins worked). As they arrived at AAA, two camps quickly arose: previously existing officials who favored agribusiness interests and New Deal appointees who sought to protect small farmers (and farm laborers) and consumers as much as agribusiness. Or, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. summarized the attitude, "There were too many Ivy League men, too many intellectuals, too many radicals, too many Jews." By December 1933, Frank had hired John Abt and Arthur (or Howard) Bachrach (brother of Abt's sister Marion Abt Bachrach) to develop litigation strategies for agricultural reform policies.
In February 1935, Chester Davis fired many of Frank's cadre, including Pressman, Frank, Gardner Jackson, and two others.
WPA, RA By April 1935, Pressman had been appointed general counsel in the Works Progress Administration by Harry L. Hopkins. A joint resolution dated January 21, 1935, called the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, passed in the United States Congress and became law on April 8, 1935. As a result, on May 6, 1935, FDR issued Executive Order 7034, that essentially transformed the Federal Emergency Relief Administration into the Works Progress Administration. "Pressman set to work analyzing the budget request that would transform FERA into the WPA."
By mid-summer 1935, Rexford G. Tugwell appointed him general counsel of the Resettlement Administration. Pressman split his time between the two agencies. However, by year's end (he recollected in a letter to Tugwell in 1937), he came to believe that New Deals changes occurred only when "major controlling financial interests" concurred or when "financial interests had been able to seize effective control of the code and manipulate it to enhance their power."
CIO 1936–1948
Pressman left government service in the winter of 1935-36 and went into private law practice in New York City with David Scribner as Pressman & Scribner. Clients included the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (MEBA), the United Public Workers CIO, and other unions.
In 1943, during hearings by a Dies Committee "Special Committee on Un-American Activities," director of research J.B. Matthews asked whether witness Lucien Koch had retained the New York City law firm of "Hays, St. John, Abramson, and Schulman" and "Is this Lee Pressman's firm?"; Koch confirmed "yes." (Osmond K. Fraenkel, a fellow member of the National Lawyers Guild, was also a member of Hays, St. John, Abramson, and Schulman.)
In his role as the CIO's general counsel, Pressman was influential in helping to stop the attempt to deport Communist Longshoreman's Union official Harry Bridges. He continued to interact with Bridges well into June 1948, as longshoremen continued to threaten strikes on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and Bridges remained president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.
Under John L. Lewis 1936–1940
In June 1936, Pressman was named a counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO—later AFL-CIO) for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC—later, the United Steelworkers of America), appointed by union chief John L. Lewis as part of a conscious attempt to mobilize left-wing activists on behalf of the new labor federation. According to scholars, "One of Pressman's unofficial roles in the CIO was liaison between the CIO's Communist faction and its predominantly non-Communist leadership."
In 1936-1937, he supported the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike.
In 1937, Michigan Governor William Francis Murphy supported workers rights and the nascent United Auto Workers in a sit-down strike at General Motors plants. He listened to advice Pressman that civil rights statues passed to protect African-American voters during the Civil War might grant the federal government authority to intervene in strikes in terms of Free Speech, like strikes in Harlan County, Kentucky. In February 1939, when President Roosevelt made Murphy United States Attorney General, Murphy created a Civil Liberties Unit within the criminal division of the United States Department of Justice.
In June 1938, Pressman moved back to Washington, D.C., to become full-time general counsel for the CIO and the SWOC.Hearings Regarding Communism in the United States Government — Part 2, pg. 2849. He remained in this position for the next decade. (According to his obituary in the New York Times, he was general counsel from 1936 to 1948.)
In August 1938, Pressman criticized the American Bar Association in The CIO News in his own "bill of particulars," which included the following: Mooney Case: ABA refused to investigate injustice committed therein Industrial Espionage: ABA lawyers have worked with firms "that engage in industrial espionage" Sacco-Vanzetti Case: ABA refused to investigate Wagner Act: Shared ABA and NLG members declared this act "unconstitutional" Racism: ABA membership asked for and often excluded members based on race ("White," "Indian," "Negro," "Mongolian")
In May 1939, Pressman spoke on behalf of the CIO before the US Senate's Education and Labor sub-committee to support the "National Health Bill" (part of the Reorganization Act of 1939), sponsored by US Senator Robert F. Wagner. He attacked the American Medical Society's position against the bill as "reactionary," which he felt had kept the bill from going "far enough."
From May through August 1939, Pressman attacked support for the "Walsh amendments" to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (AKA the "Wagner Act"). In May 1939, when AFL president William Green supported the amendments on CBS Radio, the CIO's response, penned by Pressman, accused Green of colluding with the National Association of Manufacturers against not just the CIO but also the AFL, i.e., workers. In August 1939, Pressman appeared before the Senate Labor Committee to state that Green's support did not represent AFL rank and file.
Also in August 1939, Congress passed the Hatch Act of 1939, which restricted political campaign activities by federal employees. A provision of the Hatch Act made it illegal for the federal government to employ anyone who advocated the overthrow of the federal government.Goldstein, Political Repression in Modern America: From 1870 to 1976, 2001, p. 244. The left-leaning United Public Workers of America (UFWA) immediately hired Pressman to challenge the constitutionality of the Hatch Act.Gall, Pursuing Justice: Lee Pressman, the New Deal, and the CIO, 1999, p. 216.
In October 1939, during a closed-door session during a CIO convention, president John L. Lewis declared his intent to rid the CIO of "Communist influence." This decision came in response particularly from Philip Murray and Sidney Hillman, the CIO's two vice presidents, that pre-dated the Hitler-Stalin Pact (announced the previous month). Instead, Lewis would empower eight member of the CIO's 42 executive committee members. Further, Lewis increased the number of CIO vice presidents from two to six with: R. J. Thomas, president of the United Automobile Workers; Emil Rieve, president of the Textile Workers of America; Sherman Dalrymple, president of the United Rubber Workers; and Reid Robinson, president of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. "Left forces" failed to have Joseph Curran, president of the National Maritime Union, elected vice president. Further, Lewis demoted Harry Bridges from West Coast CIO director to California state CIO director. In 1939, New York Times reported on further internal conflict.
On January 3, 1940, Pressman discussed the "1940 Legislative Program of the CIO" on CBS Radio. orIn his speech, Pressman said:
On pretexts of economy, more money for war purposes and similar catch cries, the reactionary financial interests and their political henchmen hope to reduce appropriations for the unemployed and for publish works, to emasculate labor and social legislation, and to restrict our civil liberties. The CIO ... calls for a determined advance in adapting social legislation to the needs of the whole American people.
Under Philip Murray 1940–1948
On January 14, 1940, John L. Lewis retired from the CIO presidency, and Philip Murray succeeded him.
On May 18, 1940, Pressman again spoke on CBS Radio, this time on the "Wagner Act."