“We hadn’t set up a new organization in order to be cannibals in the Canadian labour movement.”
— Bob White, first president of the Canadian Auto Workers (now Unifor).
By Doug Nesbitt, Gerard Di Trolio, Evan Johnston and David Bush
Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, has left the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC). Unifor’s website says the decision was made by its National Executive Board on January 16. In a letter to CLC President Hassan Yussuff dated January 17, Unifor President Jerry Dias states that Unifor’s Executive Board has voted to cease affiliation to the CLC “immediately.”
This will have reverberations across the entire labour movement, and the Unifor membership has had no say in the decision
Unifor’s grievances
In his January 17 letter to Yussuff, Dias provides two main reasons for their decision to withdraw.
First, Dias states that Article 4 of the CLC Constitution — which was designed to govern disputes between unions — is being misapplied. This is framed in terms of democratic rights of union members to choose their own unions. He says unions affiliated to CLC frustrate this process, and furthermore that Unifor was excluded from having representation on a CLC advisory committee on Article 4.
Second, Dias states that the CLC has not upheld Article 26 of the CLC constitution defending the autonomy of Canadian unions in the face of international union leaderships based out of the United States.
Behind the grievances
The subtext of the split is Unifor’s involvement in the internal crises of other unions, and an ongoing dispute over the political direction of the labour movement.
The 2017 crisis that embroiled the Amalgamated Transit Union local 113, representing 10,000 Toronto Transit Commission workers, was a major sign that all was not well in the house of labour.
In February 2017 the ATU International trusteed Local 113 after learning its president, Bob Kinnear, sent a letter to the CLC requesting access to section for 4.9 of the CLC constitution. This outlines the process for justifying changing unions. Kinnear did this without any membership or executive board involvement.
Documents and recordings that RankandFile.ca unearthed made it clear that Unifor was colluding with Kinnear in this process. They paid Kinnear’s legal fees and communicated with him prior to the trusteeship. Other executive board members were even recorded accurately outlining the sequence of events before they unfolded and confirming Unifor’s prior involvement.
As Unifor’s involvement became known, Local 113’s executive board, shop stewards, and membership turned on Kinnear. Kinnear eventually resigned. The CLC’s investigation into the events was cut short at this point. The crisis at ATU Local 113 smacked of an attempted raid. Both Unifor’s actions and the CLC’s preliminary report were roundly criticized by other affiliate unions.
RankandFile.ca has also learned that Unifor is now involved in the crisis at UNITE HERE Local 75, a Toronto-based union of 8,000 hotel, restaurant and food service workers. UNITE HERE Local 75’s leadership, carrying the majority of its members, though not a majority of its executive board, is fighting a trusteeship imposed on it by UNITE HERE International (UHI). This is a long and complex story with more details yet to emerge, but what is key to understand now in relation to the CLC disaffiliation is that Unifor is now actively involved in the dispute. Unifor is signing cards of Local 75 members and a section of its leadership resisting trusteeship is now supporting Unifor.
As Dias’s letter suggests, Unifor will frame this, as it did with the ATU crisis, along nationalistic lines.
A history of division at the top
None of these divisions are new. From 2000 to 2001, the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) were out of the CLC after raiding the Service Employees International Union. This meant CAW was excluded from provincial federations and labour councils everywhere but in Quebec. CAW merged with CEP in 2013 to form Unifor.
In the 2014 CLC election, CLC president Ken Georgetti was the first ever incumbent to be defeated. The hotly-contested election was decided by a handful of votes with Unifor backing Hassan Yussuff and many other major affiliates backing Georgetti. At the CLC convention last year, all of the candidates supported by Unifor were elected, leading Jerry Dias to tweet a photo of himself holding a broom saying it was another clean sweep at the CLC for Unifor.
At the 2017 Ontario Federation of Labour convention there was a motion from the floor for the OFL to offer partisan support for the NDP. This evoked a heated debate which pitted Unifor delegates, whose old CAW side has backed strategic voting since the late 1990s, against delegates from most other unions. The pro-NDP motion was passed and it was clear the leadership of Unifor was not pleased.
The Fallout
The divisions at the top are not new, but splits have a real effect on the ground.
Consider the timing of this split as Tim Hortons owners have sparked off an explosion of working-class anger against employers we haven’t seen in years. There is a national discussion over working conditions and organizing the unorganized. This demands a coordinated, united and strategic response from all unions.
