The Long Distance Feeling: A History of the Telecommunications Workers Union

...In this thesis we examine the history of the telephone workers, from their earliest organizing efforts to their public campaigns of today. In restricting the restructuring of their work, telephone workers have often been in the leadership successfully applying and developing militant labour tactics, from the first successful "hello girls" strike of 1902 to the dramatic provincial-wide seizing of exchanges by telephone workers in 1981. The history of the Telecommunications Workers Union provides a valuable case study of workers' efforts to build and maintain their union in [the] face of massive and continual technological change.