CUPE Cooks a Turkey

CUPE members would rather be talking turkey. But yesterday they were cooking turkey.

CUPE members are on strike in Vancouver. Yesterday was Day 24 of the strike in which inside and outside City government workers, from librarians to garbage collectors, are off the job. But workers at Carnegie Center’s low cost cafeteria on the Downtown Eastside, Canada’s poorest neighbourhood, are on the job because Labour Relations has labeled the cafeteria an essential service. This is partly because people volunteer at Carnegie to earn 80 cents an hour in vouchers which they trade for food in the cafeteria. People can also use money to buy meals in the cafeteria.

And you don’t need much money. Yesterday CUPE members, along with volunteers, produced a turkey dinner and here’s what you got for three dollars:

• Turkey: everybody got a mix of white and brown meat.
• A scoop of steamed red cabbage.
• A scoop of steamed carrots, not overcooked, still a bit crunchy, with a few green peas tossed in.
• Brown rice, short grain. Carnegie switched to brown rice last year after years of serving white rice.
• A large slice of homemade brown bread with margarine.
• Chocolate chips and banana cake, with chocolate icing. Carnegie makes their desserts and muffins low in sugar. There is a diabetes epidemic in this neighbourhood, so if you want to skip the cake, they’ll let you chose an apple, banana, or orange for dessert instead.

The City-funded cafeteria in Canada's most used community center wasn’t as busy last evening as usual. That could be because the strike has closed services which draw a steady stream of people into the building: the small Vancouver Public library just off the lobby, and the public access computers in the basement and on the 3rd floor. But even with a slower evening than usual, the sixty meals — that’s the number prepared seven evenings a week – would probably sell out. Other food is sold at the cafeteria too: soup for 75 cents, sandwiches, low-sugar blueberry muffins, and even homemade granola for a buck a bowl with soy drink or milk to pour over it.

And CUPE hasn’t cut off the coffee. Despite the strike, you can still get a good cup of coffee in the basement of Carnegie. There is a volunteer on duty – a few volunteers are still allowed to work in the building, but only in food service — selling coffee down there. It’s Guatemalan, freshly ground everyday. Sixty cents for a small takeout, with real cream. There’s a television blaring down there too, but not much else going on during the strike.

When Phil, a security guard, walked through the cafeteria as people ate their turkey, a volunteer asked him about the strike. The City doesn’t want to bargain, Phil responded. The City, though, accuses CUPE of not wanting to bargain. CUPE is up against the current Non-Partisan Association City Council which is less union-friendly than the previous Committee of Progressive Electors City Council which CUPE helped bring to power. “It looks like it could be a long strike,” Phil said.

For another CUPE strike-related story, see CUPE Boss Asked to Settle With Secretary

Harper Asked to Cut Cash to Carnegie

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has been asked to intercept a federal New Horizons grant applied for by Lucy Alderson, Co-ordinator of the Carnegie Learning Centre. That is, until allegations of human rights abuses against Alderson and Carnegie Director, Ethel Whitty, are investigated.

When Alderson's application for a $25,000 New Horizons grant was announced at the June Board meeting of the Carnegie Centre, it raised eyebrows amongst several Carnegie members. One purpose of the grant was "outreach to the homeless".

That started the jokes: "Maybe when Alderson is doing outreach to the homeless, she will run into the homeless man she banned from the Learning Centre for blogging."

In Dec. 2006, Alderson had escorted homeless man Bill Simpson to the office of Skip, Head of Security at Carnegie, where she told him that he was barred from the Learning Centre. She explained that it was because he had been writing on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. Simpson says he is not a blogger but even if he were, the Downtown Eastside Enquirer is a legitimate blog which can support all claims with witnesses or documentation.

The Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog had criticized Alderson for too frequently locking low income residents out of the Learning Centre or evacuating them in mid-day. She consistently used the same excuse: a volunteer hadn't shown up. Bloggers took the position that with the massive government funding received by Carnegie Centre to provide services to the poor, whether doors to educational and computer services were locked should not be determined by whether an alcoholic volunteer had gone on a binge.

