Lentorama 2022: It Happened on Easter

Day 36: The phone lines reopen

Much like recent innovations in communication, the telephone was adopted quickly after Alexander Graham Bell's successful demonstration in 1876. It allowed anyone to talk to any other person - as long as there was an operator to connect the call.

By 1919, thousands of women were working as telephone operators in New England. While the job wasn't as dangerous as mill work and in a more professional setting than domestic occupations, the work wasn't easy. Operators were expected to work at quick pace throughout their shift, and were often disciplined harshly for minor mistakes. The pay was also much lower than that given women in other occupations.

Julia O'Connor had tried to change that. While working as an operator she had a little success trying to organize operators into a union, and that combined with the poor working conditions led O'Connor to leave her job to start organizing full time. The operators went to the Postmaster General (who was given oversight of the telephone industry during World War I), who refused to bargain with them for a new contract, or allow the telephone company to negotiate. So on April 15, 1919, the New England operators went on strike.

The effect of the strike was immediate, and several attempts were made to bring in replacement workers, from college students to recently-returned war veterans. But they were often stymied by members of other unions - cab drivers refused to take them to work, and the police refused to break the strike. This was critical for the operators, as women didn't generally have the support of largely male unions.

With the phone outage crippling business, the Postmaster General relented and allowed New England Telephone to negotiate with the union. And so on April 20, 1919, the operators returned to work, with a new deal in hand.

Their victory was somewhat short-lived, however, as the phone companies made an even harder push to develop a telephone system that would automatically connect calls. Within 20 years, the operators union was gone, replaced by technology. Also something we're getting used to with recent innovations in communications.