As Crooked As They Wanna Be
In the summer of 1986, following a rash of stories of corruption among Ontario's biggest unions, the Toronto Star - a newspaper known for balanced reporting on labour issues - printed this scathing opinion piece.
The Toronto StarMonday, August 4, 1986
The evil that Ontario's unions tolerate
By John Deverell
This is not about all the good labor unions do. It's about the evil they tolerate.
A rash of serious abuses of power by leading union officials has demonstrated the need for new laws in Ontario to protect and foster union democracy and the rights of union members.
Sweetheart payments, physical assault on union members, rigged internal trials, suspensions of members for political purposes, firing and blacklisting of union reformers - all these practices flower in the dark corners of the Ontario labor movement.
The ugliness is concentrated for the most part in unions where leaders are least accountable to their members.
And despite the evidence of serious misconduct, top leaders, such as Cliff Pilkey of the Ontario Federation of Labor and James McCambly of the Canadian Federation of Labor, do nothing but wring their hands.By their silence and inaction they prove that organized labor's claim to be effectively self-regulating should no longer be taken seriously by the Ontario Legislature or the Parliament of Canada.
The doctrine of self-regulation is at best a protection for entrenched leadership cliques, and at worst an umbrella for labor racketeers.
To correct the abuses, rank-and-file union members need a legal charter of rights and an ombudsman to enforce it. An effective charter would give union workers the tools to deal with leaders who have strayed into the temptations of self-aggrandizement, tyranny or criminality.
Most union leaders have little to fear from such reforms. To foster union democracy is to strengthen the foundations of the labor movement.
For 27 years the United States has had laws, albeit poorly drafted and enforced, for just this purpose. The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, otherwise known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, aims to keep unions clean and responsive to their members.
The Parliament of Canada and the provincial legislatures have never adopted such a broad law, and not a single top union leader in the country has ever suggested that they do so.
Pilkey, leader of the 650,000-member Ontario Federation of Labor, grows apoplectic at the mention of Landrum-Griffin. The U.S. law requires financial disclosure, protects free speech and free elections within unions, and bars convicted criminals from office. Pilkey condemns it as an unwarranted and excessive encroachment on a free labor movement.
He and his colleagues offer no other solution, however, to the corrosive influence of some union dictators and racketeers and the disrepute they inflict on all of organized labor.
"We've agonized over these things a lot," Pilkey says. "They're very difficult issues. We don't have the answers."
McCambly, whose CFL embraces some international construction unions in which the presidency is handed from father to son, takes a similar view. "Most unions have so much democracy already that they don't work well," he argues, and Landrum-Griffin laws are likely "to create more problems than they solve."
These attitudes, shared by other top labor leaders, including Bob White of the Canadian Auto Workers, were born in a distant past when unions were regarded as illegal combinations in restraint of trade and governments did what they could to suppress them.
Over the past 40 years, however, unions have been transformed from voluntary secret associations of workers into bureaucratized quasi-public agencies. They are certified and granted exclusive bargaining rights by the state. In Ontario, all employees in certified bargaining units are now required by law to pay union dues.
Clearly the state has a right and an obligation to enforce minimum standards of democratic conduct and accountability within unions in return for the legal privileges and protections they enjoy.
Our governments have neglected this duty. Consider some of the recent abuses that have not been addressed properly by labor itself or by the labor laws of Canada and Ontario:
* Thuggery. An official of the Seafarers International Union, Peter White, presided over the beating of SIU member Don Davis by a thug from Montreal in the union's Toronto hall. The thug and White were both convicted of assault on guilty pleas and went to jail.
SIU president Roman Gralewicz had the union pay White's legal expenses and quickly promoted White to port agent in Toronto. The lesson to SIU members was that it is futile - and dangerous - to oppose the incumbent officers as Davis had done.
Dennis McDermott, then president of the Canadian Labor Congress, ignored requests by SIU members for an investigation of the trials of Davis and others and the Davis beating.
* Unfair trial procedures (I). When Lynn Williams, former Ontario director of the United Steelworkers of America, was seeking the presidency of the international union, Cec Taylor of Hamilton represented a menace to the big Canadian vote Williams needed for victory.
Taylor, a nationalist and a controversial president of the Stelco local, was removed from office by local opponents at a rump meeting after a dubious local trial.
There is no evidence that the local opponents acted at the instigation of the international union. But the international - where Williams was by then acting president - did stall Taylor's appeal. Meanwhile, senior Canadian officers of the union who were loyal to Williams conducted an "inquiry" into the local's affairs and issued 10,000 copies of their report to the Hamilton membership.
