Telephone Operators Sweating at the Switchboard — 1951
by Paula Bosse
by Paula Bosse
The summer of 1951 in Texas was brutally hot. One heat-related incident that August made national headlines: more than 1,500 Southwestern Bell telephone operators (and supportive coworkers) who were working in unairconditioned conditions (!!) at the Haskell Exchange on Bryan and at the Akard Street headquarters downtown staged what news reports called a “wildcat walkout” and refused to continue working in the sweltering buildings. Management’s attempt to cool things down with electric fans blowing over buckets of ice had not worked. Operators returned the next day, having made their point, hopefully to the imminent installation of air-conditioned switchboard rooms.
The caption for the photo above:
Dallas, Tex. Aug. 10 [1951] — BEATING THE HEAT — Both ice and fans are brought into play by telephone operators at an exchange here today as the city continued to swelter under 100-degree or over temperatures. The thermometer reached a high of 102-degrees to run the consecutive days of 100-degree readings to ten. It is the longest period of such reading since 1925 when a record 11 straight days was set. High mark for the present heat wave was 107 on August 6.
Three days later, the sweat hit the fan, and the women walked out.
St. Joseph [MO] News Press, Aug. 14, 1951 (click to read)
Let’s hope your work conditions are a bit better this summer!
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Sources & Notes
Wire service photograph from the Southern Labor Archives of the Georgia State University Library Special Collections.
See ads from 1911 and 1925 encouraging women to become telephone operators in the Flashback Dallas post “Work and Play in Telephone Land,” here.
Click photo for larger image.
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Copyright © 2014 Paula Bosse. All Rights Reserved.
Flashback : Dallas 
[…] See an earlier, related post — “Telephone Operators Sweating at the Switchboard — 1951” — here. […]
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[…] “Telephone Operators Sweating At the Switchboard — 1951,” here […]
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[…] Imagine working in an un-air-conditioned building when it had been over 100 degrees outside for a couple of weeks straight. You and your coworkers would be mighty peeved. And possibly unconscious. Southwestern Bell’s idea to combat this sweltering problem was to use electric fans and buckets of ice in hopes that their employees didn’t faint on the job. Read how Dallas telephone operators reacted to this “solution” in the Flashback Dallas post “Telephone Operators Sweating at the Switchboard — 1951.” […]
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Yes, lived down here in 1950-1952 when it was so hot. Used evaporative coolers. The heat combined with terrible schools drove my parents north. When you look back on record heat most records pre-1980 and 2011 were set back then. Drought led to the building of the dams and reservoirs.
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During that summer Roland Miranda, my mentor in architecture, was working in the un air conditioned Wilson Building. The people in the drafting room would have to wrap their forearms in paper towels. The sweat would make the India ink run and the pencil work smear. Mr. Miranda said that conditions made it almost impossible to turn out a good set of plans. I tried to keep this in mind as I toiled away in a nice cool drafting room.
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Wow!
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We had air conditioning in KC, MO. In 1959 as I was one of them. We were the toughest also. We worked mandatory 12 days in a row, 24\7 hours to be filled. Discipline and productivity were the rules. I loved it, we were the best as those ladies in TX. proved. We were the first contact the customers had. We also had great Union Representation from Communication Workers of America.
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It’s my understanding that my mother made one of the first recordings for Southwest Bell
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Wow!
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