The blog also criticized Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty. In addition to being criticized for at times sitting in her office while doors to educational and computer services just meters away were locked, Whitty was criticized last fall for allowing misleading comments to be made to the public. Whitty and those under her, led the media to believe that an opera put on in the Carnegie theatre at considerable public expense had been written and produced primarily by homeless people. A DTES Enquirer blogger pointed out that when you get past the actors, writers, and musicians with houses, condos, or good social housing, you find just one homeless man.

Although Simpson was the only person barred from the Learning Centre for blogging, a witch hunt for the blogger was carried out in the Carnegie Learning Centre and the rest of the building last December. Volunteers were questioned. One long term volunteer was traumatized by being interrogated by six staff persons, including Whitty and Alderson. All interrogated him seperately, he says, with the exception of Alderson who paired up with a Learning Centre teacher, Betsy. Whitty and Alderson even attempted to get him to 'turn in' one of his closest friends, who had been seen talking to Simpson. He told them that his friend was not a blogger. But he admits giving them confidential information about medical research she was doing on the internet, claiming that he felt pressured: "I had to give them something." The volunteer has now recovered and holds no grudges against these staff persons but jokingly calls them, "The Inquisitors".

Shortly after these interrogations, when Alderson barred Simpson in the office of Carnegie Security, she told him that she had a very reliable "witness" to the fact that he had been blogging on the Downtown Eastside Enquirer in the Learning Centre. She gave enough information about this mysterious witness in the Learning Centre that it led Simpson to the volunteer interrogated by "The Inquisitors". But this volunteer denies that he ever told Whitty or Alderson with certainty that Simpson was blogging on the DTES Enquirer.

Whitty acknowledged at a recent Community Relations meeting at Carnegie that she had "supported" the barring of Simpson from the Learning Centre. And she acknowledges that he was never given a reason in writing. She says she did not give him one because the barring was not her decision.

Whitty is downplaying her role in eroding Simpson's civil liberties at the Carnegie Learning Centre. Before Simpson was barred from the Learning Centre for the long term, he had been barred for an afternoon in November 2006. Chad M., a monitor in the Learning Centre that afternoon, went to Whitty and told her that Simpson had done nothing that would justify barring him. He said Whitty refused to take his version of events into account and upheld the barring, which had been instigated by her staff person Colleen Gorrie and a Learning Centre teacher, Betsy. Chad, however, was the primary witness to the incident in which a woman, Bharb G., had launched into a verbal tirade against Simpson outside the elevator on the 3rd floor of Carnegie, accused him of blogging about the opera in which she had acted, stalked him into the Learning Centre, and continued the verbal abuse despite Chad repeatedly asking her to stop. There was a basis for barring Bharb for the afternoon in Chad's view, but none for barring Simpson.

[The Learning Centre is funded by Capilano College which has a largely hands off approach. Staff under Whitty's supervision are involved in the Learning Center: Rika Uto, Colleen Gorrie as well as security guards. The Learning Centre does not operate entirely independently of Whitty and the Carnegie. Certainly, it is Whitty's responsibility as Director to ensure that any member of the Carnegie is allowed due process and a written reason when being barred from an entire section of the building.]

It's now been almost eight months since Simpson claimed he was told by Alderson that he was barred from the Learning Centre for blogging. The barring was reported in the DTES Enquirer and on major internet news sites, and the details never disputed by Whitty or Alderson. Now Whitty has edited out the "blogging" reason for the barring. At a Community Relations meeting at Carnegie in late July, Whitty claimed that Simpson had been barred from the Learning Centre because he was not a student. Simpson can prove that he was a student. He was registered under the tutor, Chad M.

