We, CUPE Local 1230’s Executive Committee, call on the CUPE National Executive Board (NEB) to reverse its call for CUPE Ontario President Fred Hahn’s resignation.
On Wednesday, August 21, the CUPE NEB voted to call for Fred Hahn’s resignation as CUPE National General Vice President over his personal social media repost of a satirical video during the recent Olympics, challenging Fred’s legitimacy as CUPE Ontario President. The video depicts a fictional Israeli diver at the Paris Olympics as the sportscasters applaud him. His dive cuts to a bomb which destroys a street and leaves Palestinians bloodied and running through the rubble. The video concludes with text which says that athletes of the Israeli Olympic team have participated in the devastation of Palestinians as part of the Israeli military: “Shame on them, shame on the sports, shame on the world.”
We fully support principled critiques of power which uphold CUPE’s core values of solidarity, equality, democracy, integrity, and respect. Principled critiques of power make us stronger. Fred Hahn’s repost was in poor taste in that it did not adequately reckon with nuances relating to the diver’s Star of David tattoo – a symbol for both the State of Israel (the national flag) and for Judaism. This carelessness did a disservice to some of our Jewish siblings and we do not condone this hurt. We also appreciate that Fred has since issued a statement to apologise for sharing the video and to acknowledge the nuances and impacts of antisemitism.
By consistent principle, we are appalled by the NEB’s decision to demand Fred Hahn’s resignation, with neither due process for Fred nor a principled reckoning with the anti-democratic and anti-solidarity politics of such a decision. Fred Hahn deserves the same treatment as any other CUPE member does in response to allegations of error (which many Jewish coalitions also object to): access to an appropriate accountability process without abandonment of solidarity. Were NEB to uphold CUPE’s core values and outlined processes in their actions per our Code of Conduct, we would see thoughtful communication to locals and a principled internal inquiry into the social media allegations. Instead, we are witnessing a national open-air brouhaha in which we, the members of CUPE Ontario, must scramble to piece together the facts while Doug Ford and his ministers praise the CUPE NEB decision.
The NEB decision contradicts many directly relevant democratic decisions made at and by CUPE Ontario. CUPE Ontario agreed almost unanimously in 2006 on Resolution 50, which “supports the international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until that state recognises the Palestinian right to self-determination”. Most recently, our annual convention in May strongly passed numerous solidarity resolutions to recognise the bombing of Rafah, divest the Ontario municipal workers’ pension from arms manufacturing, educate and support our membership in solidarity with Palestine, and defend against the policing of protest. Our convention was addressed by the High Commissioner of South Africa, and we were validated in our learnings on labour apartheid resistance when in July, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) authoritatively recognised Israel to be practising it. We can continue to ask ourselves better questions like this than resignation: What is our collective process when a brother is said to have erred? What response moves us toward strong unions, worker protection, and international solidarity?
The call for Fred’s resignation is a dangerous move which undermines our collective power and local and regional autonomy. It must be reversed. As CUPE members, we stand for union solidarity, equality, democracy, integrity, and respect. We stand against contravention of collective process and submission to organised external pressure at the cost of our solidarity.
CUPE Local 1230 Executive Committee