Local 183 trustee Rick Weiss has filed a $2.8 million lawsuit against the former executive led by ousted Tony Dionisio claiming they “misspent” members’ funds on clandestine surveillance.
Labour
TORONTO
Local 183 trustee Rick Weiss has filed a $2.8 million lawsuit against the former executive led by ousted Tony Dionisio claiming they “misspent” members’ funds on clandestine surveillance.
In a Statement of Claim filed at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, Weiss, acting for the 27,000 Local 183 members alleges the surveillance and installation of fibre optic cameras and other spy gear in the ceiling of the local offices in north Toronto were carried out “without proper approval or any approval by the membership of Local 183.”
The allegations are just that and have not been proved in court. A statement of defence is pending.
“I really can’t talk much about this,” said Dionisio, currently organizing non-unionized workers in the residential trades under the Canadian Construction Workers Union.
Dionisio is doing it with the aid of a $1 million from the Canadian Auto Workers, the nation’s largest private sector union.
“It’s all before the courts. But really, at the time, we didn’t have a lot of choice; we were damned if we did and damned if we didn’t. We were advised by counsel if there was a threat to our union that we had to take steps to find out what was going on.”
In addition to Dionisio, John Colacco, Rocco Di Giovanni, John Dias, Antonio Pinto, John Cordeiro and Keith Cooper are named as defendants.
In the Statement of Claim, Weiss cites findings from the Canadian Independent Hearing Officer Brian Keller which upheld an earlier investigation by the parent body, the Laborers International Union of North America, that resulted in an order placing the Local in trusteeship.
Weiss claims a total of seven Local 183 members were placed under surveillance from May 25, 2004 through August 4, 2004 at a cost of $764,684.89.
Furthermore, Weiss alleges — in the unproven and thus far unrebutted Statement of Claim —between February 2004 and June 2006, the former board also spent $2,079,051.21 “to spy on and investigate members, employees and officers of Local 183 and/or LIUNA. Those funds were used to install concealed fibre-optic cameras throughout the offices of Local 183’s headquarters and to investigate the personal finances and activities of employees, members and officers of LIUNA.”
Weiss is suing the group for recovery of those funds erroneously totalled as $2,843,684.80 plus costs in the claim, though the actual total of those monies is $2,843,736.10.
The lawsuit is also somewhat ironic since Local 183 and LIUNA have publicly admitted keeping Dionisio and other ousted leaders under surveillance since the Keller’s order of trusteeship in Spring 2006 and sporadically during the CCWU efforts to organize workers into a new trade union.
The Keller report makes no reference to surveillance cameras at the Local 183 offices since those weren’t discovered until after Weiss took over in late summer last year.
Former President
Keller also found while the executive was justified in initially ordering a private eye to trail members of LIUNA and others based on suspicions there were connections to organized crime, that surveillance — a cost he pegged at a total $345,000 — he found it should have been halted once it was determined there were no grounds.
In fact, Keller said, the surveillance was expanded when the first subject, Cosmo Manella, was spotted meeting with four Local business representatives in a cemetery. Coincidentally, Keller noted, the surveillance ended when the Local’s elections were settled.
The new claim of $2.8 million in expenditures is based on new data gleaned from an audit of Local 183’s books since Weiss took over, though LIUNA counsel Dan Randazzo notes:
“At least what was available to us. A lot of stuff was destroyed.”
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