Public-sector unions have gained significant attention over the past year, but not for the reasons one might think. We expect to see unions making headlines when they are dealing with collective bargaining, workers’ rights and ensuring job security and fairness for workers. However, public sector-unions have instead dominated headlines for their biased and discriminatory statements about geopolitical issues — positions that have revealed a troubling underlying agenda.
This past year in particular, CUPE Ontario has repeatedly demonstrated antisemitic tendencies, focusing almost exclusively on the Israel-Hamas conflict and spreading endless amounts of disinformation and propaganda. As recently as Oct. 20, Fred Hahn, president of CUPE Ontario and general vice-president of CUPE’s national executive board, delivered a speech at an anti-Israel protest following chants that glorified Hamas terrorist Yahya Sinwar.
Unfortunately, this behaviour extends beyond CUPE Ontario. CUPE national seems to be following closely behind, as demonstrated in part by its inability to remove Hahn from his executive position, even after he was found in breach of the union’s equality statement.
Moreover, on Sept. 19, CUPE released its “International Solidarity Report 2023-2024.” The cover featured two women in keffiyehs, which set the tone for the rest of the report. While there was mention of several countries facing urgent worker struggles, there was an obvious focus on Palestine. Analysis of Palestinian worker issues is indeed important, but the contents of the report were not that. The report was, instead, replete with one-sided, unfounded accusations and disinformation.
It failed to recognize that, prior to October 7, Israel provided almost 150,000 work permits to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; it neglected to assign any blame to the terrorist organization Hamas for the oppression it has inflicted on the Palestinian people; and it equated innocent Israeli and foreign national hostages with prisoners in Israeli jails convicted of terrorist attacks, among numerous other misinformed statements.
The report, in fact, reads more like a propaganda tool seeking to indoctrinate CUPE members than a report pertaining to worker rights, and it has done a disservice to anyone who holds a sincere interest in promoting international solidarity.
This is why, shocked with the biased report, 49 Jewish CUPE members from 16 CUPE locals across the country sent an email to CUPE’s national president and secretary-treasurer expressing our objections to the document. After one month, CUPE decided to have an executive assistant respond on its behalf, only to deflect and minimize our legitimate concerns, with no offer of support or remedy.
Unions have been quick to blame the “Jewish lobby” for such “attacks,” but, when it is their own members coming to them, they utterly fail to even acknowledge our very real concerns.
We collectively demand accountability from CUPE, to ensure fair and equitable representation within our union. We deserve to know what proportion of our union dues went into this report and others like it, and how the union is allocating our hard-earned money to promote its political agenda.
I am left wondering just how deeply the rot runs in Canada’s public-sector unions. How long have they been sowing covert seeds of hate against the Jewish people and the State of Israel? And, considering their bias, how can we expect them to represent us fairly as public-sector workers in Canada?
Now is the time for all union members, both Jewish and non-Jewish, to unite in demanding accountability and take a stand against the political decay that’s corrupting our unions and diverting resources from vital worker issues here in Canada. Instead of focusing on disseminating hateful disinformation about geopolitical issues that seek only to divide us, it’s time for CUPE — and all other public-sector unions — to prioritize the interests of Canadian workers.
National Post
Lauren Frenkel has been a CUPE member for four years and is also a member of the Canadian Jewish Labour Committee.