Carnegie member, Debbie Gosselin, pointed out the obvious to Whitty at the meeting: even people who are not registered students are allowed into the Carnegie Learning Centre. It's an open facility where people drop in to sit and read a book or a newspaper, sometimes eating their lunch at one of the tables.

Whitty appeared not to be entirely on the same page as Alderson who, after permanently barring Simpson from the Learning Centre, had "walked up behind [him] in the hall" and told him that he could return to the Learning Centre after three months -- indicating she did not dispute the fact that he qualified as a student. During that encounter, Simpson reminded Alderson that he had given her a letter requesting that the reason for the barring be put in writing, "And I would like a response in kind." Alderson didn't provide the reason in writing and never again raised the issue of him returning to the Learning Centre.

Despite being barred from the Learning Centre, Simpson managed to get elected to the Board of Directors at Carnegie in June 2007. Just days later, on June 21st, Whitty arranged for security guards to hold Simpson at the front door until she delivered a letter to him from the City barring him from the entire building "indefinitely". His crime? His website, he was told in the letter, "features links" to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog. It appeared that he was no longer being accused of being the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blogger, just linking to the blog.

Simpson recalls that just before he was barred, he was able to attend a Learning Centre Committee meeting in his role as a new Board member. He asked about the graduation scheduled for the following Tuesday, wanting to know who from Capilano College would be attending. (He was hoping to button-hole a representative of Capilano College management and ask their position on this barring issue.) Alderson, he said, appeared "rattled" but he noted that she didn't actually say anything. A day or two later, he was barred from the entire building. Guess who would not be attending the graduation to ask embarrassing questions?

The Bill Simpson case is not an isolated one. Low income people are routinely barred at Carnegie without due process. Board member Rachel Davis told Co-op radio two weeks ago that there is supposed to be an incident report written up by Security to accompany a barring. But often an incident report is not produced, Davis explained, and if it is the barred person is denied access to it.

Prime Minister Harper was contacted on July 18th and asked to ensure that the conduct of Alderson and Whitty was reviewed before another grant is approved. His office or somebody from the Ministry responsible really should have gotten back to us by now, says a community member who does not want to be identified. "I know it's cottage time back in Ontario but we have a human rights crisis here inside Libby's Davies [Carnegie] organizing base and it won't get better if he keeps throwing money at the offenders." When it comes to human rights, to steal a slogan from Harper, 'The West Wants In'.

CUPE Boss Asked to Settle with Secretary

Paul Moist, President of CUPE National, sent a letter to striking Vancouver civic workers on July 23, 2007 in which he stated:

“In short, we want fairness and to date this has not materialized….”

With the language Moist was using, he could have been a secretary.

For years, a former secretary to two CUPE Presidents in Vancouver has been saying all she wants is “fairness” in her grievance against CUPE. In Dec. 2002, CUPE called police on this secretary after she exposed the fact that for years, CUPE had been operating what she alleged was a “non-union sweatshop” inside Local 116. Vancouver Police Constables M. Herrmann and K. Ng – who did not even have jurisdiction at Local 116; the RCMP did – visited her apartment and left voice mail instructing her that CUPE wanted her to silence herself about unfair labor practices.

The secretary left CUPE with two glowing letters of reference but she knew too much. She had seen secretaries working for CUPE Local 116 -- the Local was staff exclusively with non-union secretaries -- fired after speaking up about excessive workloads, chronic verbal abuse from a CUPE Vice President, and the fact that CUPE had reneged on a promised pension. She saw a 12-yr veteran secretary take CUPE to court for a pension. She saw a long term book keeper fired when she became less efficient after getting cancer. "I was a credible witness corroborating other women's stories," says the secretary, "and CUPE didn't like that." Another secretary who had attempted to pursue the issue of unjust firings got a Cease & Desist letter, the secretary recalls. She believes that CUPE sent police to her home to throw a scare into her, to weaken her resolve.

