International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Local no. 3 (New York, N.Y.)

Local 3's origins date back to 1887 when electricians in New York City building trades organized the Electrical Mechanical Wiremen's Union of the Knights of Labor, Local Assembly 5468. This local affiliated with the AFL in the next decade but would not join the IBEW, which established three other locals. A conciliation was reached, however, and an IBEW charter was granted in February 1900.

During a time when workers risked being blackballed for union affiliation, Local 3 organized to protect the wages and working conditions of electricians. Contractors who bitterly opposed the union locked the electricians out of construction sites beginning in 1903. This lockout lasted 33 months with members enduring great personal hardships.

The principles of craft unionism have a long tradition in Local 3. Even today, the union assesses members who do not attend membership meetings. Members were expected to affix the union label to every piece of work they did on a construction site, risking stiff fines for negligence. In addition, they banded together to help union families in distress. Work was dangerous; accidents and even deaths were common. If a member died, his tools would be auctioned off at the membership meeting and the hat would be passed to collect money for the widow.

Construction workers in the 'teens and twenties could not count on working regularly. The seasonal nature of all the building trades as well as contractors' hardened antiunion attitudes made employment frequently undependable. Frequent strikes were a strain on the local. Nevertheless, Local 3 was deeply involved in solidarity efforts throughout the labor movement. Citywide as well as national appeals from AFL affiliates were always met with financial contributions. Along with the routine trade union business of organizing, trade protection, wages, and hours, speakers on political issues of the day, for example, women's suffrage, were on the membership meeting agendas. In 1928 IBEW Local 261, the Inside Fixture Workers merged with Local 3. In the late twenties and early thirties, Local 3 members laid the cable for residential telephone systems, installed sound in motion picture theaters, and wired the Empire State Building up to the antenna.

Great changes were taking place in the structure and direction of Local 3 in the 1930's. Dominant in this decade, as in the next four, was Harry Van Arsdale, Jr., who rose to leadership of the local on a tide of rank and file militancy. Himself the son of a Local 3 electrician, young Van Arsdale and the "Committee of 100", chaired by Jeremiah P. Sullivan saw that there were great opporunities for Local 3 to organize the electrical industry as an industry.

This was opposed by the officers who wanted to maintain AFL craft union structures and practices. Van Arsdale and the Committee challenged the officers at frequently rowdy meetings in an effort to convince the membership that the organization should be rebuilt and the various factions united. In 1933, Van Arsdale was elected Business Manager. He was elected President of the New York City Central Labor Council in 1959 and became Financial Secretary of Local 3 in 1969. These two offices he held until his death in 1986.

Local 3's membership in 1933 numbered 5,708. Van Arsdale's fiery speeches to the membership inspired vigorous recruitment drives among nonunion electricians. In 1934 Local 20 of the IBEW, the Cable Splicers, merged with Local 3. With the advent of the New Deal and the Wagner Act of 1935, trade unionism gained legitimacy. Van Arsdale set out to bring workers from the expanding electrical manufacturing industry into the local. Major compaigns were waged at switchboard, fixture, and wire and cable factories. It was the first time any craft local had gotten involved in vertical (or industrial) unionism, and it was a fully developed feature of Van Arsdale's organizing strategy before the founding of the CIO.

Although Local 3 activists met stiff resistance in their organizing campaigns the committment to organizing industrially was strong. By 1939 the union had grown to 30,000. The Leviton Manufacturing Company, which made wiring devices and employed 2,300 workers, most of them women, sustained a bitter 13 month strike, 1940-41. This struggle was settled by the NLRB. Concurrently in 1941 Local 3 waged and won another important strike with the Triangle Conduit and Cable Company.

Through shrewd negotiating and foresight, Van Arsdale was able to take advantage of yet another New Deal program--the Social Security Act of 1936. Employers of Local 3 workers were required contractually to contribute the percentage of wages (at that time 1%) that accrued to workers' social security accounts. Today that percentage has risen to 7.15%, but in most Local 3 agreements it is still the contractors' responsibility. And in 1941, the construction industry's first employer-paid pension plan was written into Local 3 contracts.

Although Local 3 workers were involved in building plants, wiring battleships, and various types of electrical manufacturing, the construction industry as a whole dwindled during World War II, with many electricians travelling to other cities to work. For critical defense work the union increased its work day from six hours (won in 1939) to eight, and throughout the industry adhered strictly to labor's no-strike pledge. There was a considerable increase in female members of the union, especially in the manufacturing shops. For men serving in the military, union dues were absorbed by the Local. Local 3's newspaper, the Electrical Union World, begun in 1940, ran frequent articles on the experiences of member servicemen overseas.

At war's end and especially during the 1947 recession, employment slackened; it was not until 1948 that the building trades began to see an economic upturn. In 1949, the newly established Taft-Hartley legislation challenged Local 3's election processes. "A" Charter members (the skilled trade electricians) each had one vote, but "B" Charter members (from manufacturing shops) did not. Following an investigation, Father William J. Kelley from the State Mediation Board conducted a proper "one-man, one-vote" election for the Local, which resulted in an overwhelming re-election of all the incumbents. In appreciation, Local 3 established a scholarship fund in his name for members' children.

The fifties saw major changes in workers' security plans. An annuity fund was established in 1954. But perhaps the most unique of Local 3's postwar projects was the development of the Electchester cooperative housing community in Flushing, Queens. It fulfilled two important needs: the development of more housing which was very scarce at the time, and the creation of more construction jobs. Financed primarily by members and by Local 3's benefit plans, ground was broken in 1949, after a consortium of government, industry, church and labor leaders worked out the purchase of land from Pomonok Golf and Country Club. Ironically, the President of the club had been the owner of the Triangle Conduit and Cable Company, Local 3's opponent, ten years earlier. Building on Electchester was interrupted in 1954-55 by limitations on materials brought about by the Korean War, but by 1956, the community was complete. Electchester is today the home of the Joint Industry Board and the headquarters of the union. It has 2,400 housing units and a shopping center; land for the playground and public school (PS 200) was donated by the union to the City.

In 1961 IBEW Local 664, Electricians and Electronics Technicians of the Brooklyn Navy Yard merged with Local 3. In 1962 construction electricians won the five hour day; this helped to stabilize work opportunities in an increasingly automated industry threatened with job loss. By the late 1960's the electrical manufacturing plants were leaving town. There were strikes and major job losses as companies, like General Instrument or Phelps Dodge, which had each employed a thousand or more IBEW workers went to other parts of the country or abroad for lower wages.

Nevertheless, in the seventies and eighties, Local 3 continues to be one of New York City's strongest unions. IBEW Local 1005, the Telephone Operators merged with Local 3 in 1976. Current membership numbers 34,000, with over 5,000 active retiree members and 18 social clubs to represent special interest and ethnic groups within the union.

From the description of Minutes [microform], 1901-1982. (New York University). WorldCat record id: 78313161