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FIGHT BACK

The Great Pretender

by Jeff Goodall

January 6, 2003

The news item was clipped almost 10 years ago, and the subject matter annoyed me to the extent that I have kept it close all these years waiting for an opportunity to use it. The trigger was a Toronto Sun editorial dated December 18th, 2002, in which we are told of concerns expressed about leftist anti-semitism by persons such as "trade unionist Jeff Rose".

Jeff Rose was employed by the old City of Toronto as a municipal planner, and became active in CUPE Local 79. At that time, the city’s planning function was the responsibility of the Planning Commission, which was a separate employer to the City of Toronto in much the same way that the police still are to this day. Unlike the police, however, planning department employees comprised a Local 79 bargaining unit. They bargained jointly with the powerful Metro and City units, but voted separately on their own contract. Thus, this otherwise insignificant grouping, by virtue of possessing its own collective agreement, was entitled to a "Unit Officer" and a place on the Executive Board of Local 79. It was also entitled to a seat on the high-profile Civic Bargaining Committee.

In the 1980 elections, having taken this easy route to prominence, Jeff Rose launched a sophisticated attack on incumbent president Ted Simmons and his slate. Simmons was a WW II veteran employed at a municipal bath-house, and he was hopelessly outgunned by the university-educated Rose, who spared no effort to ridicule and humiliate his opponent. The accession of Jeff Rose to the presidency of the Local marked the end of the reign of the returning war veterans, those "democratic socialists" who had built the Local from scratch.

It was both the end of an era, and the commencement of an orgy of elitism and political intolerance in Local 79. I remember well the occasion that, soon after attaining the presidency, Jeff Rose waited until I had left the meeting hall before bringing up a controversial motion. I returned promptly, but Chairman Rose refused to recognize me, and actually commenced a motion to cut off debate while myself and one other person were the only ones still standing at a microphone waiting to speak.. On a later occasion, he told a friend and I that we were not "good trade unionists", despite our disparate politics and lengthy records of service to the membership.

I was present at the executive board when, as one of his first moves, Rose instigated and then spoke to a motion to increase his Local 79 pay to equal that of the highest-paid job classification represented by the Local. I don’t remember what the pay difference was between a "planner" and a "senior planner", but certainly, getting himself that increase was among the first items on Rose’s agenda. Rose also commenced the practice of hiring highly-paid "consultants" to help the president, none of whom were Local 79 members. The one Rose hired first he later took to Queen's Park with him as an executive assistant, and the Local later hired a director of the Ontario NDP in such a role. Additionally, Rose kept a Canada-wide "complimentary" mailing list of friends and potential supporters within the labour movement, who were sent copies of the Local 79 paper "News ’n’ Views". The issues always included a major article by Rose, and the publication was used as a vehicle to promote him in his subsequently successful efforts to obtain higher office in CUPE. This blatant self-promotion was all paid for out of our dues.

Later, Jeff Rose became a deputy-minister in Bob Rae’s disastrous NDP government, and that brings us to the yellowing article I now hold in my hand. It is from the Toronto Star of November 6, 1993, and is written by Leslie Papp. It is headed: "Premier’s buddy bills $46,000 in expenses." Here are some extracts: "A high-profile bureaucrat, who is also a close friend of Premier Bob Rae, has racked up expenses in excess of $46,000 for cabs, meals, hotels and a leased car, the Opposition charges. ‘Rae preaches restraint while his hand-picked deputy abuses the public purse’ said Liberal MPP Tim Murphy (St. George-St. David)….Murphy held a news conference yesterday where he produced the expense records of Jeff Rose, deputy minister of intergovernmental affairs…Rose spent $6,085 for taxis and parking, plus $9,945 to lease a Cutlass Supreme. Rae’s university chum also charged $18,334 for hotels, airfare and other expenses, and $11,754 for meals." This was all during the period November 1991 to July 1993, and is in then-dollars.

To my mind, Jeff Rose is a predatory opportunist who has always sucked everything he can get out of every place he has ever been. He is an arrogant, me-first elitist who wouldn’t know "working class" from a hole in the ground, and he is not a "trade unionist" in any meaningful sense of the word.

To call him so is to betray the blood of the workers who fought so hard to break the chains of tyranny, and who gave their all to make this a better world.

Jeff Goodall worked for the Metro Treasury and City Finance Departments for 25 years, and served as a member of the CUPE Local 79 Executive Board for 14 of those years.