In the last 10 years, only three Toronto cops have been fired out of 66 brought before an internal discipline tribunal after being convicted of crimes such as drunk driving and beating suspects and their own wives.
The CBC reports this stunning statistic flatly, as it is required to do, and I will provide the commentary. I would say of this billion-dollar, extremely well-paid, ill-trained, often incompetent and violent force, that Toronto police officers have a job for life. Who among us can say that?
The remaining convicted cops received light punishment like a brief suspension and temporary drop in rank for, say, punching a wife in the head repeatedly, the very kind of violence police are paid to stop.
The police union, which calls itself an “association,” defends this, as it always has. “Even those convicted of a criminal offence could represent a lapse in judgment or even a medical disability and not necessarily warrant dismissal,” interim union president Brian Callanan told the CBC.
By this definition, all crimes are lapses of judgment. If they’re excusable, why do we have jails?
The police association is a terrible union for the many good, law-abiding, devoted police officers but a great one for the stupid, violent ones, the ones I call Forcillos. Good cops don’t like working with thugs — every workplace has them — but the union will always back them up.
We need unions. In this new Gilded Age where the rich became richer while the middle-class remained economically stagnant and worse, almost every workplace should be unionized. But not with unions like these.
the Toronto Star’s Ben Spurr this week reported on another terrible uniondecision. After the 2015 discovery of a massive ongoing benefits fraud by Healthy Fit, a fake clinic that gave kickbacks to 700 TTC workers for lying on workplace insurance forms, 200 workers were fired and 60 resigned.
It was such a huge case of staff fraud that the TTC offered a deal to Local 113, which represents 11,000 workers: anyone who stole less than $5,000 could keep their job if they repaid the money, were briefly suspended, and helped the investigation.
The union leader at the time was allegedly furious and eager to fight, even for the 5 per cent of staff who had clearly committed fraud costing $6.9 million, even though it must have known it would lose. So arbitration continues five years later with the union arguing in one case that a worker didn’t know it was wrong to claim $1,980 for four compression sleeves, receive one, keep $1,200 in cash and give the rest to Healthy Fit.
The result has been hearty laughter among lawyers and arbitrators. The union has no case. So why fight it?
Recall serial killer Elizabeth Wettlaufer, defended between murders by the Ontario Nurses’ Association, which grieved her suspension, sealed her file, and insisted she be given a good reference. She killed eight elderly people left vulnerable in long-term care to a monster who stopped by their beds in the night.
I am a proud Unifor member — even newsrooms campaigning for the hard right are unionized — and I argue that we need more unionization. When you encounter trouble at work — which will happen at badly managed workplaces — someone has to have your back, and that’s the union.
But perhaps unions have to shift their frames a little. Some have fallen into a ludicrous Trumpish trap that everything is either black or white. Not true. There are shades of grey. Unions shouldn’t defend the indefensible.
When they succeed, talented workers end up working alongside disgraceful people. The damage to morale becomes a citywide rot.
The pandemic has taught us that in times of terror, we should work together, be rational and fair-minded. Loblaws should have faced a national strike after ending its wage top-up for front-line staff. I note that my own little personal Loblaws boycott had, strangely, no effect whatsoever. There’s power in numbers.
Workers need fair treatment. It won’t happen without unions working with management for better times ahead.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2020/10/27/unions-shouldnt-defend-the-indefensible.html?source=newsletter&utm_content=a04&utm_source=ts_nl&utm_medium=email&utm_email=0C810E7AE4E7C3CEB3816076F6F9881B&utm_campaign=top_34754
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