Alan Bersin has taken an interesting road to the border. But the saga begins long before he was born, with the great grandfather of his wife, Lisa Foster......Isaac Ratner, a cap maker from New York... came to San Diego... in 1921, ...and established United Cap Works. San Diego was close to the border and filled with sunshine, cheap labor, and Navy contracts.
...Sons Abe and Nate joined him in the business...
...Abe’s daughter Pauline met Stanley Foster ...They married in 1954 ....where Stan worked his way up the ladder at Ratner Clothing....Stan Foster succeeded 64-year-old Abe Ratner as presidentThe Ratner company was a creature of the border. It built a 310,000-square-foot factory in Chula Vista, an easy commute from Tijuana for many of its workers. It also owned the Arizona Slack Co., which operated a plant just across the state border in Yuma, employing hundreds of Hispanic workers, and owned a warehouse in El Paso, Texas, opposite the Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez.
At its peak in the mid-1970s, Ratner Manufacturing, as the company came to be known, was said by San Diego Magazine to be the fifth-largest menswear maker in the country, employing 2500 people, with sales of $57 million.
In 1991,... Bersin met and married... Lisa Foster, a daughter of Stan and Pauline Foster...
Thank you!
Ratner Manufacturing is a Union friendly company right? ...like the Mexican company that he used to build the plant?