Background
Michael J. Boyle was born on June 11, 1879 in Woodland, Minnesota. He was the son of Michael Boyle, a farmer, and Ann Kelly.
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Michael Boyle
Edit ProfileEducation
Boyle was educated in parochial schools.
Career
At the age of sixteen, Boyle went to work as a lineman for various utility companies in Minnesota, Ohio, and Michigan before becoming an electrician for the Chicago Tunnel Company. A member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, in 1904, he transferred his card to Local 134, which had jurisdiction over "inside" electrical work in Chicago.
In 1906, after a brief stint as a statistician, Boyle became the union's business agent, a job he held intermittently until 1919 when he took the post of business manager and thereby formalized the position of personal dominance he had long since achieved over Local 134.
At the time that Boyle embarked on his trade-union career, labor relations in Chicago construction were in flux. The famous lockout of 1900 had broken the stranglehold of the building trades, but thereafter the contractors' unity deteriorated, and the unions revived. Earlier abuses crept back in, and the vulnerability of individual contractors encouraged business agents to demand "strike insurance. "
The monopolistic relationship between unions and contractors' associations offered other opportunities for quick profit. In 1909, Boyle, along with Congressman Martin B. ("Skinny") Madden, was indicted for extortion but not convicted. In 1914, indictments were returned against a number of electrical contractors, members of the Chicago Switchboard Manufacturers' Association, and officers of Local 134 for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
Boyle was charged with having agreed, in exchange for the closed shop, to exclude from the Chicago market switchboard equipment not produced by members of the Association. Testimony revealed, among other things, Boyle's financial interest in one of the firms and his acceptance of payments to permit the installation of non-Association switchboards.
In 1917, he was fined $5, 000 and sentenced to a year in jail. Boyle served four months in 1919-1920 before President Wilson commuted his sentence. In 1923, following his refusal to testify before a grand jury regarding allegations of jury-tampering in the acquittal of Illinois governor Len Small on charges of misappropriating public funds, Boyle received six months for contempt of court. His friend Governor Small commuted his sentence after he had served less than two months.
Boyle early developed a colorful reputation as "Umbrella Mike. " It was said that his ever-present umbrella served as a convenient receptacle for contractors' payoffs while he held court at his unofficial headquarters at Johnson's saloon.
The unemployment insurance plan he introduced served them well in the early years of the Great Depression. And Local 134, strongly organized and effectively administered, came through those disastrous years for Chicago construction better than most of the building trades.
The loyalty that Boyle elicited from his labor constituency lasted throughout his life. Boyle became, moreover, a force for stabilizing the labor relations of Chicago construction. As both sides organized themselves into industrywide groupings and achieved a rough balance of power after 1911, the conditions emerged for ending the chaos and strife of earlier years.
The Uniform Form of Agreement, adopted in 1915, invoked a set of basic principles on all participating employer associations and trade unions and put into effect a system of mediation and arbitration. Although Boyle broke away under wartime inflationary pressures to secure a special wage increase in July 1917 in violation of the union contract, he was thereafter an ardent supporter of the Uniform Agreement.
When he died in Miami, Florida, after a period of semi-retirement, he was widely and sincerely mourned within the union. But the Chicago Tribune barely noted his passing, which perhaps said something about the respectable turn Boyle's career had taken in later years.
Achievements
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Boyle's career epitomized, for better or worse, major tendencies of American business unionism. In 1921, he was instrumental in saving the Uniform Agreement after Judge Kennesaw M. Landis handed down an arbitration award bitterly disliked by the building trades. It was, of course, characteristic of Boyle that he had somehow managed to secure favorable treatment for the electricians in the award. In his later years, Boyle played an increasing role in the affairs of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. A member of the executive board since 1914, Boyle in 1930, became vice president for the sixth district, which covered the upper Midwest. Under the New Deal, he was notably successful at bringing electrical and utility workers into the IBEW and fending off the CIO. His highly organized district, encompassing 25 percent of all the IBEW membership, gave him a powerful voice in the national union, as was evident in 1947, when his support threw a contested election for the IBEW presidency to Daniel Tracy over Edward J. Brown, the incumbent president.
Views
In his first decade of union service, Boyle amassed a considerable fortune, although how much derived from his union position, and how much from astute business and real-estate dealings, never became clear.
Nor did he hesitate to exploit his union's strategic position in the city's power and rapid transit systems for collective-bargaining purposes. Although the Chicago Tribune, a bitter critic, accused him of "a reckless disregard of the public", only twice did he actually make good his threat to close down public services.
Quotations: When asked to explain how he had acquired so much money on a business agent's salary, Boyle remarked laconically, "It was with great thrift. "
Personality
The acumen that advanced his own fortunes was applied no less assiduously on behalf of the men he represented. A resourceful and tenacious negotiator, he compiled a remarkable record of gains for the Chicago electrical workers.
Connections
In 1902, Michael Boyle married Minnie Alice Oberlin. They had three daughters. In 1936, four years after his wife's death, Boyle married Helen Kane.
References
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Born
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Died
May 17, 1958 (aged 78) -
Nationality
American