Howard Levitt: A union should stand up for its members, not a foreign regime hostile to organized labour

A woman holds a heart shaped sign in the colours of the Iranian flag as protesters rally during a 'No War on Iran' demonstration outside the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 18. Photo by APU GOMES/AFP via Getty Images files

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Earlier this week, a flyer began circulating online promoting a June 22 rally against the war between Israel and Iran. “Hands off Iran,” the flyer said, and invited protesters to gather outside the U.S. consulate in Toronto.

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An accompanying social media post called for “building and preserving unity in confronting Zionism” and pledged support for the Palestinian and Iranian people, and “all people across the world who continue to resist imperialist and Zionist domination.”

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The lead sponsor of the event, it turns out, is the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). The union drew immediate criticism and condemnation from politicians, the media and many of its own members.

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The flyer was taken down, and CUPE issued a statement saying it was “an early unapproved draft version” and that an approved flyer “would be shared shortly.”

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However, they have issued no such new version, and the demonstration is going ahead.

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The mishandling of promotional material for such an obviously contentious event (if it was mishandled, which I question), should alone raise alarm bells about CUPE’s leadership. But the fact that the union is involved in this event at all is beyond the pale.

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Iran has the world‘s worst human rights record, and a well-known history of torturing and murdering its dissidents, raping female prisoners, persecuting minorities and sponsoring terrorism around the world.

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It is also famously opposed to organized labour, and CUPE itself has previously condemned the Iranian regime for persecuting labour activists.

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So why is Ontario CUPE organizing a rally in support of Iran, a country recognized by Canada (and others) as a state supporter of terrorism? Does it hate Jews so much that it would ally itself with a regime that, other than antisemitism, opposes everything the union ostensibly stands for?

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For years, I have had Jewish union members complaining to me about antisemitism in their unions, particularly public sector ones. This dramatically exacerbated after Oct. 7 when unions, along with universities and the radical left, organized and came out to support the pro-Hamas rallies that ubiquitously took over Canadian streets.

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Their Jewish members, unsurprisingly, felt discriminated against, disenfranchised by their unions’ public position supporting groups calling for their extermination.

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Remember, CUPE’s legal obligation is to represent its members, not discriminate against them. Similarly, as unions conducted DEI seminars, Jewish members felt excluded — not only because the seminars failed to recognize them as a group that, according to Statistics Canada, experienced dramatically more discrimination than any other, but because the DEI trainers characterized Jews as residing at the top of the hierarchical pyramid, part of the “white oppressor class.”

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This is similar to the experience of Jewish employees compelled to attend corporate DEI seminars with the same anti-semitic messaging, but seemed even worse because their unions were ostensibly there to protect them against just such discrimination.