On the ground, union activists get this. Unifor members were right at the centre of organizing the Cobourg Tim Hortons protest in collaboration with many other union members in Durham Region Labour Council and Northumberland Labour Council. This was a fine example of the unity we need at the local level to wage real fights against the bosses.
Unifor’s insistence on a split is a waste of resources that could be directed into political and union organizing instead. Roughly $10 million in dues going to the CLC, provincial federations, and labour councils will be lost. This will lead to staff layoffs and weaker campaigning capacities from federations and labour councils across the country.
In Ontario when OPSEU left the OFL in 2011, OPSEU and CUPE started and worked on two separate campaigns to stop Hydro privatization, rather than work together. When an Ontario Liberal convention was being held in Toronto in the wake of the horrendous Bill 115 assault on teachers bargaining rights, OPSEU and the OFL held two separate rallies. These sort of divisions are but a taste of what negative impacts a divided labour movement can present.
A very likely consequence is opening the door to much more raiding. Unifor will no doubt direct resources to raiding already unionized workers, rather than focusing on organizing the unorganized. This will also sap the organizing resources of unions trying to fend off the raids.
This split will is likely to re-open old wounds. The SEIU-UNITE HERE-Workers United saga which racked the US labour movement in 2009 and spilled over into Canada, may come roaring back with Unifor’s intervention in UNITE HERE Local 75. The ATU-Unifor fight from 2017 is also likely to start anew, and many other past conflicts involving the CAW/Unifor could be reignited.
Unlike the brief NUPGE disaffiliation in 2010, the amount of existing bad blood does not bode well for a quick fix.
Our unions put precious few resources into organizing. There is a battle that needs to be waged to change this. But if unions are at each other’s throats in raiding wars, workers are going to lose and employers are going to win.
Nationalism and democracy
While Unifor’s recent efforts in the NAFTA renegotiations to fight for Mexican workers’ rights and reach out to them is good labour internationalism and should be applauded, its approach to international unions operating in Canada is far less progressive.
Dias has repeatedly called for Canadians to have democratic control of their unions against the control of American union leaders. We heard this during the ATU Local 113 trusteeship.
But there was never anything democratic about Kinnear’s initiation of the justification process to change unions, or Unifor’s involvement. Nor is Unifor’s internal democracy something to write home about. Members with different views inside Unifor are regularly frozen out of all sorts of union bodies and activities. This isn’t a problem limited to Unifor.
Canadian unions need to be controlled democratically by their members. This doesn’t just mean opposing American union leaders who trample democracy, but Canadian union leaders who do the same.
There is a real danger that Unifor will play up the nationalism card as it attempts to sell this split to its members and win other unions. This is extremely dangerous and harmful when we need more cross-border solidarity, not less. The immanent right-to-work assault in the U.S. (via the Janus v. AFSCME case) and the rise of far-right nationalism and racism means the union movement should be aiming to stand up as a united front across the continent.
Our priorities: Building unity from below
So where should our focus be? Palace intrigue at the top, or focusing on building a fighting working class movement from below?
We think the latter.
Trade unionists across Canada should be coming together to build the January 19 National Day of Action in support of Tim Hortons workers. At the same time we need to reject this division being imposed on us from above.
The split and its possible consequences are a propaganda gift to employers. If Unifor does in fact begin raids, it allows business to spin more stories about greedy unions who only care about union dues.
Though Unifor says it will continue its membership in provincial federations and local labour councils, the CLC constitution and practice is clear: disaffiliation from the CLC means the disaffiliation from provincial and labour councils.
At the local level, it will be important that Unifor activists engaged in work with other union members are not ostracised because of the decisions of their union leadership. Activists pushing for unity at the local level will be absolutely necessary if the labour movement wants to fight and win. While there is disorder at the top, keeping a fighting labour movement will require unity from below.
This crisis is not going to be solved by backroom deals or bureaucratic maneuvering at the top. We have to reject the temptation of union factionalism and focus on building the power of our movement from below. Union members must hold their leaders to account to help solve this impasse and get back to fighting for the interests of workers.
There’s a huge opening across the country to advance a $15 minimum wage organize the most unorganized sectors. The alternative is a divided labour movement that can be easily conquered by the bosses and hostile governments.
can be easily conquered? Already done for most of the workers outside the public sector.
