Labour council meets after harassment claims
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/04/2019 (1808 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The spectre of Basia Sokal’s pending resignation hung over the Winnipeg Labour Council (WLC) on Tuesday night as the group’s monthly meeting kicked off with the reading of an anti-harassment policy statement.
It was the group’s first meeting since Sokal, the current council president, announced her intention to resign last month, citing alleged sexual harassment and bullying by male union colleagues. She is currently on a leave of absence and wasn’t present at Tuesday’s meeting.
“Complaints of harassment at all labour council functions will be taken seriously and will be investigated immediately by the representative of the Canadian Labour Congress and a member of the Winnipeg Labour Council,” executive member Mike Kelly told the room of roughly 50 attendees.
When Sokal announced her intention to resign last month, she said she’d complained about the alleged harassment and bullying to union leaders and executives, as well as the Manitoba NDP, but that her concerns fell on deaf ears.
She has been president of the WLC since January 2017 and an interim president has been named in her absence. The group’s next scheduled council election is set for November.
At the meeting, slips of paper were handed out inviting “WLC members, affiliates and Winnipeg-based labour activists to participate in an anonymous survey about experiences in the labour movement.”
It’s unclear if the survey was a direct result of Sokal’s allegations.
Not long after the anti-harassment policy was read out, a delegate from the United Steelworkers Local 9074 proposed a motion to bar any non-delegates — including the media — from sitting in on the meeting, as well as all future meetings.
“The people that are in this room should be duly qualified delegates from their union and nobody else. I have a concern with that, because I do not want to have this labour council have their dirty laundry aired in public anymore,” he said.
Seven people rose to speak against the motion and it was subsequently voted down by an overwhelming majority of the delegates present.
Later in the meeting, the same delegate from the United Steelworkers Local 9074 rose again to claim he’d recently reviewed the WLC’s financial books and found a number of concerning “irregularities.” As a result of his concerns, he said an independent forensic audit was called for.
“Some of these are not legitimate expenses… (A forensic audit) is not a great cost for us to go out and say, ‘We’re doing everything right.’ Cost should not be an issue,” he said, after a number of delegates expressed concern over the potential price tag associated with such an audit.
However, the motion to fund an independent forensic audit of the WLC’s books was voted down by an overwhelming margin, only gaining support from a handful of delegates.
ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca
Ryan Thorpe
Reporter
Ryan Thorpe likes the pace of daily news, the feeling of a broadsheet in his hands and the stress of never-ending deadlines hanging over his head.
History
Updated on Wednesday, April 17, 2019 6:28 AM CDT: Adds photos