Telephone Workers on Strike from Bell System Photo Archive Showing Picketing, Scuffles with Police, and Labor Voting, November 1950

Bell System Communications Workers of America

Photograph

[Labor][Union Orgazning] Bell System telephone workers on strike in Philadelphia press photo archive, November 1950, recording the Communications Workers of America's fight for better wages and working conditions in the postwar wave of American labor conflict that followed WWII wage controls. Captions identify the strike as part of a national stoppage, with one Washington image stating that “7,000 members of the CWA CIO Communications Workers of America walked off their jobs at 6 A.M. as a nation wide telephone strike got underway today,” while the Philadelphia images show the local mechanics of that conflict at exchange entrances, on sidewalks, and in police custody. The group makes the system visible at street level: organized picketing, strikebreaking protection, arrest processing, and the use of municipal police power to keep telephone exchanges operating during a politically sensitive communications stoppage.

Photo archive of 7 silver gelatin press photographs, ranging from 7 x 9 to 7 x 7inches, Philadelphia and Washington D.C., November 1950. All retain typed press captions printed on or attached to the image identifying Bell Telephone exchanges and specific episodes of confrontation. One caption reads, “One of the Telephone strikers being removed form the picket line by a policeman,” while another states that “some 150 strikers tried to prevent workers from going through the line,” and a third describes “striking telephone equipment and installation workers scuffling with police for nearly 30 minutes.” The pictures themselves are tightly focused on action: uniformed policemen gripping picketers by the arms and collars, one officer pulling a striker backward across the pavement, another forcing a man down while officers crowd around him, and groups of detained workers being escorted back from a police station after fingerprinting. The Washington photograph broadens the sequence beyond arrest scenes, showing suited picketers outside the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company building with placards reading “WE MUST STRIKE WE ARE NOT HAPPY” and “OUR WAGES WILL NOT SUPPORT A HOME AND FAMILY,” making wage grievance and public messaging part of the same visual record.

American labor activism between the 1940s and 1950 reshaped transportation, steel, auto, mining, and communications industries. Telephone workers entered that national movement as unions pressed to convert wartime labor gains into durable postwar bargaining power. These photographs document the realities of mass strikes at the street level: pickets, replacement or continuing workers being moved through police-cleared entrances, men arrested following scuffles, and news agencies rapidly distributing images of labor conflict to national audiences. Light to moderate surface wear, scattered creasing, some staining and chipping to margins not affecting images. Overall very good condition. A press record of postwar American labor conflict in the communications industry.

Item #23350

Price: $680.00