There’s little democracy to be had at Unifor. Their National Executive Board make all the decisions and there is little room for any other viewpoint. It’s a very top-down structure. If grassroots unionism is important to people, they need to take on leadership who are acting without any direction or input from the general membership.
Is there something bigger going on here ? Hassan Yusuff is a UNFOR member and was an executive board member with CAW/ UNIFOR , Hassan’s wife is currently assistant to UNIFOR president Jerry Dias . Either this is an attempt to start a major debate within the Canadian Labor movement , or there is a major in fight happening that extends even deeper.
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Unifor is simply out to bolster their numbers and really doesn’t seem to care who they pick up. They lost the opportunity of 11,000 ATU 113 members and now targetting large locals in an attempt to raise membership. What I have seen of Unifor is exactly as Chris Harris says. “Top down”. There is little to no representation for their members at a local level other than a steward, and the National doesn’t even get involved when an employer starts walking all over an employee.
I’m proud to me an executive board member of a small local with our own board, that represents it’s people and makes sure their jobs and rights are protected.
We are all brothers and sisters involved in the labour movement. Shame on Unifor for what they have done to undermine Unions in this country.
Unifor cant organise the unorganised thats why they raid shame on them
Those who speak about democracy and “top down” executive board at Unifor simply have no idea. Unifor’s Executive Board is made of Rank and File Members from every service sector across the Country (Local Presidents, Local Vice Presidents, Local Secretary/Treasurer, Regional Council Presidents). These brothers and sisters are elected to their local positions by the membership in their respective locals, and then elected to the NEB by the delegates to Councils and Conventions; who were elected to be a delegate by their brothers and sisters at their local.
If having elections was the only feature of democracy, pretty much every jurisdiction in the world could be called democratic. It’s about power residing with the members of the group, not with the leadership. That’s authoritarianism.
As members of Unifor for more than three years before our local was kicked out with no due process, no advance notice, and no reasonable justification, we don’t need lectures about the wonders of Unifor democracy. The most hypocritical part of the Unifor statement is the celebration of grassroots dissent.
A truly democratic union doesn’t make decisions behind closed doors, with no discussion among its members, many of whom found out about the CLC withdrawal through the news. You can defend this old-style “union boss” style of governance all you want, but please don’t insult those of who have experienced Unifor’s brand of “democracy” first-hand.
Unifor has allowed employers to pick union shop stewards a fact that has been well hidden.
Further to this, many SS and others have been appointed and not elected
I am concerned for unions. Does this impact on the stability of the CLC?
If you are advocating for “building a fighting working class movement from below”, how are the goals of that movement going to be defined? Would that definition include ensuring workers have democratic control of their unions or do we build a fighting working class movement from below while our locals are in trusteeship?
By every angle and incident you have covered in this story over the past decade, the failure of the Canadian labour movement to reach unity around the right of workers to change their union has been a longstanding issue for many more such decades – long before UNIFOR and possibly as long as Jerry Dias has actually been alive. This isn’t simply about UNITE-HERE; ATU Local 113; COPE; SEIU; CWA; GCIU or even UAW-CAW. It’s fundamentally a question of whether union locals are democratic and controlled by members, despite making decisions that may infuriate their Washington or Ottawa HQ. If we are not building a fighting working class movement from the union local outward, please describe what it is you intend to build.
This is an excellent piece, and I agree with your conclusion!
There are too many paper locals. MOBILIZE.
Raiding only works if unions are not looking after their workers. It’s all fine and good to talk politics and lobbies, but if people in their jobs are not being protected and unions are siding with their employers, then why wouldn’t they be looking elsewhere? We need strong unions who will fight for their membership, or they become only another layer of fees and bureaucracy.
As a member of an independent Canadian Union that was kicked out of the CLC for leaving our American counterpart, I fully support this statement and move by Unifor. The CLC has long been dominated by huge American Unions that work only on behalf of the organization and not for the Canadian member they are supposed to be serving. Canadian autonomy is critical for a fair, free and democratic Canadian labour movement.
The CPU, now Unifor, have been raiding unions for many years. When they raided the UPIU in the 90’s they were found in violation of the CLC constitution but there was never any sanctions applied by the CLC. Now when the CLC takes action against them for there actions they take their ball and go home. Once a bully always a bully.
