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Mary Gannon, leader of the Washington Telephone Traffic Union, in 1944.
By Craig G. Simpson
The Washington Telephone Traffic Union had its roots as a company-sponsored association, but by 1944 was the most militant local union in the Washington area and one of the fiercest telephone operators’ union in the country.
The union staged as many as 200 mini-strikes—most only an hour or two long and were often sympathy strikes in support of other local unions across the country, usually winning victories because of Washington, D.C.’s location as a strategic communications center.
Their leader Mary Gannon was the first woman to lead a sizable and influential District of Columbia union.
The 3,000-plus member overwhelmingly female operators union was also a forceful advocate of equal pay for women and of a strong national organization to take on the monopoly Bell system. It was a powerful voice for women within the larger union at a time when union leadership was a near exclusive men’s club.
Beginnings
C&P Telephone Co. operators worked side by side connecting calls from one line to another.
In an era with no mobile phones, e-mail, messaging or social media, the telephone reigned supreme for one-to-one communications.
Operators worked at rows of switchboar
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By Craig Simpson
1,400 members of a predominantly African American union in Jim Crow Washington, D.C. take on both a company intent on union busting and the Taft Hartley Act in a 78-day strike in the frigid winter of 1948 that included battles on the picket line, between the AFL and the CIO, and between President Harry Truman and Congress.
A mass picket outside the Federal Works Administration during the 1948 cafeteria strike.
Two cold winds swept into Washington, DC in the winter of 1947-48: a brutally cold season and the onset of the Cold War. For the cafeteria workers in government buildings in the District of Columbia neither development was welcome.
The contract between United Cafeteria and Restaurant Workers Local 471, the largest of one of the few predominantly African American unions, and Government Services, Inc. (GSI), the dominant private provider of cafeteria services to federal buildings, was set to expire at midnight on December 31, 1947.
The recently enacted anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act required all union officers to sign affidavits that they were not communists if their unions were to utilize provisions of the National Labor Relations Act.
GSI staked out a position that unless the Local 471 officers and those of the parent United Public Workers o
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Interview with Greg Iles
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