1919 Telephone Workers Strike Successfully Over Low Pay and Oppressive Conditions

Telephone Operators Working at their Stations

Mary Kenney O’Sullivan founded the Women’s Trade Union League (WTUL) in Boston on November of 1903 in affiliation with the American Federation of Labor (AFL). “The WTUL committed itself to organizing women workers who lacked union representation.”  The organization was extremely influential and successful at demanding equal pay for equal work for women, children and workers in general. The WTUL was also instrumental during the women’s suffrage movement of 1919.

In 1912 the New England operators filed grievances under Local IA over working conditions, low wages, and a practice called the “split trick, a staffing procedure that extended the workday by dividing it into two separate shifts, leaving several hours of unpaid time in between.”   The telephone operators knew little of what they could do about their workplace situation and enlisted the help of Mary Kenney O’Sullivan’s Women’s Trade Union League. The WTUL suggested that the operators affiliate with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. They were organized as the Boston Telephone Operators’ Union and had 2,200 members.

As a result of World War I, telecommunications were placed under Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson.  In 1919 the Boston Telephone Operators’ Union, and similar unions across New England asked Burleson to turn over negotiations to individual phone companies, but Burleson refused. Julia O’Connor, President of the Boston Telephone Operators’ Union, proposed a strike in order to gain the rights that the workers deserve. Samuel Gompers, President of the AFL-CIO advised that they not strike and wait for a negotiation and IBEW leaders threatened to not back the strike. O’Connor went on with the strike anyways. “On April 15, 1919, telephone operators from Vermont to Cape Cod laid down their headsets and went on strike for a new contract, setting up picket lines outside regional exchanges.”

Though they did not receive much aid from the IBEW, the striking operators gained the support of many other local unions. The strike gained massive public sympathy, with the most significant assistance coming from the Boston Police. The police had sympathy for the strike because they were engaged in a labor dispute of their own. The Boston Police were trying organize themselves, and so they did not act as strikebreakers during the telephone operator’s strike. The phone companies brought in scabs to maintain the phone lines, but they were immediately branded as strikebreakers. Albert Burleson was pressured by the media and politicians to negotiate with the strikers and eventually conceded a wage increase, collective bargaining rights and an end to the “split trick”. The strike resulted in a nation-wide organizing campaign, and also was rumored to have influenced the Boston Police in their attempt to gain union representation.