See you at Dubrow’s!

This was written by Deborah Dash Moore, who wrote one of the articles in Nosh and Kibbutz. It’s a great history of the significance of cafeterias in NYC in general, I’ve photographed her history of Dubrow’s.  I did not know the original incorporate name was Dubrow’s Pure Food!  

I also didn’t know about the court case against the waiters union in 1932!  This reflects my cousin Joe’s oral history about union busting activity occurring in my family’s restaurant. 

Union Settlement Comes in War Stamps

This is the oldest article about Dubrow's I found in the New York Times database. Among other things, it adds some details to my cousin Joe's story about Dubrow's being unionized. It also says a lot about the times that the union was willing to negotiate part of their pay raise to be in war bonds.

Unions Win Pay Rise; Part In War Stamps
(New York Times, February 14, 1942)

The national defense effort received impetus from a wage settlement negotiated yesterday between Local 325 of the Cooks, Countermen, and Soda Dispensers Union, A.F. of L. and Dubrow's Cafeteria, 1110 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. The contract stipulated that 25 cents, or about 9 percent, of a $2.75 weekly increase should be paid by the company in war savings stamps.

The 25-cent stamps in the weekly pay envelopes of the sixty employes will yield the defense effort $780 annually. The increase was granted to the employers in addition to a forty-eight hour, six-day week, a closed shop, arbitration of grievances, and vacations with pay ranging from one week for employes in service for one year, and three days for employes in service six months or less.

After the new wage agreement had been signed for the company by Louis Shapiro, counsel, and for the union by Sidney Elliot Cohn, attorney, Irving Halpern, president of Local 325 disclosed that 3,000 members of the union had invested $7,000 of their treasury's funds in defense bonds and would double the amount as soon as it was convenient for officers to make the purchase.

When Local 325 opened negotiations for a new contract it asked for a weekly increase of $3 for its sixty members employed at Dubrow's Cafeteria. The company countered with an offer of $2, and a deadlock ensued.

The war savings stamp idea was put forward as a compromise, and both sides quickly reached an agreement.

A bit controversial

I thought for a long time about whether I should post this piece of the transcriptions. As you'll see, Joe is telling me not to put it on the blog. My mother, meanwhile, gives the go ahead. But the whole point of this blog is to commemorate and document Dubrow's. Any good documentary maker would say that you don't censor what you find just because you don't like it. So here we go.

Joe: Now, Bonnie, you gotta hear this one (to me)– turn the tape recorder off –

Bonnie: No, you’re not turning it off –

Joe: This is not good. This is not good for our image. Uh…they were trying to unionize the cafeteria. And they didn’t want to unionize. So the union went down to the bowery…the truck – they gave them more money – this is absolutely true – my father was there. (to Ruthie) See, they don’t tell you the bad news, you would have said “Pop, unionize!” You know, I told my father, I asked him once, “why are there no Black countermen?” He said, "You want to go to college?" I said, “No, I really don’t want to go to college, frankly. And I’d rather you put Black people behind the counter.” He said, “You want me to be the first?” I said, “yes, I want you to be the first!” But, your father, my father, they weren’t the first. I know people who were – I’ve given awards to people who were – people who had the balls in Miami Beach in those days to stand up, and it wasn’t our family. But anyway, they were also – they didn’t want to unionize – they would bring these bums in, and of course it drove all these other people away - Simon Batwinick was by a tree, outside, screaming “The Jews go to Miami in the winter!” – he was mister union man. Now, years later, he’s a partner of our father’s and he was the worst son of a bitch to people that worked under him, ever, ever…I don’t know anyone who was as mean as I heard he was…

Ruthie: I didn’t know that either.

Joe: Yeah, that’s where he was: “The Dubrows go to Florida in the winter!” What a bastard he was when he became a boss. I remember it like it was yesterday.


Apparently, Dubrow's employees at one or more of the locations attempted to unionize. Anyone else have recollection of this? If Simon Batwinick (spelling uncertain) or his family are reading this blog, I feel compelled to note that the opinions suggested here are not the opinions of anyone other than Joe. I would very much like to hear your story, if you are out there.

As a former union president myself (Parry Center for Children, local 987 of SEIU/OPEU) I find it unsettling to think that any of my relatives were anti-union. But I also know that the way the world works is that there are managers and workers, and that when you're on the manager side being accountable for the bottom line, things look a lot different than when you're the worker, defending your right to organize. Both sides have truths, both sides have struggles. One side just has more power, and power is rarely given up without a fight. It's easy to empathize with why they would have resisted unionization, even if it's not pretty.