Jerry Dias takes a question from a journalist at a news conference in Toronto on Sept. 22, 2020.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
The race to replace beleaguered former Unifor leader Jerry Dias as head of Canada’s largest private-sector union took a surprising turn on Tuesday, with the addition of a new high-ranking executive member to the contest.
Lana Payne – the current national secretary-treasurer who has been the primary spokesperson for Unifor after Mr. Dias’s controversial retirement – announced that she will run for national president of Unifor, after being asked by union members to “step up” in light of the organization’s recent troubles.
In late March, shortly after announcing his retirement because of health reasons, Mr. Dias was accused by the union of breaching its code of ethics for accepting a $50,000 payment from a supplier of COVID-19 test kits in exchange for promoting those kits to union employers. The union has said that it intends to hold a hearing on the matter in the near future.
The Toronto Police Service’s Financial Crimes Unit has opened an investigation into Mr. Dias after the union, upon advice of its lawyers, handed over $25,000, the part of the money in question, to the police last week.
Aide to former Unifor boss Jerry Dias was whistle-blower over alleged $50,000 payment
“I had been asked by many locals and members to run and I told them I did not intend to be a candidate,” Ms. Payne wrote to members of Unifor’s national executive board in an e-mail dated April 11, and obtained by The Globe and Mail.
“But after a great deal of thought and after receiving many personal notes, messages and calls from Unifor members and locals asking me to step up in light of the events of the past few weeks, I have decided to answer that call.”
Up until Ms. Payne announced her candidacy, the contest was a two-way battle between Scott Doherty – a long-time executive assistant to Mr. Dias – and Dave Cassidy, the Windsor-based head of Unifor Local 444, which mainly represents auto workers. Earlier this year, the national executive board – Unifor’s leadership branch which includes Ms. Payne – had endorsed Mr. Doherty to be president.
But around the same time that Ms. Payne announced her candidacy publicly in a Facebook post on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Doherty published his own post on the social-media site asking that the board remove its endorsement of him for president.
“Though I would have preferred to continue working with Lana as national secretary-treasurer, I respect her decision to run and look forward to a respectful campaign,” he wrote.
Unifor, which represents more than 300,000 workers including some of The Globe’s editorial staff, was founded in 2013 via a merger between the Canadian Auto Workers union (CAW) and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP).
The union’s election system, which dates back to even before the merger, was traditionally very centralized – one where a single endorsed candidate would typically get elected, according to Stephanie Ross, director of the School of Labour Studies at McMaster University.
“With the Dias issue, we were already in uncharted territory, but this is a very unusual development,” Prof. Ross said.
In light of the allegation against Mr. Dias and an external investigation into his conduct, Ms. Payne has pledged to run a campaign focusing on “transparency, accountability and inclusion,” according to the internal e-mail and her Facebook post.
In a news release from February, Mr. Cassidy had also vowed to bring “change” and “transparency” to Unifor, and criticized the union’s endorsement process for the election of a new president.
Ms. Payne has been in the union movement for almost three decades, first as member of the Fish Food and Allied Workers Union (FFAW) and then as director of the Atlantic Region for Unifor. Ms. Ross, who is also co-author of Building a Better World: An Introduction to the Labour Movement in Canada said that Ms. Payne’s background is more unconventional not just because she is a woman in a predominantly male union, but also because she hails from a union and a region that is outside the orbit of traditional union politics.
Larry Savage, a professor of Labour Studies at Brock University told The Globe that in the wake of Unifor’s recent scandal, it is vital that a new leader focuses on regaining trust of union members and the public, especially at a time where union enrolment rates in Canada are largely static.
“Are you driven to lead a union for self-interested, careerist reasons, or do you see it as a vehicle for collective economic justice? That’s a key difference, when deciding who is fit to lead a union,” he said.
Unifor will hold a special convention to elect a new leader – the date of that gathering has not been announced.
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