As a doctoral student and teaching assistant at York University, Alexandria Petit-Thorne got involved with her union for two reasons: to fight for stable jobs in academia, and to put pressure on her employer to create a fund for sexual violence survivors on campus.But during a contentious five months of striking and picketing in 2018, she was allegedly subjected to “an overt pattern of sexual harassment” by the chairperson of her own union’s local unit — which lacked a formal policy to deal with her complaints and “utterly and manifestly” failed to address it, according to a claim filed with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.At the heart of her HRTO application is how unions — whose mission is to advocate for safe and healthy workplaces — deal with problems like harassment within their own ranks. Petit-Thorne sees solving that challenge as central to the labour movement’s values.“The point of a union is to protect its members from systemic abuse and exploitation,” she said in an interview. “This is systemic abuse. If the union is not going to protect us from this, then it’s not serving its purpose.”In an emailed response to the Star, a spokesperson for CUPE’s national office said the union “takes matters of harassment very seriously.”“To that end, we provide our local unions with a variety of tools and resources to address these issues with both their employer and within their local union, such as our Stop Harassment guide for locals.”Read more: Understaffing at Ontario workers’ compensation board creates ‘toxic’ work environment, union survey saysFor 20 years, miners sickened by toxic aluminum dust couldn’t file compensation claims. Why?She was grabbed, endured sexual taunts and followed into the washroom. The WSIB says this wasn’t workplace harassmentThe statement said all locals were “encouraged” to ado ...
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