Call Number:

539

Repository:

Temple University Libraries: Special Collections Research Center

Extent:

1.75 linear feet (4 boxes)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

[Description and date of item], [Box/folder number], David Neifeld Papers, Acc. 539, Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Date:

1848-1980 (inclusive)

Creator:

Neifeld, David, 1914-2001

Form:

Clippings, Correspondence, Minutes (administrative records), Publications (documents), and Speeches (documents)

Abstract:

David Neifeld (1914-2001) was active in union organizing since the 1930s and in time was frequently elected president of the Retail Clerks international Association, Local 415. He grew up in the Strawberry Mansion section of Philadelphia and was graduated from Central High School in 1931. Though work was hard to find during these years of the Depression, Neifeld worked in stores and shops in Philadelphia. As he describes in remarks made at retirement in 1979 (see Box #1, folder #3), the labor union movement attracted him as it did many others in that era and he discovered in himself a talent for union organizing. There were several bitter strikes and organizing campaigns in some of Philadelphia's department stores, food stores, and other kinds of retail stores in the late 1930's. Neifeld was closely associated with all this activity (see folder 3-3, "Historical Development of the Union," for an account of this pre-war period), but the war drew him and others away for a time.

At officers' school in 1942, Neifeld suffered a leg injury and an ensuing bone marrow infection. Nevertheless, after recovery, he went on to command an antitank until in Central Europe. He sustained a shrapnel wound on Christmas Eve at the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 and received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

After his service in the army, Neifeld returned to union organizing in the retail businesses of Philadelphia and the region. In the late 1940's through the 1960's, he served as officer in various unions whose different names reflect the shifting allegiances within the labor union movement in Philadelphia's retail stores at that time. There was Local 836 of the Retail Specialty Schops Employees Union, District 76 and Local 77 of the Distributive, Processing & Office Workers of America (CPOWA)., the Distributive Workers Union, and, finally, Local 415 of the Retail Clerks International Association. By the 1960's until his retirement in 1979, Neifeld was president of RCIA Local 415 and from the position; he took a prominent part in the labor-related issues of the day.

This collection reflects intensive union activity among Philadelphia's retail clerks over a span of nearly 50 years. The collection contains newspaper clippings and correspondence showing his role as union spokesperson. In the 1960's and 1970's, the Neifeld Papers show that his activities had extended to subsidiary groups like the Delaware Valley United Labor Committee for Full Employment, Pennsylvania Labor History Society, Democratic National Platform Committee, and the Eastern Pennsylvania Labor Assembly for Peace. As he wrote in his retirement remarks, the labor movement "must participate in the struggles for civil rights, for equality, and for peace." The Neifeld Papers reveal a life lived almost entirely within the Philadelphia region's retail clerks sector of the labor movement. His loyalty and intensity to the cause of the workers are conveyed throughout the Papers, as are his wider perspectives-borne of deep commitment and experience over decades.