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IBEW1245

The power is in our hands

PAY YOUR DUES ONLINE
PART-1

Chapter 14: Contest of Wills

Electric Meter Testers and Arc Lamp Repairers in Oakland in 1910. Pacific Gas & Electric

Electric Meter Testers and Arc Lamp Repairers in Oakland in 1910. Pacific Gas & Electric

On the second day of the strike, strikers rallied outside PG&E headquarters in San Francisco. Shortly afterward, all the lights there mysteriously blew out. Service on the city’s Geary Street Railway was interrupted by outages for the second day in a row. Street car service was also affected in Sacramento and San Jose.

To force PG&E to the bargaining table, the Light and Power Council needed to thoroughly disrupt service. Steam plants and substations were picketed in San Francisco, and there were walkouts at Dixon, Folsom, Newcastle, Alta, Deer Creek and Grass Valley. PG&E rushed blankets, cots and cooking utensils to the student strikebreakers it had recruited from Stanford and Berkeley so that they could stay in the plants around the clock. Britton succeeded in getting police to patrol its major facilities in San Francisco. PG&E also brought in private detectives and “special officers.”

The picket lines became a contest of wills, with strikers urging fellow workers to join the picket line and managers urging them to cross it and come to work.

From the beginning there were cracks in the workers’ unity. San Francisco Gas Workers did not join the strike. Even more troubling, P.H. McCarthy, the president of the Building Trades Council, wouldn’t allow any Building Trades union to participate in the strike, including PG&E’s Steam Engineers. The reason was simple. The strike was organized by leaders of the Reid faction of the IBEW. McCarthy supported the McNulty faction.

From the beginning, then, the PG&E strike contained the seeds of its own destruction.

Next: Chapter 15

  • Introduction to the History of IBEW Local 1245
    • Skip to Part II
    • Skip to Part III
  • Chapter 1: Because Somebody Needed Their Help
  • Chapter 2: Gas Workers Organize
  • Chapter 3: The Earthquake
  • Chapter 4: The United Railroads Strike of 1906
  • Chapter 5: The Industrial Union Prophet
  • Chapter 6: The Street Carmen and the Slave Owner’s Son
  • Chapter 7: Bloody Tuesday
  • Chapter 8: Linemen Refuse to Back Down
  • Chapter 9: The “Hello Girls” Make a Stand
  • Chapter 10: The Strike Against Naphtaly
  • Chapter 11: The Split
  • Chapter 12: The Reid IBEW in the West
  • Chapter 13: PG&E Strike – An Exuberant Spectacle
  • Chapter 14: Contest of Wills
  • Chapter 15: No Neutral Position
  • Chapter 16: Brotherhood and Betrayal
  • Chapter 17: Thugs and Gunmen
  • Chapter 18: Dynamiters and Snitches
  • Chapter 19: Appetite for Direct Action
  • Chapter 20: Coup de Grâce
  • Chapter 21: The 1917 Telephone Strike
  • Chapter 22: The Big Frame-Up
  • Chapter 23: The 1919 Telephone Strike
  • Chapter 24: The American Plan
  • Quick Link: Organizing Sacramento Municipal Utility District
  • Quick Link: Organizing Sierra Pacific Power
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