THREATS, ABUSE, WHEEL NUTS LOOSENED ON CAR WHEELS — JUST SOME OF THE TACTICS USED BY MONTREAL’S BLUE-COLLAR UNION ON MEMBERS WHO HAD FALLEN OUT OF FAVOUR, ACCORDING TO COURT DOCUMENTS.
Allegations of sabotage, threats in Montreal
MONTREAL • The intimidation tactics sound like something out of a movie.
Lug nuts loosened on the car wheels of unsuspecting drivers. A mob encircling a panicked man in a corridor, yelling insults and preventing his escape. A lunch meeting that ends with the boss lifting a finger and warning, “You know, that’s all I have to do, and your face gets smashed in.”
But in this case, as alleged in court documents, the boss was the president of Montreal’s blue-collar union, and the people on the receiving end were fellow union members who had fallen out of her favour.
To outside observers, it has been plain for years that something was wrong with the union representing Montreal’s 6,500 blue-collar municipal workers as its members alienated the public with intimidation tactics and illegal walkouts.
But now it is the parent union, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, that has stepped in to relieve president Chantal Racette and the rest of her executive of their duties and place the local under trusteeship, citing fears of escalating violence.
“It is urgent for the Court to intervene before the situation escalates further and even more violent acts are committed or documents that (the local) is obliged to preserve are destroyed,” CUPE lawyers wrote last month in a request for an injunction.
Quebec Superior Court Justice Johanne Mainville granted the injunction after two executive members at the headquarters of Local 301, the blue-collar union, initially refused entry to the CUPE administrator appointed to administer the trusteeship.
The documents filed to obtain the injunction catalogue the alleged “dysfunction” of Local 301. They include a sworn affidavit from a representative of the national union, Marc Ranger, who details two incidents in which he was threatened by Racette and others.
The most recent was last month at the annual convention of CUPE’s Quebec wing in Quebec City. During a break, Ranger, CUPE’s Quebec director, went to the restroom. When he came out, he saw Racette leading seven or eight members of Local 301 toward him in the narrow corridor.
He said Racette was using foul language to insult him, accusing him of encouraging members to report her to the police.
“Her comments and her physical approach, threatening and intimidating, left no doubt about her bad intentions,” he said.
He tried to get past the mob, but was blocked.
“They physically pushed me back while the president of Local 301 continued to insult me ... I felt in danger like never before,” he said.
He cried out for help and when some other delegates approached, he escaped back into the meeting hall.
When he left the convention, he found someone had written the date on the hood of his car. He took it as a message from his tormentors to remember the date.
“I seriously fear for my physical safety and that of my family,” Ranger said in the affidavit.
A year earlier, he met with Racette at a restaurant in hopes of reducing tensions. He said Racette started criticizing CUPE and made the threat that she could have his face smashed just by lifting a finger.
“I’m holding them back,” she said.
He was shocked and left the restaurant, he said.
Quebec City police are investigating a complaint of threats and assault filed by Ranger after the incident at the Quebec City convention centre on May 18. A spokeswoman said Thursday the investigation is still active.
André Lepage, a political aide to the blue-collar union, said Wednesday that Racette has no comment.
In a May 30 statement after trusteeship was imposed, Racette called the move unfortunate.
“We are honest people who have our members’ interests at heart,” the statement said.
It also “categorically denied” Ranger’s account of what occurred in Quebec City.
CUPE’s injunction request reads like a greatest hits package of Racette and fellow executive members Michel Martin, Jacques Rochon and Michel Jeannotte.
It notes the four were convicted last year of contempt of court in connection with an illegal strike. After a judge ordered the union to pay a $2-million fine for an earlier illegal walkout, Racette called the judge a “f--ing idiot” at a union meeting.
The documents say members of the Local 301 executive who opposed decisions made by Racette’s team faced threats and intimidation, with at least two suffering serious health effects as a result.
“People who opposed the team in charge suffered acts of sabotage on their cars that could have had monumental consequences for their safety and those of the cars’ occupants,” the court documents say, specifying that wheel nuts were loosened.
Racette had GPS devices secretly placed on the cars of some of her executive members for surveillance purposes, the documents say.
Taken together, CUPE says in the documents, the local’s actions demonstrate “a contempt for democratic values and for statutes and bylaws, a desire to silence dissident voices (and) intimidating, violent and totally unacceptable behaviour that must be brought to light.”
The trusteeship can last up to a year and will lead to the election of a new executive.