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| Women 'L' Agents Win
Pay Fight
Loop Ticket Sellers Get Same For Ten Hours as They Did for Twelve. Find Men "Knock Down." Trial Proves Feminine Toilers More Honest, and They'll Not Lose Jobs. Source: Chicago Daily Tribune, 9 October 1911, pg. 9. Women ticket sellers employed by the Chicago elevated railroads have won their fight against a wage reduction because of the ten hour law. Feminine agents on the loop now get the same pay for ten hours' work that they did for twelve hours before the law became effective. Those on the lines receive eleven hours' pay for ten hours' work. Officials of the union announced yesterday at a meeting of the Women's Trade Union league that the agreement had been reached with the company late Saturday night. It expires next June. Three hundred women are involved. Say Men Agents "Knock Down." When the new law went into effect July 1 the managers of the roads announced the pay of the women would be reduced in proportion to the number of hours they worked. They also said that eventually all the women would be discharged. The agents insisted they would not submit to the reduction. Since then the union officials and the railway managers have held conferences almost daily. The managers argued that most of the women were "old maids or widows," and that they could not earn as much money at any other work, even after the reduction. The entire extra list of women agents was discharged, besides a number of regular employees. Men were put in their places. Most of them proved unsatisfactory, the union officials assert, and after two months' trial the companies decided they must retain the women. Officials say they found the women honest, with hardly an exception, while some of the new men agents "knocked down" as mush as $30 a day. South Side Employees Organize. Recently the 600 employees of the South Side Elevated road unionized. The agreement includes the agents of this road. Previous to the organization the South Side ticket agents made no open protest against the reduction. Miss Mary McDowell, vice president of the Women's Trade Union league and head of the University of Chicago settlement, told of the recent labor uprisings in England, where she was when they took place. She said public sentiment was with the strikers. |
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