Order of Railroad Telegraphers
This practice greatly increased the efficiency of single-track railroads by enabling two trains traveling in opposite directions to use the track at the same time.
[4]: 6 In the early 1890s, members began to demand that the union take a more assertive role in negotiating wages and working conditions with the railroads.
During the relatively prosperous years of 1890–92, the railroads were inclined to recognize the union and negotiate agreements with the ORT to guarantee wages and working hours.
[4]: 8–13 The ORT organized its membership into a set of system divisions in the late 1890s, which improved communications and coordination of activities.
Ola Delight Smith joined the ORT in Gainesville, Georgia, in 1906, and began a long career as a labor organizer and journalist.
In 1907, a bill was introduced in Congress to limit the maximum number of hours that railroad employees had to work in a twenty-four-hour period, known as the La Follette Hours of Service Act, after its chief sponsor, Senator Robert La Follette Sr. of Wisconsin.
This bill was offered as an amendment to the La Follette bill in the Senate; however, members of the committee to which it was referred bowed to pressure from the railroads and attempted to increase the maximum number of working hours allowed in a single day to twelve hours, a move which enraged ORT members.
They immediately began using the telegraph to bombard their congressional representatives with messages of protest, which resulted in the original nine-hour limit being reinstated.
The La Follette Hours of Service Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Theodore Roosevelt on March 4, 1907.
ORT Grand Chief Perham appeared before the Board to request a 40 percent increase in pay, an eight-hour day, and relief from handling government mail by railroad telegraphers.
[13] When the contracts that had been negotiated while under federal control expired the following year, the ORT had to re-negotiate agreements with the individual railroads.
Some railroads, including the Santa Fe, the Louisville and Nashville, and the Great Northern, maintained essentially the same agreements with the ORT that they had established during the years of government control.
A dispute with the Atlantic Coast Line led to a strike in 1925 that ended with the railroad making concessions to the union and signing a new agreement.
Membership in the ORT began to decline after the stock market crash of 1929, due not only to economic conditions but also to the increasing use of centralized traffic control, which no longer required the presence of a telegrapher in each station.
As a result of the declining membership and the loss of revenue from dues, the ORT was forced to suspend payment of pensions to retired members through the mutual benefit program.
The ORT members who served as express agents as well as telegraphers for the railroad were offered individual pay adjustments on short notice, which the ORT claimed was a violation of the Railway Labor Act of 1926, which required 30 days' notice of any pay adjustment.
Additionally, the ORT charged that the individual pay adjustments were in violation of a collective bargaining agreement that had been signed with Railway Express in 1917.
However, the railroad was required to give 90 days' notice to terminated employees, and to pay laid-off telegraphers 60 percent of their annual salary for as much as five years.
