Cupe-Only President Can Blow The Whistle
Cupe-Only President Can Blow The Whistle
When Judy Darcy, President of Cupe blew the whistle on suspected corruption in her union, it's a good bet Darcy was not prepared for the situation to become a media nightmare. In what began as a police investigation into campaign inconsistencies has quickly become a growing fraud and corruption scandal in Canada's largest union.
The reasons why Darcy decided to break rank and put the largest union in Canada under microscopic scrutiny remains unclear.
What ever Darcy's reasoning, as the Halifax Herald reports, the union has suddenly found it necessary to pull back into a defensive shell and issue a protective order stating that any Cupe employees caught speaking out about the corruption investigation will be fired.
Cupe states in its constitution that one of its objectives is the "The defence and extension of the civil rights and liberties of public employees and the preservation of free democratic trade unionism".
What has Darcy done in essence with the gag order is trampled on the civil rights and liberties of all its members and shown just how controlled and undemocratic trade unions really are.
What is so important that Darcy would threaten all members with immediate dismissal? The severe penalty for openly speaking about the corruption scandal leads us to ask several questions:" What is Darcy afraid we will find out?" What if anything is Darcy and Cupe hiding from its members? Why is it OK for Darcy to be a whistle blower but no one else dare out of fear of retribution?
Is this type of autocratic hypocritical behavior by Darcy or any union leader for that matter, in the best interest of the future of unions and their members?
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"Clearly it's not helpful to the movement," said Wayne Samuelson, head of the Ontario Federation of Labour.
"(But) if you pile up all our people who've been fired for these kinds of things and put all the corporate guys (who've been fired) on another pile, their pile's thousands of times bigger than ours."
This statement provides a ton of insight into what's wrong with Wayne Samuelson's labour movement: Bad behaviour by union officials is OK as long as it's marginally better or not as frequent as that of their management counterparts. Being a little bit better than the business community appears to be the standard by which unions are measured. Working people aren't buying it. Unfortunately for Wayne, he's not getting it.
Stealing by union guys isn't as rampant as stealing by corporate guys (makes me feel much better). Union leaders love to use faulty logic--"We steal less than corporate executives." The analogy that if they steal, we can steal too, but to remain "good" we must always steal less.
New York jouralist Robert Fitch once said:
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Unions are supposed to be run for the members. But corrupt leaders sell them out. Instead of the protecting the worker from the boss, the corrupt trade union leader protects the boss from the workers. The nature of the betrayal is truly unique. When has an American union leader ever been indicted for giving a bribe to a boss to sell out his stockholders?
The upshot is that corporate executives can hurt us only once. But because unions have stood for something besides the worship of the golden calf, union leaders can hurt us twice. First with the blow to our wallets and second with the blow to our hearts.
When will machine heads understand that they aren't supposed to compare themselves with corporate bosses? I'll answer that. Never! They would lose too much money and power. They would lose their purpose because they lust to hang with the corporate elite. They see the wealth and they want it.
Speak and be fired has been going on for a long time.
Labourer's Union official Tony Dionisio is organizing a $1,500 a plate fundraiser for Liberal leadership candidate Paul Martin. Prominent union organizations are reported to have snapped up $120,000 worth of tickets so far.
Is this the same Tony Dionisio?
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The Toronto Star -- MET
Friday, August 2, 1996 A18
15 business agents fired by laborers union boss Some testified against chief in court case
by Jack Lakey Toronto Star
Fifteen business agents at a powerful Metro union have been fired by its newly elected boss.
The firings came within weeks of Tony Dionisio's election as business manager - the top job at Local 183 of the Laborers International Union.
The fired agents had opposed Dionisio in the recent election and some had co-operated with investigations into the local's finances that resulted in criminal charges.
Dionisio was charged in 1995 with offering a secret commission and defrauding the government after Star articles that showed how Eric Ferguson, a federal bureaucrat who recommended $1.6 million in grants for Local 183's training centre, had his house renovated by union employees.
Ferguson was later charged with accepting a secret commission and pleaded guilty, but Dionisio and another union employee were acquitted last June.
Judge Charles Vallaincourt was highly critical of the way the case was presented.
Dionisio was reached at his office yesterday, but refused to comment on the dismissals.
Three other union employees, including the assistant director of Local 183's training centre, who also testified against Dionisio in court, were also fired.
Some of the business agents, who deal with employers on behalf of union members and organize new bargaining units, say that Dionisio is now getting even with them for offering an alternative to his leadership, or for crossing him.
"We were fired because we stood up to Dionisio," said Tony Candiano, a Local 183 business agent for the past eight years. "Nobody said a word about our work. There was no problem with that.
"We were all called in, one at a time, to Dionisio's office, and he told us that we would not be re-appointed. He didn't give us a reason. He said he didn't have to."
Candiano said he had often been warned he would be dismissed if Dionisio became business manager.
"I expected it to happen," said Tony Rodrigues, a Local 183 business agent for 11 years who ran against Dionisio for the business manager's job.
Some men had been with Local 183 for more than 20 years and are in their 40s and 50s, Rodrigues said, adding that several were dismissed shortly before they would have been eligible for pension benefits.
"A lot of us have given the union and the members many years of good service," Rodrigues said.
"You don't just get rid of good people like that.
"We tried to fight him and clean up the union, and now we are paying."
This was a very big story at the time, especially the business about the misuse of federal training funds.
The crooked government guy who was on the take ended up in the slammer. The LIUNA guys who were charged beat the rap. The business agents filed wrongful dismissal lawsuits which were subsequently settled and things just kept on rolling.
I'd be very interested in hearing from any of the business agents. If any of you are out there, log on and talk to us, (or send RV a private message using the private message feature and we'll go from there).
I'd also like to know more about what's up with the HRDC training funds. I wonder if any controls were put in place after the great LIUNA fiasco or if it's business as usual.
