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Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel

Swiss trade union

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 4, 2024
Entity authorityQ104880113 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel (German: Verband Schweizerischer Post-, Telephon- und Telegraphenangestellter, French: Fédération suisse des employés des postes, téléphones et télégraphes, PTT-Union) was a trade union representing communication workers in Switzerland.

The union was founded on 5 April 1891 in Zurich, as the Union of Federal Post, Telegraph and Customs Clerks. The Union of Swiss Customs Clerks split away in 1919, and it renamed itself as the Union of Swiss Post and Telegraph Employees. In 1928, affiliated to the Swiss Trade Union Federation, and it also absorbed the Union of Federal Telephone and Telegraph Workers.

By 1954, the union had adopted its final name, and had 16,191 members, the lower-paid, uniformed employees of the communications sector. By 1997, its membership had grown to 28,360. The following year, it merged with the Union of Swiss Postal Employees, the Union of Swiss Telegraph and Telephone Supervisors, the Association of Swiss Air Traffic Control Personnel, the Post Office Keepers' Association and the postal section of the Staff Association of the Federal Administration, to form the Union of Communication.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel” is swiss trade union. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Union, Swiss and Postal, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1891, 1919, 1928, 1954—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Union, Swiss and Postal is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “swiss trade union” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 4, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q104880113. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1891, 1919, 1928 and 1954.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel primary sources, Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel archive and Union research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Union of Swiss Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Personnel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.