Montreal's elevator thugs: English-speaking union goons thrived in a cesspool of fear and violence

 

Warner Baxter elevator union boss

In 1974 a work crew typically needed one or two days to install an escalator.
   In Quebec, the same job would take up to three months and cost 50 percent more.
   Quebec workers would first dismantle the pre-fabricated equipment and then reassemble it.
   The Quebec-based International Union of Elevator Constructors (IUEC) cost millions in slowdowns and construction stoppages in the 1970s and would think nothing of using vandalism, intimidation and even arson to get their way.
   In one case the Quebec Public Works department was so desperate to get the Otis elevator workers to actually do their jobs that they paid them a $45,000 bonus. 
   Unlike other Quebec unions, the elevator repair guys were largely-English speaking.
   Judge Cliche denounced the union at a January 1975 hearing as “the gang of 500 guys from Verdun and Lasalle who try to run the government. Otis (elevator company) had the government by the throat and the elevator union had Otis by the throat."
  Those who control ed the unions could easily extort builders for big money just to complete their contracts.
   Warner Baxter, who headed local 89, was frequently rewarded in exchange for actually getting his elevator workers to complete their tasks.
   One entrepreneur built Baxter a free swimming pool behind his Candiac bungalow as a way to encourage increased productivity of elevator workers at an east end building site.
  Bernard Kelly, of Kelly Elevators, once gave Baxter $3,000 to buy a '74 T-Bird.  Baxter lost his position but employers kept calling him for workers nonetheless.
  In one case elevator union guys Kevin Duffy and Chuck Canning were recorded on a phone conversation referring to fires set at the homes of elevator company managers .
   Rober Warnock and Raymond Burkhart, of  Otis Elevators and Turnbull Elevators, both had their  homes burned to the ground in the pouring rain on 9 May 1973.
   Duffy and Canning denied having anything to do with setting the blazes, although the phone recordings begged to differ.
   Union thugs, who included West End Gang associate Danny Sullivan, would be paid to threaten and scare people. In one case Sullivan threatened to put a bullet into the head of a manager of the construction site at Complexes Desjardins. Other elevator workers associated with the West End Gang include George Baldo and at least one of the Johnston brothers.
 
Elevator union thugs would routinely beat and intimidate anybody who failed to give them a contract or participate in their swindles.  One victim suffered such serious injuries that he needed six months in hospital.
       The FTQ union cut ties to the elevator union and the provincial government placed it in trusteeship in 1974 but the problems endured for some time afterwards.
   Elevator union workers went on strike across North America in 1972 in opposition to pre-assembly. Canadian elevator workers went on strike on 13 September 1972 and in Quebec the 600 union workers returned to work on 1 February 1973 after a government minister threatened them with consequences if they stayed off the job.
  The 1,700 Canadian elevator workers outside of Quebec continued their strike but they appear to have resolved the prefab issue because once they returned, their work was done properly while in Quebec the sabotage continued.
  The elevator union criminals were just a small part of criminals infiltrating the union movement in Quebec, as Andre "Dede" Desjardins had a much larger operation of the same ilk that dwarfed the misdeeds of the elevator thugs.