1919
During the First World War organized labor in the United States overwhelmingly supported the American war effort, the exceptions being the IWW and other socialist radical groups. The AFL membership reached 2.4 million during 1918, and organized labor worked hand in hand with government entities and employer management to keep production levels high. When the war ended, labor found the time of relative workplace peace to be short lived. Despite the combat being over, the Treaty of Paris was as yet unsigned, and temporary war measures and restrictions remained in effect.
One such measure was the Lever Act, a wartime restriction against hindering the movement of any necessity. When the war had been on the United Mine Workers had agreed to wage hikes which were temporary, as a war measure. With the war over they wanted them made permanent and 400,000 workers struck against the coal companies. The government invoked the Lever Act. The leader of the UMW, John L. Lewis, withdrew the call for the strike, but many locals ignored him and remained out. Coal was at the time the overwhelmingly most important fuel in the nation, and demands for government action were loud and fervent. After five weeks, the workers agreed to a 14% wage increase over pre-war levels.
As difficult as it is to believe today, the ability to directly dial any telephone number was nearly non-existent in 1919. Phone calls went through central switchboards, from which they were routed through other switchboards, until they were connected to the desired party. The switchboards were overwhelming operated by women. Telephone operators, a critical link in the communications chain, were poorly paid, their wages less than a third of those of women dressmakers, or seamstresses, or others in manufacturing jobs. In 1919 the Boston Telephone Operators asked for an increase in wages, and when New England Telephone refused, they went on strike.
Boston became isolated from the rest of the country, and in most cases from its own neighborhoods. In response New England Telephone hired strikebreakers, many of them from Boston’s numerous colleges and universities. When they were confronted by supporters of the women on the picket lines, many of them husbands, boyfriends, or brothers of the women, they for the most part turned back. New England Telephone relented, and the women, their wage demands acceded to, returned to their duties on the switchboards. The success led to an increase in the unionization of telephone company employees nationwide.
Although there was a brief downturn following the war, the Roaring Twenties were soon underway, and union expansion in the United States ebbed. Throughout the 1920s prices of consumer goods remained relatively stable, unemployment remained relatively low, and businesses expanded, particularly in the automotive industry. Nonetheless there were some major events affecting organized labor in the United States during the decade, including the use of contracts through which employees agreed not to join a union under pain of being terminated, and hostility by the courts to unions in general. There was also the Great Railroad Strike of 1922.