The Supreme Court of Ontario eventually ruled that the international's treatment of Taylor lacked even minimal fairness. In his judgment, Mr. Justice Alvin Rosenberg noted: "The international union, in its failure to stay the penalty and in its actions on appeal, made it quite obvious they were happy to have Mr. Taylor out of office."
The court restored Taylor to office by injunction. By then, however, Williams was safely ensconced in the international presidency and Taylor's opponents were positioned to control the union hall and win the next local election.
The Steelworker administration accomplished, by a combination of unfair trial procedures and executive action, the defeat of a serious challenger.
* Unfair trial procedures (II). The leadership of the Carpenters' union in Toronto recently gave another demonstration of the political abuse of union kangaroo courts.
Two active and popular members of Local 27, Ucal Powell and Tom Connelly, were preparing for a run at executive positions, and their likely victory threatened president Matt Whelan's control of the executive board.
Whelan charged the two with violations of procedure at union meetings. The Carpenters' district council, of which Whelan was also president, found them guilty and imposed unusually harsh two-year suspensions. That rendered the two ineligible to run for election.
* Unfair trial procedures (III). A spectacular abuse of internal union trial procedures is still unfolding in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, where Canadian vice-president Ken Rose has barred his chief Ontario critic, Barry Fraser, from holding any union office for five years.
Fraser is the immediate past-president of the Ontario Provincial Building Trades Council and a member and former business manager of the IBEW local in Hamilton. After a dispute over local meeting procedure last summer, Fraser was put on trial along with four other local officers. The hearing was conducted by a union business representative employed by Rose, and Rose himself passed sentence.
The penalties he imposed bar Fraser and two others from taking their seats at the union's international convention in Toronto in September, where Rose will be seeking re-election. Fraser has declared his candidacy against Rose.
But unless the international convention delegates vote to overturn the penalties, Fraser won't be allowed to attempt that challenge or to challenge, in the next local election, the Hamilton business manager who put him on trial.
There are no practical remedies for Fraser in Ontario law.
* Criminality. Sean Floyd, the former president of Teamsters Local 419 in Toronto, won election in 1982 while facing criminal charges for stealing, in collusion with management personnel, goods worth $200,000 from a warehouse whose employees he represented.
Following his election victory, Floyd pleaded guilty to theft and was sentenced to jail. He remained in office, however, and was able to drive key reformers out of the local while retaining control for a further 2 1/2 years.
Floyd finally resigned in 1985 during a Revenue Canada prosecution that revealed that he'd received $250,000 in secret payments from another employer, Consumers Distributing. He pleaded guilty to a charge of tax evasion.
The members who were wise to Floyd and tried to fight him in 1982 and 1983 received no real help from Teamster leaders. Joe Bigeau, who ran against Floyd and lost, was subsequently fired as business agent by Floyd.
Where was Ed Lawson, Canadian director of the Teamsters, during this time?
In the United States, unionists convicted of certain crimes are barred by the Landrum-Griffin Act from holding positions of trust. Under its provisions, Floyd would have been removed from office in 1982, and the Local 419 reformers might not have been sacrificed to the Teamster meatgrinder.
Ontario law does not forbid criminals from holding union office, just as it doesn't require union leaders to provide an avenue of appeal against phony political trials, or to protect free speech, or to require fair union elections.
To their shame, the leaders of Ontario labor find it advantageous to preserve this legal vacuum. Their wishes and convenience should no longer be the foundation of public policy.
Copyright © 1986 Toronto Star, All Rights Reserved.
Sixteen years later nothing much has changed. Corruption continues and our feckless leaders maintain a studied stupor.
When a scandal involving misuse of federal training funds rocked the Canadian wing of the Laborers International Union of North America in the early 1990's, neither the Canadian Labour Congress nor the Ontario Federation of Labour had a word to say about it.
When the President of a Toronto HERE local was caught using union funds to pay the bar tab of a well-known mobster, Canadian Labor Congress spokesman Derik Hodgson had this to say,
"... labor bodies sometimes use members' dues to pay for accommodations for visitors and consultants. The congress recently paid for lodgings for visiting Third World feminists and South African union activists, Hodgson said.
"We paid for Lech Walesa's hotel bill," Hodgson said, referring to the Polish leader's recent visit to Canada.
"Maybe . . . the (mob) guy was doing business with them," Hodgson said. "Geez, I don't know."
(Mobster's tab paid by union, hotel bill shows, The Toronto Star, December 31, 1989)
Within the Canadian UFCW, allegations of vote rigging, persecution of dissidents and questionable uses of members' funds began in the mid 1980's and continue to this day.
