| Kelly Patrick | |
| CanWest News Service; National Post |
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TORONTO – Members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees angry about their Ontario wing’s boycott of Israel are taking their case to the streets and to the courtroom.
As many as 200 members of four Toronto CUPE locals plan to hold an information picket outside CUPE Ontario’s Scarborough offices at noon Friday.
“It’s basically countering anything that (CUPE Ontario president) Sid Ryan has said that Israel has done or not done,” said Lil Nobel, president of CUPE local 2063, which represents about 80 workers at three Toronto Jewish organizations.
“It’s about the truisms of what Israel is and why it shouldn’t be boycotted.”
Meanwhile, a University of Toronto teaching assistant is spearheading a lawsuit against CUPE Ontario he hopes will force the courts to clarify how much money a union can spend on causes he says are “manifestly irrelevant” to its members’ interests.
“Why is this union taking a stance, wasting its time, money, energy and resources on the (Israel) issue, which is manifestly irrelevant to us, when all these other serious concerns exist?” said Daniel Nadler, a 23-year-old graduate student in political science.
He plans to file his suit in the next month or two.
Nadler, who is Jewish, said his union should focus on improving post-secondary education and the pay and working conditions of sessional instructors and teaching assistants, not on taking “partisan” stances on protracted overseas conflicts.
CUPE’s Ontario division represents between 10,000 and 12,000 teaching assistants at 12 Ontario universities.
Ryan, CUPE Ontario’s president, said he could not comment on a lawsuit that has yet to be filed. But he welcomed Friday’s information picket as a sign the union is “vibrant and democratic.”
“There’s a long history in CUPE of locals expressing their opinions,” he said. “The only thing I’d say to them is that it’s not going to change the democratic decision of our union.”
At its convention in Ottawa on May 27, CUPE Ontario unanimously passed a resolution supporting an “international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination.”
The resolution also committed the union to developing an education campaign about “the apartheid nature of the Israeli state” and to calling on its parent union, CUPE National, to research Canadian involvement in what it calls the occupation of the Palestinian territories.
CUPE National, which is the country’s largest union, has said it will neither endorse nor renounce the Ontario wing’s resolution.
The four Toronto CUPE locals helping organize Friday’s information picket represent workers at the Bathurst Jewish Community Centre, the Jewish Immigrant Aid Service, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the UJA Federation Toronto, the Jewish Vocational Service a non-sectarian employment agency and Jewish Family & Child Service.
None of the locals are affiliated with the Ontario arm of the union. Affiliation with the union’s provincial wing is voluntarily, Ryan said.
One of the locals, which represents workers at Jewish Family & Child Service, pulled out of the provincial division after the recent resolution on Israel passed, Ryan said.
The others pulled out earlier or had not been affiliated with CUPE Ontario for some time.
Nobel said she has received calls and e-mails from many non-Jewish supporters in other unions who are expected to join the information picket.
Nadler said he and the other teaching assistants who have expressed an interest in joining his lawsuit aren’t seeking reimbursement of their union dues, which amount to $1.25 per month per teaching assistant.
Instead, Nadler wants the courts to rule on whether unions can spend funds in ways “not clearly permitted by their constitutions.”
He cited the Israel “education campaign” which CUPE Ontario promised in its controversial May 27 resolution as an example of something that would not directly benefit workers, but which could cost money. That, he argued, could violate the union’s constitution.
Ryan said that, so far, the union has not spent a cent on the education campaign.
CUPE Ontario does not set aside money in its budget to support passing resolutions on domestic or international political questions, he said.
David Robbins, a spokesman for CUPE’s national office, also said the umbrella union does not calculate its budget that way.
Ryan defended his union’s long tradition of taking stances on international affairs.
“We’re being told every day at the bargaining table that we’re living in a globalized world and we better get used to it,” he said. “We’ve got every right to be involved in politics at that level and it’s directly related to the livelihoods of our members.”
National Post