CUPE can't force VP to resign over allegations of antisemitism

National executive says Hahn’s actions bad for all unions

- ROB FERGUSON

The country’s largest public-sector union acknowledges it cannot oust vice-president Fred Hahn for posting a video denounced as antisemitic, but says his refusal to resign as requested is fuelling a damaging “conflict.”

There are no provisions in the constitution of the Canadian Union of Public Employees to remove the elected Hahn, who is also the elected president of the union’s Ontario arm, CUPE’s national executive board said in a statement Friday.

“I appreciate the recognition … that union democracy must be respected,” Hahn, who has previously rejected charges of antisemitism, told the Star in a text message.

CUPE’s two-page missive to members caps a rift within the union since the national executive board declared it had “lost confidence” in Hahn — an outspoken critic of Israeli attacks on Gaza — over the video he posted on social media on Aug. 11 and removed a week later.

It depicted a Jewish athlete with a Star of David arm tattoo leaping off adiving board at the Paris Olympics and turning into a bomb that explodes.