“CUPE members across Canada applaud your solidarity and your resolve.”
Paul Moist, in his letter to members

The secretary has written to Paul Moist, President of CUPE National, in Ottawa to ask that he settle her case. She would like Moist to reverse what she alleges was CUPE's "hypocritical stance" in the case, that stance being that writing to labor leaders about unfair labour practices is “evidence” of criminal activity. She would like him to have CUPE lawyers remove from the police Property Office the letter she sent to CUPE National in 2002 about unfair labour practices inside Local 116, as well as the one she addressed specifically to Barry O’Neill at CUPE BC, and the one she addressed to Jim Sinclair of the BC Federation of Labor.

And while CUPE is taking back letters filed in the Police Property Office, the secretary says they should also take back one written by Paul Cooke, Vice President of CUPE Local 116 (he left not long afterwards after considerable in-fighting.) Cooke had written the 2002 letter on union letter head and sent it to a long list of people – but concealed it from the secretary -- falsely claiming that the secretary had merely been a “part-time” worker at CUPE and had never mentioned excessive workloads before leaving. She has pay stubs confirming that she was a full time secretary. And she has a handwritten letter from Paul Cooke apologizing for “working you too hard”.

Not only would the secretary like Paul Moist to acknowledge that writing to labor leaders about unfair labor practices is not criminal conduct, but that it does not constitue the specific offence of "harassment". The police report reveals that the secretary, at the request of CUPE, was investigated for “WORKPLACE HARASSMENT” and the case labeled “CLOSED”. The secretary attempted to have this defamatory phrase adjacent to her name on the police computer expunged but the VPD responded in writing that it would remain on file for “99 years”. The secretary then wrote to O’Neill and Sinclair informing them that as long as this label remained on her record, she would ensure that it remained on their public record as labour leaders -- as they should be protecting people speaking up about working conditions, not smearing them. After that, something mysterious happened. She discovered that the offence for which she had originally been investigated, the one at the top of the police report she had obtained through Freedom of Information shortly after CUPE called police, had been altered. It was now, “HARASSMENT/OBSCENE COMMUNICATION”. It was fraudulently altered roughly a year after the case had been labeled “CLOSED” by the VPD. She wants this retroactively altered “offence” to be removed from police files.

The above issues are just two of several that the secretary has been asking CUPE for years to deal with in a fair way.

“There are many issues . . .and these must be dealt with in a fair way….”
Paul Moist, in his letter to CUPE members

Before and after the police complaint was lodged against her, the secretary says that CUPE never made even one attempt to deal fairly with the issues. A CUPE lawyer, Ian Aikenhead had contacted her in writing and she had responded in writing, only to discover later that her polite response letter had been filed in the police Property Office. (She also discovered through the police report that Aikenhead had released to police confidential information – albeit exaggerated and misrepresented -- that he had in his possession as a result of his wife, Catherine Aikenhed, being an NDP-appointed public representative to a dental regulatory body.) When she asked O’Neill and Sinclair to personally ensure that her letters addressed to them were removed from the police Property Office, they completely ignored her. They had ignored her prior to the police complaint as well. CUPE leaders resort to smear and intimidation, in the secretary's view, instead of dealing with the real issues. “I often hear CUPE use the term ‘good faith’ in bargaining,” says the secretary, "but in my case I’ve never seen CUPE show any sign of good faith”

“Lower Mainland employers have to date refused to bargain in good faith and to address the real issues….”
Paul Moist, in his letter to CUPE members.

The secretary says she would like Moist to put a stop to CUPE’s double standard: one standard for how dues-paying members deserve to be treated and a much lower standard for how their own employees deserve to be treated. She believes that resolving her case would be a good starting point.

Related article: CUPE Strike Haunted by Secretary Scandal

Cease & Desist Order To Target Jacquie Forbes-Roberts at City Hall

If Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, the Mayor’s top woman in his Civil City initiative, can’t be civil, she is going to be slapped with a Cease & Desist order. “This is bullying!”, says Carnegie Centre Board member Grant Chauncey of the behaviour of Forbes-Roberts’, who is also General Manager of Community Services. Chauncey was speaking to a small group of Carnegie Centre Board members and the public at a Community Relations Meeting at Carnegie Centre last Thursday afternoon, July 26th .

