Links in the Chain: Stories from Western Pennsylvania’s Locomotive Manufacturing Workers

In 2023-24, I traveled to Western Pennsylvania to document the stories of the region’s railroad manufacturing workers. My work focused on the history of United Electrical Workers (UE) Local 610, whose members worked at Wabtec, in Wilmerding, Pennsylvania, an industrial suburb of Pittsburgh.

In addition to conducting several biographical interviews with workers employed between the late 1960s and 2024, I recorded a group interview with veterans of a dramatic strike in 1981-82, which took place on the heels of the PATCO strike, and which represented a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the anti-concessionary battles of the 1980s.

This work was funded by an Archie Green fellowship from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

(PHOTO: Machinist and historian Charles McCollester in his workshop, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2024.)