Another large Boston electrical contractor came into its own in the 1930s. The St. George family ran the M. B. Foster Electric Company. The superintendent of employment was a 6’4" gruff man named Louie Klein and his assistant Gerry Langelier devised a new concept of a workforce.

They had big pipe men who worked on 3", 4", 5" and 6" conduit installation in powerhouses. Concrete men like Paddy Sullivan who specialized in conduit installation in concrete, and wiremen who pulled in feeders through a system of boxes and pulling wheels. They could pull wire through four ninety-degree angles right back to where the cables were set on jacks with shieves and pulleys or blocks and falls.

And finally connection men who would install switches and receptacles and do the intricate control work. M.B. Foster and Mass Electric employed 600 members year round, year in and year out, and members who stayed in their employ would become shoppies and seldom felt the pinch of unemployment, but the dues they paid carried the local union Health & Welfare and International per capita for many lean years.

Big pipe Freddie Gustafsen, Paddy Sullivan, and Jack Cronin labored many years in these different vineyards for the same employers and seldom worked together.

One story related to Louie Klein, a story which traveled all over Local 103 for many years, was when he happened on three telephone company employees, and thinking them to be electricians with electricians’ tools and lounging around on chairs. He asked how many hours they had for that week and pulled a bankroll out of his pocket and fired them, giving each pay up to the last hour. The three telephone employees willingly took the money and left. (It could well have happened in a 600 men shop).