A couple of Carnegie Board members are heading to Pivot Legal Society on the Downtown Eastside to ask about the possibility of a Cease & Desist order for Forbes-Roberts. The first step, explained Chauncey, would be to have a lawyer send Forbes-Roberts a letter telling her to cease and desist and that if she does not, we will go to the courts to ask that she stop. Chauncey and others would like Forbes-Roberts to stop blocking Carnegie Board member Bill Simpson from entering the Carnegie building until such time as mediation can be arranged between Simpson and herself. Chauncey, like numerous Carnegie members, insists that Forbes-Roberts has no evidence to support barring Simpson from the building.

The Cease & Desist would be a response to a letter Forbes-Roberts had delivered to Simpson on June 21st, just after he was elected to the Carnegie Board of Directors. She notified the homeless man in the letter that he was barred from entering the Carnegie Centre “indefinitely”. Simpson now stands outside on the sidewalk as Board meetings take place inside, with security guards instructed to prevent him from entering the building. Supporters of Simpson say they want Forbes-Roberts to adopt a more civil approach to an elected official.

Chauncey pointed out that Carnegie Centre members make rules and regulations governing behaviour in the Centre and that Forbes-Roberts is overriding them. “She obviously has no respect for any of our rules. Within the guidelines that we have regarding behaviour, Bill Simpson has not broken an iota, anything. He has not to my knowledge broken any rule or regulation and she, Jacquie Forbes-Roberts, has made no accusation of anything he did wrong. And so they’re making a decision on what? We don’t know. But as far as it being legal…she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. She’s doing it to usurp the community.

“People are in an uproar about this,” said Sophia Friegang, a Board member.

One criticism of Forbes-Roberts is that she was not precise enough in her letter about alleged wrongdoing that had resulted in Simpson being barred from the building, making it difficult for him to defend himself. Forbes-Roberts informed Simpson in her letter that he was barred because he operates a web site, Downtown Eastside Enquirer .ca, which “features links” to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blogspot which she claims contains “inaccuracies”. Simpson asked the obvious question when Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty who is supervised by Forbes-Roberts delivered the letter to him: “What are the inaccuracies?” Whitty refused to identify any.

“Has the City come back after giving us that first letter, giving us any indication as to why this is occurring other than the vaguest of things?” Chauncey asked Whitty. Whitty responded, “No. Other than that letter.” “If you ask me there’s no proof of anything…And if there was at all, they’d take legal action.”

“Having a link to a site is not the same as publishing a site,” said Board member Rachel Davis.

Although the only reason given in Forbes-Roberts’ letter for barring Simpson was that he “links” to the blog, the City did come up with a second reason after the barring attracted media attention. The second reason, announced by Whitty, was that there had been a Work Safe [WCB] complaint against Simpson by a Carnegie staff person who claimed that the blog created an unsafe environment at work. Rachel D. wasn’t buying it. “There’s nothing in that letter saying that William Simpson can’t come in because of Work Safe …If it’s a Work Safe issue, why don’t they just say it’s a Work Safe issue.” Whitty interjected, “It was alluded to in the letter.” Maybe she means “eluded”, says Serg, one of several Downtown Eastsiders who can’t find any hint of a Work Safe issue in the letter. Indeed Simpson has yet to be informed in writing or verbally that he is barred due to a Work Safe issue -- even though Whitty has announced this reason to the public on behalf of her boss Forbes-Roberts at two public meetings at Carnegie.

Chauncey, a former union member and outspoken supporter of the current CUPE strikers, has the Work Safe manual at home. “It’s not a Work Safe issue,” he said. “It’s just not.” He pointed out that there were no threats on that blog. “And I’ve looked and I’ve looked and I’ve looked and I’ve looked.”

