IBEW 98 100+ year History

chartered, as a corporation to purchase a property for the union. The EMA assessed each member of the local a small amount of money and purchased the property, which it then leased to the union. (The EMA still exists, and is presently the owner of the property at 1719 Spring Garden Street, which it leases to the union and the Apprenticeship Training Program.)

In the 1920’s there was no apprentice training program in Philadelphia. Apprentices learned the trade on the job. The only requirement for admittance to the union was that an applicant had to be 18 years of age. During this period it was customary in the electrical construction industry for an apprentice to spend four years gaining a working knowledge of the trade. Those apprentices who were interested in learning some theory to accompany the practical knowledge they were learning on the job, attended a trade school at night or took a correspondence course. Some Local 98 apprentices attended a vocational school, located next to the Academy of Music on Locust Street, to study sheet metal work, since no one taught electricity at the time. Throughout the 1920’s there was often more work for apprentices than for journeymen, since contractors preferred to hire apprentices and pay them lower wages. The local was willing to maintain a large pool of apprentices since they did not want to increase the number of journeymen at that time because they would be forced to compete for jobs. Because of these circumstances apprentices often had to wait for years to get a ticket from the local.

There was also a “helper” classification of workers in the local in the 1920’s. Helpers were allowed to work but they were never eligible for membership in Local 98. They were, in effect, given a temporary work permit by the union, but were never able to attain full status in the local. Despite the large number of apprentices and helpers in the union in these early years, it was relatively easy for an experienced electrician to become a member of the local.

“I arrived in the United States in July 1923, the day President Harding died. I was 21 years old. I had been an electrician in Scotland and when I came here I tried to become a member of the &