"This article examines the history of labor organizing in the service, distribution, and processing industries. It examines Local/District 65's (Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union) efforts to find a “home” for its differing “orientation” as it targeted low-wage distribution, processing, and service workers, more often Black, Puerto Rican, and Jewish, in New York who worked in small, largely “invisible,” 10–20-person shops, using what it called a “catchall” or area-based organizing strategy. The union's history helps us better understand the challenges the contemporary labor movement faces organizing in the Wal-Mart era as low-wage service, distribution, and processing (warehouse) jobs become the norm."

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