Chauncey, like many Carnegie members, sees the Work Safe angle as a ruse. He explained that if inaccurate statements had been made on the blog, if there was “defamation” -- a word Forbes-Roberts used in the letter but for five weeks has evaded supporting with examples -- legal recourse is available. “You do it legally; you don’t hide behind some veil.” He is convinced that the City did not pursue the defamation issue legally because, “They’ve got nothing.”

Despite his vigorous support for legal action against Forbes-Roberts whose behaviour he believes will get worse if a check is not put on it, Chauncey is actually not a supporter of the DTES Enquirer blog. He believes the blog, in which contributors don’t identify themselves with real names is “gutless and cowardly and that [Simpson] should come in and apologize.”

Wilf R., a new Carnegie member, told Whitty that he was concerned that barring Simpson from Carnegie -- particularly a previous barring from the Learning Centre when he claims he was told that it was because he was blogging on the DTES Enquirer -- has resulted in him being "tarred as the blogger". Wilf R. claimed he heard people at Carnegie talking about Simpson as though he was the blogger. Indeed Whitty herself had just spoken of Simpson minutes earlier as though she assumed he was the blogger, saying "He can write about me all he wants. . . ." And indeed the blogger does write about her, criticizing her failure to consistently provide services Carnegie is funded to provide.

Friegang asked Whitty, "Don't you have a concern . . . that Bill Simpson might be wrongly accused?" She added, "If I were Director, I would be doing something about this. I would be doing something."

“There’s no proof that [Simpson] writes that blog,” said Debbie Gosselin, a Carnegie member who attended the meeting, and indeed Forbes-Roberts did not accuse him in the letter of actually writing it, only linking to it. Gosselin asked Whitty, “Are you saying that anybody who links to the Downtown Eastside Enquirer blog will be barred from Carnegie?”

Whitty responded by explaining that in barring Simpson, City lawyers working with Jacquie Forbes-Roberts made their decision “based on probability”. Simpson operates a website with the same name as the blog, and links to the blog appear at the top of his website “so he probably intends for people to read that blog.”

Although the Community Relations Committee discussed the Cease & Desist order, they require approval of a majority of Board members before getting any legal ball rolling. They unanimously passed a motion at Thursday’s meeting to ask Pivot Legal Society on the Downtown Eastside to for help in wording what Friegang called “a legal motion” to be brought to the next Board meeting.

Simpson is not entirely optimistic about Pivot Legal Society helping him though. He went to Pivot on his own shortly after he was banned from Carnegie but was rebuffed. Pivot claims in their literature that their goal is to fight civil liberties abuses of marginalized people on the Downtown Eastside, creating a “trickle up” effect which strengthens the civil liberties of everyone in society. When Simpson asked a Pivot lawyer for help with the Carnegie case, she responded, “But they’re our friends.”

At this point, Simpson, who calls himself “home-free” and “welfare-free” seems to be lawyer-free. When interviewed on Co-op Radio on Monday, along with Rachel D. and other Carnegie members, Simpson was asked if he had a lawyer. He responded that any lawyer interested in helping him could contact him at his website.

Whether Jacquie Forbes-Roberts will be ordered to Cease & Desist is not yet certain. It remains, to use the language of City lawyers, a “probability”.

[It has become necessary for supporters of Bill Simpson to tape meetings due to the fact that Whitty and the City regularly revise their stories -- this meeting was no exception -- about the various barrings of Simpson. Copies of tapes often find their way to the DTES Enquirer. Quotes in this post are taken from a tape of the meeting.]

Ethel Whitty's Deaf Ears

Does the word "deaf" mean anything to you? That's the question several Carnegie patrons have for Carnegie Director Ethel Whitty, while they're still able to hear the answer.

