Union head allegedly tried to get rival fired
OPSEU’s president is accused of asking a community college president to fire a professor — an elected vice-chair of the local bargaining unit — who dared criticize the union’s top leadership, according to allegations in a complaint to the Ontario Labour Relations Board (OLRB).
In his submission to the OLRB, the professor accuses union president Warren (Smokey) Thomas of unfair labour practice for allegedly trying to have him terminated by his own employer.
Social sciences professor Kevin MacKay says he was tipped off by Mohawk College president Ron McKerlie that “Smokey called me and asked me to fire you.”
The allegation emerged after MacKay and local OPSEU leaders finished a routine meeting with the college’s senior management last month. The longtime professor describes, in his submission, how Mohawk’s head asked him into his office for a private chat to give him a heads up:
“You need to watch your back,” he says the college president cautioned him. “He’s out to get you . . . he’s on the warpath.”
In an emailed statement, Thomas dismissed the complaints against him as president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union.
“I, and our union, emphatically deny ever having asked anyone to fire or otherwise discipline Mr. MacKay,” the OPSEU president said. “If Mr. MacKay were to be fired or disciplined by his employer, I can assure you that he would have OPSEU’s full support.”
The complaint has not been proven, but at any future OLRB hearing, witnesses would testify under oath and be subject to cross-examination. That could pit the OPSEU president against the Mohawk College president who is cited as the source of the allegation.
Asked for confirmation, Mohawk sent a statement saying it would not comment in advance of a formal hearing: “It would be inappropriate for the president to comment as the college is an intervener in the matter before the Ontario Labour Relations Board.”
But MacKay’s submission includes a copy of email correspondence with the president that appears to corroborate their initial conversation: The professor thanks McKerlie for “being a man of integrity, and for telling me what you did.” Mohawk’s president replies that he shared the information “in confidence. I was hoping you would simply keep your eyes and ears open . . .”
MacKay’s OLRB complaints include both unfair labour practice — “intimidation and coercion” — and failure in the “duty of fair representation” by his union. He seeks a finding that Thomas and OPSEU violated the Labour Relations Act, an order to cease and desist from “further targetting and intimidation” and a written apology.
If borne out, the accusations raise serious questions about whether Thomas, by allegedly seeking the favour of a firing, was willing to put himself in the debt of management — potentially at the expense of rank-and-file members at contract time.
“What’s the quid pro quo?” MacKay asked in an interview.
“To me, it just undermines the essence of what a trade union is supposed to be doing,” he said. “Ninety-nine per cent of people within that organization are ethical and trying to do the work of the union — and are horrified when they hear something like this.”
As a social activist and lifelong trade unionist, the professor said he agonized over whether to raise the matter with the OLRB. But as an elected vice-chair of his local, MacKay feels entrusted with a fiduciary duty to stand up to what he believes to be bullying by Thomas after more than a year of struggle at one of Ontario’s biggest public sector unions.
The bad blood started when senior managers at OPSEU headquarters filed a notice of libel against MacKay and other elected leaders and activists from the same union last year over their allegations of a toxic work environment, sexual harassment and sexual assault at union headquarters. After a Toronto Star story detailing the unusual libel action against its own members, an OPSEU convention voted to pay the legal fees of MacKay and the other unionists, and the suit was dropped by top brass. The OPSEU convention also voted for an outside consultant to investigate the workplace environment.
But tensions rose again last year after OPSEU’s staff union — representing about 375 organizers and campaign staff at headquarters and regional offices — filed a sweeping complaint of unfair labour practices by Thomas and the top leadership during and after a bitter contract dispute. The complaint cited at least four firings and 12 suspensions, plus surveillance and retaliation.
The complaint was settled last December after OPSEU made undisclosed payments to some of the terminated staff and agreed to rehire others. Thomas said he could not reveal how much the union spent in payouts because of confidentiality provisions, “so I can’t help you there.”
Pati Habermann, president of the staff union, told me her members were stunned to see labour peace unravel again in recent weeks, after the firing — without prior notice — of a 26-year employee who chaired the pay equity committee.
“These actions by our employer (OPSEU) have a devastating and negative impact on staff,” she wrote in an email to members of the staff union (OPSSU). Thomas said OPSEU would have no comment on “internal staffing matters.” But the unrest at his union, whose 130,000 members work in community colleges, correctional institutions, nursing homes and the LCBO, shows no signs of abating.
As president, Thomas has long been a maverick, popular among the rank and file for his populist antics that cast him as the Donald Trump of trade unions — badmouthing fellow labour leaders and pushing back hard against opponents. But fratricide is forbidden for union brothers, because solidarity — not civil war — is a cardinal rule of the labour movement. Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.