Financial History Issue 129 (Spring 2019) | Page 10
THE TICKER CONNEC TING TO COLLEC TIONS
The Battle of Wall Street
By Sarah Poole, Collections Manager
On March 29, 1948, 1,100 union-
ized employees of the New York Stock
Exchange (NYSE) and the New York
Curb Exchange (later the American Stock
Exchange), joined in solidarity by 500
members of the Seafarers Union, walked
out of their jobs. This marked the begin-
ning of the first and only multi-day strike
in the histories of both exchanges.
The United Financial Employees Union
(UFE) was founded by Merritt David
Keefe in 1941. Keefe had started working
on Wall Street in 1928 as a pageboy for
$15 per week. After 13 years, his wages
had only risen to $28 per week, and Keefe
decided that his best chance for improve-
ment would be through the negotiating
power of a union. The UFE managed to
win a contract with the New York Stock
Exchange and organize the New York
Curb Exchange before the outbreak of
World War II interrupted their efforts.
After the war, Keefe and the UFE went
back to work with the ultimate goal of
organizing the employees of all of the
Wall Street exchanges, brokerage houses
and banks. Wall Street’s first (and only)
union drive began in August 1946. On
August 14, 700 NYSE employees (98%
of the workers) staged a two-hour walk
out to show support for the drive in an
unexpected display of strength from the
union. The UFE grew to 5,000 and held
majority membership at the NYSE, New
York Curb Exchange, New York Cotton
Exchange and Wall Street’s five largest
brokerage houses.
In March 1947, the UFE organized a
day-long strike at the Cotton Exchange,
raising tensions. However, the union’s
biggest struggle was with the brokerage
houses, who could simply reroute their
trades through other firms and render an
employee strike ineffective. This led to the
idea of attempting to shut down trading at
the source—the NYSE. Tensions rapidly
Picketers block the 11 Wall Street entrance of the New York Stock Exchange
during the “Battle of Wall Street,” March 30, 1948.
rose between the union and the exchange,
but with intervention from the Mayor’s
office, arbitration began in April. Negotia-
tions did not progress for nearly a year.
The NYSE strike began on March 29,
1948, and the first day of protesting was
peaceful. Shortly before 9:00 am on March
30, police approached picketers near the
main entrance of the exchange and asked
them to move due to a court order that
limited picketing in that area. Claire John-
son, a 19-year-old secretary, refused and
was arrested. Her arrest sparked outrage,
and picketers swarmed the police. The
violent scuffle lasted only 35 minutes, but
resulted in 12 picketer injuries (including
two hospitalizations), two police injuries
8 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Spring 2019 | www.MoAF.org
(one of which was hit by another officer
who mistook him for a picketer) and 45
arrests. The fight became known as the
“Battle of Wall Street.”
The New York Stock Exchange refused
to budge from its pre-strike offer of a $3–5
raise and would not return to arbitration.
The union did not see success with any of
the other exchanges, either. The exchanges
had far greater financial resources than
the UFE and chose to wait out the strike,
which officially ended on April 30, 1948.
The NYSE workers ultimately accepted
the terms of the pre-strike offer, but 100
workers’ positions were eliminated during
the strike. The strike had failed, and Wall
Street would not see another.