Visitors to Boston have the opportunity to see and experience much of the United States' history, from the Founding Fathers to Amelia Earhart to the Kennedys. Among the monuments to these famed trailblazers is a tribute to IBEW sister Julia O'Connor, whose work as a labor organizer earned her a spot on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail.

O'Connor was born in Woburn, Mass., in 1890. She started working as a telephone operator right out of high school, and by 1912 was a member of IBEW Local 1A, a "sublocal" of Boston Local 104. Her labor activism extended to her work with the Boston office of the National Women's Trade Union League, part of the American Federation of Labor, a precursor to today's AFL-CIO.

The league was dedicated to organizing women workers throughout the trades. O'Connor served on the executive board and was president from 1915 to 1918, after which she took the helm as president of Local 1A.

As early as 1897, Mary Honzik of Cleveland had formed an IBEW local comprising telephone operators, but employee turnover and intense anti-union pressure caused the local to fold. Boston Local 1A, through the tireless efforts of O'Connor and IBEW organizer Peter F. Lenihan, had a longer run and set off the IBEW to organize not just linemen and technicians, but also the women who operated a revolutionary technology.

Some of O'Connor's early wins for telephone operators included the establishment of a collective bargaining agreement with the New England Telephone Co., an eight-hour workday, abolition of the double shift and paid vacations. But she is perhaps best known for leading a strike of 8,000 fellow operators — all women — in 1919.

The spark that started the strike was in 1918, when the U.S. entered World War I and the government took control of the telephone and telegraph industries, placing them under the management of Postmaster General Albert Burleson.

A commission was set up to handle labor relations and was headed by William S. Ryan, an official from the Post Office. The commission consisted of two members from the telephone industry; two from the government; and one labor representative, Julia O'Connor. She resigned after a few months in early 1919, charging that the commission had demonstrated a hostile attitude toward the telephone and telegraph workers.

By April 1919, conditions were ripe for a major labor disruption. As the Boston Women's Heritage Trail notes, switchboard operators at the time were mostly young, single Irish American women and were expected to work at breakneck speed, often on double shifts. They were even punished with detention "as if they were still in high school," according to the trail's website.

After the Ryan Commission failed to act on demands for wage adjustments, O'Connor led her operator sisters on a five-day strike that paralyzed telephone service throughout New England. With help from the women's trade union league, O'Connor and her team successfully negotiated changes that included a weekly raise of $3 to $4 (about $55-$73 in today's dollars) and recognition of the right to bargain collectively.

After this successful action, the IBEW created the Telephone Operators Department in September 1919 at the 15th Convention in New Orleans. O'Connor was appointed president, a position she held until 1939, when she left to work as an organizer for the AFL.

Achieving an eight-hour day, a fair pay scale and an equitable grievance system were priorities of the telephone operators nationwide. Responding to union pressure, the telephone companies were one of the first businesses in the U.S. to bring regular hours down to eight and move toward establishing grievance review boards and standard pay scales, breakthroughs that helped unions in other industries make progress on the same issues.

The legacy of O'Connor and her pioneering sisters lives on. The telephone operator's union was spoken of often in the family of Second District International Vice President Mike Monahan, as his grandmother and aunt both worked for New England Telephone as operators.

"IBEW Local 1A was a force to be reckoned with in 1919. Not all strikes at that time were as fortunate," Monahan said. "Henry Miller, Mother Jones and Julia O'Connor were all cut from the same cloth."