"We have a medieval king in the form of Cliff Evans and a bunch of little fiefdoms underneath him," Reno said during his election campaign in 1988. "His knights are the paid business representatives pillaging the countryside. It's all done on the backs of the serfs, the workers."
(UFCW Official Bill Reno, in the Toronto Star, 1988)
Sean Floyd, the Teamster business agent mentioned in Deverell's opinion piece, served his jail time for theft and taking bribes from employers and returned to work as a business agent at another Ontario Teamsters local. He was subsequently dismissed with a $25,000 severance package. The word on the street is that he has turned up at yet another Teamster Local.
The legislative protections Deverell called for have never been tabled by any Canadian political party at the federal or provincial level. For those who don't know it, there are absolutely no laws in Canada that protect union members' rights or address union corruption. Labour Relations Boards don't deal with union corruption (it's not their jurisdiction) and law enforcement agencies can't be bothered with it. Union members who believe that they are being robbed by crooked officials have absolutely no place to turn. The situation is so bad in fact, that it would be fair to say that in Canada, it's OK to steal from people as long as they are union members and you are their representative.
When union reformers in the Teamsters local featured in this story went to local police about the misuse of over one million dollars of their money, the cops told them to go away and hire a private investigator. The cops were too busy.
When a union democracy activist approached the RCMP about organized crime in the Laborers Union, she was told the mobsters involved in LIUNA weren't "high end" enough!
Today (OPP Detective Inspector) Bob Goodall returned my call and told me that (RCMP Officer) Derek Riley had decided that although Organized Crime existed in LIUNA it was not "High End Enough" to spend their budget on. Goodall said that the RCMP only deal with High end Organized Crime. Further the OPP claim that because the offenses in which they have noted occurred in Sarnia, Ontario it's out of the OPP jurisdiction.
In the early 80's when the OPP had my father wear a body pack wire system into a LIUNA meeting Sarnia was in the OPP 's jurisdiction.
So I ask the Solicitor-General of Canada if they are waiting for me to become the victim of a homicide and will that be considered "High End Enough"?
Union members who seek democracy and transparency from their unions are labeled disloyal miscreants by mainstream labour leaders, hounded with lawsuits by their unions and ignored by everyone who is anyone in the labour community.
Cliff Pilkey may not have had the answers to the corruption issue back in 1986 but he couldn't have been agonizing all that hard about them. The nature and causes of corruption have been studied and discussed for centuries. Here's a well-known theory that is familiar to most of us, but must have been news to Pilkey.
'Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men'.
(Lord Acton, in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton, 1887.)
Give a bunch of guys complete power, no accountability and access to large piles of cash, and you'll have corruption. In Canada today, nobody has absolute power like a union leader over his members.
But our leaders still don't have the answers and that's OK because they're not looking for them anymore. They have found a whole new angle to dealing with the problem: They justify it on the basis that the corporate guys are crooked too! In doing so, they've also set a new standard for themselves and their unions. To be just a little bit better than the corporate guys.
In response to media questions about recent allegations of corruption with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Ontario Federation of Labour honcho Wayne Samuelson stuck both feet in his mouth and proclaimed,
"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."
Samuelson could have taken the high ground. The head of Canada's largest labour federation could have shown some leadership, condemned union corruption and urged all OFL affiliates to work extra hard at being democratic and accountable to their members. But he didn't. Instead, he made a dumbass statement that translates into: We're not as bad as Enron.
It's doubtful that setting this low a standard for unions is going to get working people excited about joining them. Not to mention that the logic behind Samuelson's dumbass statement is somewhat questionable: If we were to compare the piles of Canadian union and corporate officials who've been fired for corrupt behavior, the piles would likely be about the same. Nobody gets canned for corruption on either side of the fence. Samuelson should be alarmed and ashamed that even one union official would steal from his or her members. Instead he defends them on the basis of the new measuring stick: As bad/about the same as/not as bad as the corporate crooks.
About the only thing that Samuelson said that makes sense is that corruption "is not helpful to the movement". That sentiment was echoed by CUPE's Sid Ryan, the union's Ontario President who is at the center of the corruption allegations.
"The growing scandal could cause the union, perhaps even the entire labour movement irreparable damage, said Ryan, "This has now killed our organizing drives in the union across the country," he said.
We think this means that working people don't want corrupt unions. How much clearer a signal do you want?
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.
(The Question of Corruption, Robert Fitch)
What our contributors said this week about corruption in unions and what it means for the labour movement.
I think there are essentially two schools of thought on how to revitalize the labour movement.
