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IBEW1245

The power is in our hands

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PART-1

Chapter 16: Brotherhood and Betrayal

PG&E found a few workers willing to cross the picket lines, presumably including the group shown here on June 7, 1913—one month into the strike. Pacific Gas & Electric

PG&E found a few workers willing to cross the picket lines, presumably including the group shown here on June 7, 1913—one month into the strike. Pacific Gas & Electric

In a breathtaking act of betrayal two weeks into the strike, the McNulty faction of the IBEW secretly signed labor agreements with PG&E, effectively subverting the Light and Power Council strike. PG&E General Manager John Britton signed these secret agreements even as he was in talks with the strikers. That would be “bad faith bargaining” under today’s labor laws, but in 1913 it was pure genius. Striking linemen would be reluctant to come back to the company as out-and-out scabs but some might be willing to return to work as members of this newly-created Local 498.

Andrew J. Gallagher, president of the San Francisco Labor Council, denounced PG&E and called on the utility to “break this dishonest bargain.” Until then, Gallagher warned, there would be “a great many more lights out in the future.”

The Steam Engineers and the San Francisco Gas Workers came under heavy pressure from the Labor Council to join the strike. But before a strike vote could be held, the American Federation of Labor ordered the San Francisco Gas Workers to not hold the vote. Similarly, the Steam Engineers were ordered by their International union not to strike. P. H. McCarthy’s Building Trades Council urged members of the Reid IBEW to abandon the strike and to sign up with the new McNulty IBEW Local 498.

At a mass meeting on June 15 strike leaders denounced McCarthy and the “scabbed agreements” with PG&E, which had greatly reduced the strikers’ leverage. At the same time, some strike supporters began looking for new forms of leverage.

Next: Chapter 17

 

  • 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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