"DISCOVERY OF PLOT FOR WINNIPEG RIOTS AVERTS CAR STRIKE," Toronto Star. September 16, 1933. Page 17 & 19.
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Street Railway Workers Re- main at Posts When Warned Outbreak Planned
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THWART RADICALS
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Special to The Star
Winnipeg, Sept. 16. The reason why the walkout of Winnipeg Electric Co. employees was called off by the men at almost the 11th hour, can now be told. Information was that lawless elements, taking advantage of the dispute between the company and its citizen- employees, planned to start riots at midnight Friday when the company's men were scheduled to walk off the street cars and strikebreakers to take over.
The company employees wanted a peaceful strike and a boycott of the company by the use of free jitneys. but when information reached them. in convincing form that their striking would plunge the city into lawlessness, possibly bloodshed, with themselves and and their families Involved in the disaster, they drew back and consented to re-open negotiations.
The authorities were fully advised and well prepared for trouble. All police and military in Winnipeg would have been standing to last night. At the first violence offered to street cars the Riot Act was to be read by Mayor Webb and the crowd ordered to disperse. Failing to obey, the rioters would have been given a sharp, severe lesson by police and soldiers.
"We had no intention," said a member of the police commission, "of permitting the situation to drift into one of general strike and anarchy, such as brought disgrace to Winnipeg and Canada in 1919. We were proud to see that the leaders of the street railway employees were ready to listen to reason and to repudiate lawless activities."
Official Information is that the Iawless elements had no relationship either with the street railway company or with its employees, who quarrelled over the 15 per cent wage cut recommended by the majority of the conciliation board.
It is said 6,000 men, non-residents of Winnipeg, had been concentrated here to foment riots. The settlement now reached is that the men take a new and secret strike ballot.
If it rejects the conciliation award of a 15 per cent. pay cut, the men may apply to the provincial government for a statutory board of five to investigate the affairs of the company to deter- mine if the award is justified by the company's financial position. The company, in the meantime, undertakes to deposit the 15 per cent taken from the men's pay with the public utilities commission pending final decision in the matter. All talk of a walkout is stopped.
The dispute has continued since last April. A board of conciliation recommended that the new pay schedule be 52 cents an hour for men on one-man cars and 49 cents for men on two-men cars. The peak wages in 1929 had been 65 1/2 cents an hour.
The Winnipeg Electric Company has been faced with high fixed charges and decreasing revenues for several years. The Seven Sisters Falls power plant, bonds for which were guaranteed by the parent company, is idle and the Winnipeg Electric Co. has since defaulted on the guarantees and also on interest on investment on its own bonds and stock.
Taxicab companies in the city were prepared to operate 560 cars. The city planned to license 1,000 jitneys. on approved routes. The men's union were going to run a "free jitney" service. The street railway was to ask for protection in operating its cars. Larger employees of wage-earners planned to organize their own automobile services to get their employees downtown.
