Yahoo Finance Howard Levitt: How the left is doubling down on its anti-Israel misadventure
It is propitious that, since Oct. 7, the left has been exposed for its utter venality. Better yet, when challenged, it is now doubling down. Hamas showed the world what “from the river to the sea” really means, i.e. “slaughter the Jews.” Western progressives had been so badly played and become so brainwashed that they are now joining in these chants, dehumanizing and demonizing Israelis to the point of celebrating their rank murder.
And that takes us to Canada’s largest union. My firm is suing CUPE, along with its president, Fred Hahn, before the federal and Ontario human rights tribunals. We accuse them, on behalf of many Jewish members, of cheerleading the Oct. 7 pogrom while it was still going on as well as generally creating a toxic anti-Semitic working environment for those members rather than representing them as it should.
Rather than being chastened by our lawsuit, CUPE local 3903 has just published a pamphlet for teaching assistants at York University that I would characterize as viciously anti-Semitic and which, by the way, also takes a shot at Canada, describing it as “the Canadian settler state.”
That is similar to the description of Israel in the Toronto Metropolitan University student petition, the notoriety of which has consigned many of its students to career purgatory as law firms and the Ontario attorney general now refuse to employ them.
In its pamphlet, CUPE’s logo is redrawn to include the Palestinian flag.
This guide asked the York teaching assistants to refuse to teach their assigned courses in the last week of January, or, as it puts it, to “refuse to abide by York University‘s culture of oppressive normalcy,” demanding that they collectively divert the week’s tutorials, whether they be art, science, math, history, or anything at all, to lecture their students instead on “Palestinian liberation.”
Even though the notoriously anti-Israeli UN Court refused South Africa’s request to declare a genocide in Gaza, CUPE had no such compunction, and demanded its TAs teach that genocide as fact. It went so far as to call out Hillel, the Jewish student organization, for particular calumny, even though York’s Jewish students already feel beleaguered, betrodden and endangered at the school. Hillel, the student social club for Jewish students who want to meet and mingle with others, is described as a “Zionist cultural institution” and York’s academic relationship with it makes York “complicit” in Israel’s “genocidal violence.” It also informs its teaching assistant members that they have a “moral and professional responsibility” to “disrupt York’s complicity in settler colonialism here in Canada,” which it calls Turtle Island, adding that our country, too, is currently a purveyor of “settler-colonial violence.” You can’t make this stuff up.
My advice to affected union members is to expose the union’s behaviour on social media, organize against it, make clear that they will not participate in any union activity and will continue to work if the union calls a strike.
They could also commence a lawsuit, potentially a class-action lawsuit, against the union for intentional infliction of mental stress, conspiracy to injure, intimidation and defamation.
Another option is to petition the union to cease its activities, and, if they do not receive a response, publish the letters on social media, and provide copies to the university to use against CUPE. They also can file an application with the labour relation board on the ground that the union has breached its duty of fair presentation in a manner that was discriminatory and in bad faith toward Jewish students.
Finally, of all the most difficult, they can attempt to organize to decertify the union or replace it’s leadership.
But I don’t write this merely to castigate CUPE, which I have no higher expectation of, but also the administration of York, which has justified its reputation as the most unsafe university for Jewish students in Canada.
When employees refuse to perform their jobs in concert, that is, at law, an illegal strike, something of which York is obviously aware.
It should have fired the perpetrators of the missive and should have warned all TAs that they would be suspended without pay if they acted on CUPE’s edict.
They should still suspend those who followed the union’s instructions and deprived the students of the curriculum they paid for.
Instead, York’s response was tepid and its statement, milquetoast, with no sanctions whatsoever. It called for “dialogue.” Dialogue is not what is needed at a university when students studies are deliberately hijacked.
York is in bargaining right now with this union and should be demanding clauses in its collective agreement that protect its students from the union’s own conduct, which I believe is discriminatory. I am not sanguine at the prospect of any of this occurring.
Howard Levitt is senior partner of Levitt Sheikh, employment and labour lawyers with offices in Toronto and Hamilton. He practices employment law in eight provinces and is the author of six books including the Law of Dismissal in Canada.
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