Every afternoon and evening, and on many mornings, Whitty allows Carnegie computer users in the Carnegie basement Lounge to be subjected to noise levels that could rival a rock concert. Both male and female patrons complain on a regular basis -- even people who have spent years sitting in bars where bands play loudly complain -- only to have their complaints fall on deaf ears. People use the basement lounge only because they don't have computers at home, or they have computers that are old and slow on the internet, and need to access the Vancouver Public Libary computers.

But they are running into Whitty's priorites.

And her priorities do not appear to be health standards or computer literacy. Yesterday unemployed Carnegie members were encouraged to veg out on a Flinestones movie in the middle of the afternoon, played at the sound level of a rock concert. One woman told a friend in an e-mail that she had to abandon her computer and go home. "The noise level was making me shake", she said in an e-mail to a friend, who passed it on to the DTES Enquirer.

This woman noted in her e-mail that she has complained about the noise level four times in the last two weeks. When she complained a little over a week ago to Devor, the coffee seller in the Lounge, he called Security as he has done in the past "to intimidate" her into shutting up. Security guards Trey and Myles arrived. She told them that her ears ring after she leaves the Lounge, which is a sign she is developing tinititus. She told Trey and Myles that this ongoing noise level has become a health and safety issue. She recalled Myles making a face that suggested that he thought she was being silly. Trey said getting the noise level turned down in the Lounge wasn't his jurisdiction.

I insisted that Trey and Myles deal with this issue, she said in the e-mail. They said they would write it up in the Security log and make certain management saw it. Guess what the result of that was? The television has been even louder since.

Others have complained too. Jim A., who is slow to anger, recalls using the computer in the basement and finding the noise level intolerable. "I flippped out," he says. "There was gunfire and glass smashing. It was nerve wracking."

Bill Simpson says he complained when he was using a computer and couldn't hear the sound through his headphones because it was drowned out by the television on the other side of the room. He complained to the coffee seller, Vivian, but met a hostile response.

The noise problem has been discussed on the internet by bloggers -- who Whitty has attempted to silence. One woman, Antonia, was reported as asking that it be turned down, saying, "We're all going to be deaf."

Health and Safety standards have not been taken seriously at Carnegie under the Whitty administration and, in fact, have been perverted for political ends. Whitty recently supported a politically motivated "Work Safe" complaint against a man accused of being associated with a blog which criticized work place performance of herself and her staff. Carnegie Board members confronted Whitty; both Grant C. and Rachel D. told her that there was no legitimate health and safety issue here. But when there are genuine health and safety issues at Carnegie that Whity has known about for at least a year, she continues to turn a deaf ear.

The DTES Enquirer will be providing updates on the performance of Director Ethel Whitty, Asst. Director Dan Tetrault, and Lounge supervisor Marlene Trick. Today, as guns were blazing in the basement, Whitty lounged in the front lobby. A patron says he saw her chatting with another male patron about a book called, "Yiddish", as a woman left the basement in tears because she asked the coffee seller to turn down the television and he wouldn't.

[There is no need for the City to pacify the unemployed with Finestones and war movies in the middle of the day. Don't just turn down the DVDs, turn them off. May, a Carnegie member, talked on Co-op radio last Monday about this pacifying of the poor by Carnegie management. They seem more interested she said in supporting DVD rental stores than the poor. The DTES Enquirer will be reporting on May's perspective in the future.]

Evidence-tampering in CUPE police complaint

CUPE members in Vancouver are on strike and a stench can be detected. It is not the stench of garbage left uncollected, it is the stench of CUPE's dirty laundry.

A former secretary to two CUPE Presidents is talking.

The secretary continues to talk about the police complaint CUPE lodged against her after she complained of the "non-union sweatshop" they were quietly operating at Local 116 at UBC. VPD Constables Megan Herrmann and Kevin Ng -- who don't have jurisdiction at UBC -- left voice mail and showed up at her home. Their message: muzzle yourself about unfair labour practices inside CUPE.

