August 25, 2005

Defamation suit filed after union certification failed

Labour board hearing set for August 29

TORONTO

The Steelback Brewery has launched a $6-million suit against the Service Employees International Union alleging it defamed the private brewer and its chief executive after the union failed in a bid to unionize the company’s plant in Tiverton, Ont.

The plant’s workers rejected the union’s proposal in a July 25 vote.

“However, since that vote, the SEIU and organizer Tom Galivan specifically have waged a slanderous and malicious campaign defaming the brewery, its products and its CEO and founder Frank D’Angelo personally,” the company alleged in a written statement last week.

The suit is seeking damages from the union, its officers and Tom Galivan personally. The allegations have not been proved in court.

“The SEIU lost the vote and I understand that they are disappointed, but that does not give them the right to try and destroy the good name of Steelback Brewery and myself by attacking the quality of our beer and my personal integrity,” D’Angelo said in the same statement.

Much of the suit’s allegations stem from content seen on the union’s website, www.steelbacksweatshop.com.

“It’s the material included on the website that’s just, according to my client, factually incorrect to the knowledge of the union and to Galivan in particular,” said D’Angelo’s lawyer Greg Hemsworth in an interview.

The website alleges the brewer dismissed four employees who formed a union-organizing committee, that D’Angelo threatened to close the plant if the union vote succeeded, and owed workers outstanding pay and unpaid overtime claims.

For his part, Galivan called the suit “an attempt to bully the workers and their representatives into submission,” adding “it’s not going to work.”

He defended the website and its content as part of the union’s campaign to publicize its allegations against the brewery. “We simply relate to people details of the employer’s misconduct and we stand 100 per cent behind the statements we’ve made,” Galivan said.

On July 18, the union filed unfair labour practice complaints with the Ontario Labour Relations Board against the brewery over the four employees’ dismissal.

Hemsworth denied the employees were fired for their role in union organization. He acknowledged that two were “let go,” but would not provide a reason because of privacy concerns. Two other workers, he added, were laid off as a result of planned changes to the plant’s bottling plans several months prior to the date, but subsequently have been recalled.

The union said an additional complaint was filed Aug. 2 alleging that the employer threatened employees with a plant closure if they voted to unionize.

The union’s website also alleges that during a meeting with bargaining unit employees three days before the vote, D’Angelo said: “If you have fridges to fill and mouths to feed, you’ll know how to vote.”

But the website also tempers the accuracy of that quote by adding the phrase “or words to that effect” after the alleged statement.

Hemsworth said his client never uttered those words during his four-minute speech to workers, but told them the start-up operation had “only so much money in the till,” and encouraged them to vote according to their own beliefs.

Hemsworth maintained that D’Angelo never threatened to close the plant, adding his client was misquoted by the website.

“... He said ‘if you have a family of three, then keep enough food in the fridge for three people. If they invite enough people over to their house for dinner, they don’t have enough food to feed a hundred people,’” Hemsworth said.

“And that’s what the union took and tortured into that phrase.”

The union said it also has filed a request under the Employment Standards Act to the Ministry of Labour to investigate outstanding and overtime pay claims. Steelback was not aware of any cases of refusing overtime or failing to pay its employees, Hemsworth said.

Canadian Press

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