The Nationality concept is one big excuse to raid. Inherit reasons justified both trusteeship of Unite Here and ATU Local 113. Bad elections of fraudulent votes flag one ground while the other was unfair elections. The basis of corrupt democracy at its finest.
Nothing to do with Nationality. Just corrupt politics leaving a bad taste on the labour union movement.
BTW, this happens across all of North America.
I am saddned to see UNIFOR , time and time again prooving themselves to be nothing but SLIMY BOTTOM FEEDERS taking advantage of the victims.
As we speak they are raiding UNITE HERE LOCAL 75 as they tried with ATU LOCAL 113, using same execuses as American Invasion, democracy.. blah .. blah
For the last 15 months the Executive Board Members of Unite Here Local 75 raised concerns to the former President Lis Pimentel of violations of the local and international bylaws, have long heated debates, passed motions for the president to correct the violations, discrimination against staff of colour, unfair represantation of members, unfair promotions and demotions of worker reps.
Requested temporary supervision for mediation in vain, simply because of the feeling of entitlement of the president of the local.
After the dead lock 18 of 25 of the Executive Board Members voted in favor of Trusteeship to save the union from further damage.
If Jerry Dias and UNIFOR really beleive in democracy and justice for workers, they should organize the unorganized instead of collaborating and colluding with the outgoing authoritarian president of Unite Here Local 75.
Workers can’t fight borderless and ruthless Global Corporations by wrapping themselves in Canadian flag.
Unions should fight globally and think locally under one big umbrella.
Solidarity forever.
I WAS ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO SAT ON THE EXECUTIVE BOARD AND THE ACCUSATIONS BROUGHT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT. BEING ONE OF THE MINORITY ON THAT BOARD WE ASKED FOR ANY DOCUMENTATION FROM AN INVESTIGATION AND STILL TO THIS DAY THERE ARE NONE. WE ASKED TO HAVE AN OUTSIDE MEDIATOR AND IT WAS REFUSED, ON NUMEROUS OCCASIONS WE HAD TURN OUTS OF 400 PLUS MEMBERS TO HEAR THE FACTS AND WERE TOLD IT WAS AN ILLEGAL MEETING.
THE NOW ACTING TRUSTEE PRESIDENT HAD MANY MEETINGS WITH THE MAJORITY BOARD AND WE THE REMAINING BOARD WERE EXCLUDED. PEOPLE CAN SAY WHAT THEY WILL ABOUT ANY UNION BUT FOR ME AND ALOT OF MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS WE KNEW IT WAS TIME FOR CHANGE. WHAT IM HEARING ALOT OF IS THAT IF YOUR STUCK IN A SHITTY PLACE YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE IT BECAUSE WHERE EVER YOU GO THEY CALL IT RAIDING. AS ONE PERSON SAID IF MY UNION IS GOOD YOU COULD NEVER RAID IT. AND TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT WE WENT LOOKING NOBODY CAME TO US.
Dias wants the freedom to raid International Unions – some in Canada since 1890. If there is one thing that US Unions do well down there, it is (sadly) raid other unions. Canadian Unions have always been admired south of border for not adhering to this practise. Unifor has presented their membership with a Trojan horse. I wonder if workers at US-owned companies in Canada would have better bargaining power if they were represented by a strong International Union with a presence in the USA? Unifor seems to have no luck bargaining with US-based employers. See DJ Composites in Gander, NL. Be careful what you wish for Jerry.
Interesting, CEP was always a bottom-up organization and CAW was very top down. The two will always be at odds.
Well the timing of this labor dispute is truly unfortunate, so much so you would almost have to wonder if unifor is intentionally trying to undermine a critical moment in Canada to organize desperate non unionized wage workers. Seriously. Jerry is appearing like the timely best friend of the big bosses and neo liberal political elites. Who needs to hire big money Union busters when jerry’s around? We absolutely need to condemn this move by Jerry and the unifor elites. The labor movement has a huge opportunity to help the unorganized workers get a fair shake, yet their energy is being spent undermining the labor movement.
The labor movement in Canada should be and needs to be closely allied with labor movements in the US and everywhere else. The fight for workers everywhere is what true solidarity looks like and must be. This is maddening!