When the secretary got a copy of the police report, she was shocked to discover that letters she had sent to CUPE President Barry O'Neill and BC Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair about unfair labor practices inside CUPE had been submitted as "evidence". Copies of these letters were enclosed with the police report. This fact has been discussed in a previous post, "CUPE Strike Haunted by Secretary Scandal". What is new is that the DTES Enquirer has learned that the police report pertaining to the CUPE complaint was retroactively altered roughly a year after the case had been labelled "CLOSED".

The alteration of the police report occurred after the whistleblowing secretary contacted CUPE President, Barry O'Neill, and BC Federation of Labour President, Jim Sinclair, in writing in 2003. She informed O'Neill and Sinclair that as long as the unfounded "WORKPLACE HARASSMENT" notation remained adjacent to her name in police records, she would ensure that it remained on their public records as union leaders. Speaking up about workplace conditions did not constitute "WORKPPLACE HARASSMENT", she reminded them. It was then that the term "WORKPLACE" disappeared from the police report -- even though the case had been labelled CLOSED by the VPD the previous year. The secretary doesn't know who changed the "offence" for which she was investigated but she can prove that it was changed in the police file long after the case had been closed.

It was quite by accident that the secretary stumbled upon the change. It was when she received documents from a second Freedom of Information request, that she noticed that the Vancouver Police had retroactively changed the offence for which she had been investigated. The offence was changed from "WORKPLACE HARASSMENT" to "HARASSMENT/ OBSCENE COMMUNICATION". She suspects that the term "WORKPLACE" was dropped as a form of damage control, to reduce potential embarrassment to union leaders -- but she can't prove it.

What she can prove is that there was nothing harassing or obscene about her communication with labor leaders. Her letters, which remain on file at the VPD Property Office, can be used to confirm this. "What was obscene about this situation was the way people who worked for CUPE were treated", she says.

The fact that the whistle blowing secretary had been investigated for the specific offence of “WORKPLACE HARASSMENT” and not "HARASSMENT/ OBSCENE COMMUNICATION cannot be disputed. "WORKPLACE HARASSMENT" is clearly typed at the top of the police report she obtained through Freedom of Information shortly after CUPE called police on her. And the fact that the case had been "CLOSED" in Dec. 2002 is also typed on the police report. Further, the DTES woman has preserved correspondence from the VPD informing her that the “WORKPLACE HARASSMENT” notation would remain on the police PRIME data base permanently. It did remain on the police data base until after she contacted O'Neill and Sinclair in 2003, after which time the "WORKPLACE" angle for which she had been investigated disappeared.

The whistle blowing secretary sees this retroactive alteration of an investigated "offence" in a closed police file as a form of evidence- tampering. She speculates that it may have been prompted by the fact that she was requesting a criminal investigation into labor leaders involved in this case. It was "no secret", she says, that she wanted union leaders criminally investigated for public mischief for lodging what she considered to be an unfounded police complaint. [Context: When CUPE lodged their complaint in Dec. 2002, the lodging of unfounded criminal complaints to silence vocal Downtown Eastside residents was an epidemic problem. Inspector John de Haas stated in one case involving the Vancouver School Board that bureaucrats lodging unfounded police complaints against political adversaries could justifiably face "public mischief" investigations, if a victims requested them. An advocate on the Downtown Eastside was advising residents to seek public mischief investigations in such cases.]

The whistleblowing secretary says CUPE and police were well aware that she had never visited or telephoned her CUPE "WORKPLACE" after leaving her job there. There was no workplace harassment and that fact was just too obvious so, in her view, somebody arranged for the "WORKPLACE" element to get retroactively disappeared. "I e-mailed Jim Sinclair in 2004 and I asked him if he had any idea who that somebody was," she says. He didn't respond. But she did preserve a copy of her e-mail to him.

There was no workplace harassment. There was no harassment, period. That's the position of the whistleblowing secretary."I have as much right as CUPE members [currently] on strike to protest about working conditions."