Omaha Traction Company
| Industry | Public transportation |
|---|---|
| Fate | Defunct |
| Successor | Metro Area Transit |
| Founded | 1904 |
| Defunct | 1971 |
| Headquarters | Omaha and Council Bluffs |
|
Key people
|
Gurdon Wattles |
The Omaha Traction Company was a privately owned public transportation business in Omaha, Nebraska. Created in the early 1900s by wealthy Omaha banker Gurdon Wattles, the company was involved in a series of contentious disputes with organized labor.
Gurdon Wattles bought the Omaha and Council Bluffs Railway and Bridge Company, or O&CB along with several competing local lines and merged them into one unit called the Omaha Traction Company in the early 1900s. Wattles continued using the O&CB brand. In 1943 the company began training women as streetcar operators after many of its male drivers were called into military service during WW II. The women learned quickly and were paid the same wages as their male counterparts. The company disbanded with the creation of Metro Area Transit in the early 1970s.
The Amalgamated Association of Street and Electric Railway Employees attempted to unionize workers in Omaha Traction Company in the first decade of the 20th century with an organizer arriving in the city in 1902. That early effort faded within a year; however, Gurdon Wattles formed the Omaha Business Men's Association within the year to fight the prospect of losing the city's open shop status.
Wattles resisted any unionization within his businesses, as well as the city. When workers struck in early September 1909 he quickly hired strikebreakers from across the country to cross picket lines. He further provoked unionizers by publicly refusing arbitration in two of the city's business community's organs, the Omaha Bee and the Omaha Herald. Starting September 19, 1909 mobs rioted in the streets of downtown destroying streetcars, terrorizing company officials and attacking strikebreakers. Wattles kept the strikebreakers on, hiring others from Eastern United States cities to come in until the strikers agreed to his terms. Wattles later wrote a booklet about the events entitled A Crime Against Labor: A brief history of the Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway Strike, 1909. In the book he referred to the strikebreakers as, "a jolly lot of disreputables, always ready for a fight." The riots continued through September 23, 1909, eventually subsiding to the pressure of the strikebreakers.
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