The first is to organize among the membership groups or slates of candidates with a mandate for change to run for executive positions within their existing union. "IF you don't like it, change it" is the motto and for the most part it's something I believe very strongly in.
The second is to scrap the old and start fresh. It's a harder sell for proponents of this theory because it requires people to think outside themselves and what they've come to believe is the norm. It's a vulnerable feeling because as frustrating as the institution of unionism is it's comforting for trade unionist to know they're still apart of a formula that's survived for 100 years. Trade unionist are not entrepreneurs [a person who organizes a business undertaking, assuming risk for the sake of profit] and in the literal sense really they're not supposed to be. That's why I can understand the need to hold on to the "Devil you know", but reject it just the same.
I look at it like this...if power source empowerment it what you believe in, and your convinced [as I am] that it's the answer, then despite the early leap of faith founding a new union takes it's the most logical of all answers and the wisest use of resources and effort.
I'll use an example from business because it's the easiest example for most people to understand. A firm wants to shake things up and it's board of directors understand they'll have to address a number of key issues in order to stream line their operation and secure a better position in the market place. What is going to drive this change more effectively? the internal [micro] desire to improve the organization? or the external [macro] competition from an aggressive competitor moving into the market and threatening the firms very survival?
The UFCW has had it's opportunity to change...now it's time they got out of the way.
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.
Baa, baa, black sheep
Have you any wool?
Yes sir, yes sir
Three bags full:
Two for Sundin,
And one for the store,
And none for the power source
Who remain among the poor!
Has the UFCW become so immersed in business culture that it's bought into business values lock, stock and crock? Read this:
They actually put this into a collective agreement!
The parties to this Agreement pledge to work towards the greatest possible degree of consultation and cooperation believing that the following concepts provide a fundamental framework for improved labour-management relations:
(a) the industrial enterprise is an economically characterized work community of capital investors and workers under the leadership of a management;
(b) the economic character springs from a continuous striving toward efficient use of resources, energy and environment, and in the adequate development of research, production and marketing'
(c) the enterprise requires authority relationships under a strong central leadership or management;
(d) a strong management does not discourage cooperation but stimulates it, recognizing that while management without labour can do nothing, labour without management cannot survive.
(Collective Agreement between Turner Distribution Systems Ltd, and UFCW, Local 777, 1998-2004, Article 17 Labour-Management Committee)
About Lying & Hiding
Ivan...or Andy, I know you read this.
Ivan told us at the general Meeting last Tuesday, Sept. 10, that Rolland, Tom and Brian, whom were waiting to get paid back for money they we're owed from the road trip to Prince George that their Cheques were in the mail (on Sept. 10). They told me they received their cheques today (Thursday Sept. 18) and the cheques were dated Sept. 12.
You said they were in the mail Sept. 10.
They were dated Sept. 12.
They were not in the mail Sept 10 as you said. Why did you Lie to us at the GMM?...
The LRB is part of a system that isn't geared to give people who work for a living a "good ruling."
The LRB is there to make sure that the law controls workers if their union isn't up to the job.
The LRB is there to make sure the employer is able to carry on business unimpeded.
The LRB is there to make sure that the union's "corporate activities" are impeded by employers who are too small to care about or who are too new to the game to understand the rules.
OFG isn't trying to avoid a union, so the system won't and can't do anything about what's happening.
In the eyes of the LRB, the "corporate" damage to the union is minimal and the employers aren't complaining, so the LRB doesn't give a hoot.
The LRB is not meant to protect people who work for a living. It is a court to settle differences between union bosses and company bosses (sometimes you need a program to figure out which is which).
There was a story in the Vancouver Sun the other day. Two hundred fifty non-union, immigrant women walked out of a greenhouse operation because of brutal treatment by a supervisor.
They marched out and sat on the road. They demanded that the supervisor be fired. The greenhouse operator fired the supervisor and told the women they could all come back to work, but the two women whom the operator labeled as ringleaders were told they were no longer welcome to return.
The 250 women refused to come back under those conditions. The contractor who rented the women to the greenhouse operator was besides himself. He said he hoped that a settlement could be reached soon.
By publishing time, a resolution still hadn't been reached, so I don't know how it all ended.
However, what's important here is that if they were with a union, the LRB would have ordered them back to work without any stipulations. It would have been an "illegal" strike. Because they were non-union the LRB didn't apply. The employers didn't know what the hell to do without the LRB to help them.
Now, I'm definitely not saying that they are better off without a union. Hell, they are a union. They are solidarity in action. What I'm saying is that by becoming "certified" then you become part of a system that is instrumental in oppressing workers.
The system is not freedom.