or the International Brotherhood of Vacuum Tube Manufacturers and Pager Repairmen is a storied workers union that was founded in St. Catharines in 1910, and has stayed confined to the city ever since.
named the International Brotherhood of Vacuum Tube Manufacturers (I.B.V.T.M.), the proliferation of transistors in the 1960s and the relocation of manufacturing jobs overseas in subsequent decades led to a membership crisis for the I.B.V.T.M. in the early 1980s. To combat this, the I.B.V.T.M. extended its membership to the booming Pager Repairmen workforce, and the I.B.V.T.M.P.R. was born.
new millennium, the I.B.V.T.M.P.R. was faced with more membership issues, but the small but dedicated hobbyist market for vacuum tubes has kept the union afloat.
Despite the fact that no members currently work on repairing pagers, the union has opted to keep the name to honour their history.
The year was 1993, and despite continued growth in the pager repair market, membership in the I.B.V.T.M.P.R. had stagnated. Hoping to expand outside of St. Catharines and strengthen the union, the I.B.V.T.M.P.R. organized Union Drive ’93 – offering resources and guidance to vacuum tube manufacturers and pager repair-people seeking to unionize. While Union Drive ’93 was a success – membership in the I.B.V.T.M.P.R. grew by 5% – the union remained fully contained within St. Catharines after promising developments in Grimsby fell apart at the eleventh hour.
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