Honolulu Record, August 19, 1948, vol. 1 no. 3, p. 4
Richard Gladstein, chief counsel for the defense in the Reinecke hearing now being conducted before the school commissioners, comes to Honolulu with a rich background of civil liberties and labor cases.
His recitation of cases in which he has figured over the past 12 years is a chronicle of battles for the "little man."
Leaves Corporation Law Firm
When asked how he had first turned to labor law, Mr. Gladstein said that following his graduation from law school in 1931, he was associated with corporation lawyers for five years. The "straw that broke the camel's back" was a case in which he was required to go to court for a chain of bakeries and get an eight hour day law thrown out.
"I just couldn't do it," Gladstein said, "for it would have meant that I would be breaking the backs of the workers."
Thence, he left the firm in Oakland and started his own law firm in San Francisco in 1936, just on the eve of the maritime strike.
From then on, he became involved with the trade unions and since that time, he has devoted his time, energy and interest to labor and civil liberties cases.
Most Important Case
When asked what he considered his most important case, he thought for a moment, then said that from the point of view of labor relations, he considered the NLRB case involving the ILWU and the ILA (International Longshoremen's Association) as the most important and farreaching as it involved the right of the workers throughout a geographical area to belong to one single union for the purposes of collective bargaining.
The Black List Licked
Other important labor cases in which Mr. Gladstein was involved include the 1937 "blacklist" case in which he obtained
an injunction from the federal court forbidding the blacklisting of Salinas Valley lettuce strikers who had lost the strike. In addition to taking the workers back to work, the industry was ordered by the NLRB to give back pay to thousands of workers, Mr. Gladstein said. The Shasta Dam Case was one in which Mr. Gladstein himself was arrested while walking in the picket line. He was indicted by a grand jury and charged with conspiracy.
This situation ended in the famous Carlson V. California case, a test suit carried to the supreme court arid in which the court held, for the first time, that an anti-picketing ordinance was unconstitutional.
Communist Reinstated
Asked what he would consider an important political case so far as unions are concerned, Mr. Gladstein thought the case involving Archie Brown, a communist, is one which stands out. In this arbitration held before Dean A. M. Kidd of the University of California law school, the arbitrator ruled that the longshore industry did not have a right to refuse the registration of a man for work because of his political views, nor deny him the right to job security and seniority.
Bridges Case Won
The attorney from the firm of Gladstein, Sawyer, Anderson and Resner has also participated in many civil liberties cases, foremost among which is the famous Bridges deportation case which he won before Dean Landis of the Harvard Law School and which involved four years of litigation before the supreme court.
Glastein [sic] cited many cases involving the forcing of employers to take workers back on the job after locking them out; the defeat of Joe Ryan in his attempt to take away the property and monies of the ILWU; the punishment of restaurants, hotels and other public places for discriminating against certain racial groups.
Fight For Local Workers
Mr. Gladstein is best known to local sugar and longshore industries and their workers for being responsible for the settlement of a number of Fair Labor Standards Act violations involving over two million dollars.
The San Francisco lawyer was born in New Haven, Connecticut 39 years ago, but came to California at an early age. He attended high school in that state and finished his pre-legal studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
He is married, has four children and lives in Sausalito.