Interurban Sub-Station Workers Strike Over Pay and Rest
After management cut their days off and refused to increase wages, substation workers on the Tacoma-Seattle line walked off the job, citing hazardous working conditions and isolation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
An effort on the part of the management of the Interurban railway to get two extra days of work each month out of the dynamo men without a corresponding increase of pay resulted in a strike, which took effect yesterday. The dynamo men are in charge of the sub-stations between here and Seattle and are paid $75 a month. Heretofore they have been getting four days off every month, but an order recently issued cut the number of days down to two. Some time ago the management gave the employees at the Tacoma station a raise in salary of $10 a month, with two 12-hour shifts and three days off a month. This took away the swing man from the other end of the division, made that end short a man and compelled a cutting down in the number of days allowed each during the month. The other men refused to stand for the change and a petition was drawn up by H. N. Hackaday to that effect and sent to E. Solimus, superintendent of power. The men gave the company 24 hours' time to cancel the new order. With the exception of a man named Weeks, every dynamo man on the line signed the petition, and when their demands were refused they quit work. The work of the dynamo men at the sub-stations is exceedingly trying. They work in 12-hour shifts and are alone most of the time. They handle dangerous machinery and if an accident should happen they are so far away that help is out of the question.
“They work in 12-hour shifts and are alone most of the time. They handle dangerous machinery and if an accident should happen they are so far away that help is out of the question.”
This dispute over worker autonomy and the 'swing' shifts required to keep the regional transit grid humming mirrors modern debates about labor exploitation in the gig economy. The dangerous, isolated work of these early electrical grid operators foreshadows the high-stakes, behind-the-scenes labor that keeps modern infrastructure reliable.
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