W.C Wood’ is best known as a manufacturer of freezers. Its founder, Wilbert Copeland Wood (1896 – 1987), relocated from Toronto in 1941, setting up shop on Woolwich Street. During WWII, Wood produced parts for aircraft and tails for bombs. After the war, the company returned to manufacturing freezers, adding portable units and coolers.
The Move to Arthur Street
The company moved to Arthur Street in 1955, taking over the old Taylor-Forbes Plant. Between 1955 and 1967, it produced bulk milk coolers and bottle cappers as well as freezers. In addition, using designs of the old T-F Company, they produced wood clamps, clothesline pulleys, barn and home ventilators and oat rollers. It was in the newer premises that the employees decided on strike action.
The Strike
The strike began on April 3, 1959. At issue was a collective agreement. It recognized seniority, granted a pay increase and addressed other related items.
The company was unwilling to budge, even when the union – United Electrical Workers (UEW) Union was willing to put aside all except seniority protection. W. C. Wood, against the union from the start, set the tone. In 1950, at a Guelph Board of Trade meeting, he told 75 industrialists he was in favour of a legislation change to remove compulsory paying of union dues. Wood specifically referred to the UEW, stating they were “communist dominated” and bargained in bad faith, avowed as they were to “destroy the free enterprise system.”
Us Versus Them
From the beginning, it was a strike of “us versus them.” Police were involved in the early stages, ensuring that the rights of the company – and not the workers, were protected. In two separate incidents, picketers were struck by vehicles leaving the plant, increasing the bitterness between the two opposing factions.
Ratcheting up the overall sense of bitterness and mistrust between management and the strikers was the company’s tactics. The company began to employ cameras to intimidate the workers; workers employed mirrors to try to prevent this action. The company claimed cameras were needed to prevent property damage; the union claimed mirrors halted the practice.
Wood continually went to court in an attempt to obtain legal protection for the property and his strikebreakers. This included several legal injunctions against the strikers. The first was on May 11, when Mr. Justice John L. Wilson granted an order preventing picketing on the premises. In frustration, the strikers followed employees of the W.C. Wood Co. on their way to work, or to their homes. Those strikers caught were charged with “besetting.”
Picketing was eventually restored on May 26, but the rules governing picketers were highly restrictive. Only nine were allowed on the premises: four at each main gate and one at the smaller gate.
Labour groups in town were watching the events unfold closely. The Guelph Labour Council (GLC) urged the City Council to act. This was an unusual measure since the UEW was not affiliated with the newly amalgamated Labour Council.
City Council considered this request, and another from the union. However, it was not until June that any movement in this direction took place. Instead of the GLC or the City Council, the Department of Labour asked for and arranged a meeting in Toronto, between the two principal parties.
The Department of Labour Steps in
The meeting was an abysmal failure. The Guelph Mercury on June 2, 1959 wrote: “The company refused to agree to return all strikers to their jobs without discrimination, stating that they had stronger obligations to strikebreakers and scabs.” This was how things stood when the Union arranged for a Rally to take place on June 4, a rally to support the workers. Three hundred came to Guelph’s Memorial Gardens to hear the speaker, C. S. Jackson, national president of the union. And still, the strike dragged on with no end in sight.
Black Day in July
The strike found some support among various unions. The Steelworkers joined the Wood’s picket lines on June 26. The employees at Canadian General Electric (CGE) also offered some support. However, in general, Guelphites seemed more focused on the Royal Tour of Queen Elizabeth and the election that placed H. Worton in Queen’s Park that June.
In July 1959, the GLC urged the strikers to return to work. They refused and, throughout July, several violent actions took place on the picket line. A fight broke out at Woods; the striker was charged with assault and fined. Later that month, employee car windows 
were smashed. However, the major incident occurred on July 9. The windows at Wood’s plant were broken. The company claimed to have suffered over $100,000 in damages.
Police were ordered to remain on site. Strikers jeered them but no further actions took place. The scene became quiet, abetted by the heavy police presence and the ruling permitting only four picketers on the WC Wood property. Charges continued to be laid against the strikers – one receiving a month in jail for his actions against a strikebreaker.
August introduced further problems. The workers within the plant filed an application, with the Labour Relations Board to terminate the union. It was to be heard on August 4, 1959.
The application was withdrawn, but matters did not improve. Strikers were forced to go on unemployment or seek other jobs. Their numbers began to dwindle as the need to pay the bills became increasingly pressing.
The End
The strike dragged on into 1960. It no longer rated media coverage. It fell far out of the spotlight.
In March 1960, the local paper did mention it, but, by this time, the company had essentially won by using scabs and strikebreakers to carry on business successfully. The union never again gained a foothold in the WC Wood Company workplace. Instead, they put into place a tame employee-company association.
