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1914-1919 Making the Connection

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With its Boston victories, the operators’ organizing movement spread through-out New England and the Midwest. According to O’Connor, “Organization sentiment also displayed itself at this time through the Middle West, resulting in the establishment of a number of successful organizations in the Middle Western and Rocky Mountain states. In New England the demand for organization among telephone operators continued unabated.“

IBEW linemen repair the phone lines in the 1910s.

Julia Sarsfield O’Connor was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, on September 9, 1890, to Irish-emigrant parents. She was the youngest of four-children. She grew up in the Boston suburb of Medford, where, like many of her fellow female graduates, she began to work for the telephone company after high school.

Achieving an eight-hour day, a fair pay scale and an equitable grievance system were priorities of the telephone operators nation-wide. Responding to union pressure, the telephone companies were one of the first businesses in the United States to bring regular hours down to eight and move toward establishing grievance review boards and standard pay scales-breakthroughs which enabled union leaders in other industries to make progress on the same issues.

Delegates to the 15th International Convention held September 1919 in New Orleans.

Between the years 1913 and 1919, the IBEW saw the most impressive leap in membership in its history—from 23,500 to 148,072. Under the leadership of International President Frank J. McNulty and International Secretary Charles P. lord, the Brotherhood was prospering. World War 1, which began in Europe in 1914, by 1917 embroiled the United States in the largest conflicts the world had ever known. Declaring the U.S. “The Arsenal of Democracy,” President Woodrow Wilson challenged American workers to produce the machinery necessary to bring peace—a challenge which called for massive amounts of electricity and the manufacturing of electric-powered machinery. The war changed the map of the world, caused over 41 million civilian and military casualties and brought a level of misery and hopelessness to Europe which many believe led directly to the greater horror of the Second World War.

Because it had become such at vital communication link, during the war the American telephone network came under government control. Julia O’Connor served as labor’s only representative to the national board, presided over by Postmaster General Albert Burleson, which set telephone workers’ wages and supervised their working conditions.

The war confirmed America’s place as a world power. American manufacturing shifted into overdrive; and when the armistice was declared on November 11, 1918, American consumer spending was up, factories were producing goods as fast as the public could buy them and the Roaring Twenties were around the corner.

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Page 3 of 3
Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3
1914-1919 Making the Connection