'I'm good to people, but the minute they try to bring me down, I will bring them down'
Recently, the executive director of a union was found responsible for workplace harassment.
In an award dated May 27, 2026, sole arbitrator Mark Hart found that the Canadian Office and Professional Employees Union (COPE) must compensate two of its labour relations specialists after its former executive director psychologically harassed them.
He ordered the union to pay $5,000 to one employee and $12,000 to the other.
The grievance was brought by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Local Lodge 1922, which represented the two employees.
Poisoned work environment
An external investigator who conducted 38 interviews found that the executive director had repeatedly gossiped about staff and board members to the employees who reported to her. Between 2019 and 2023, she called colleagues incompetent, lazy and worse, questioned their mental health, spread a rumour that two employees were having an affair, and disclosed private medical information.
The investigator concluded the gossiping was pervasive and had created a poisoned work environment.
The two employees were rarely the direct target, but they had to listen to their boss tear down their coworkers and carry that knowledge around the office. The more junior of the two was also told the executive director had been talking about her behind her back, and the investigation found negative comments had been made about the other as well.
One employee said it left her exhausted, anxious and unsafe. The other described feeling uncomfortable, emotionally drained, unsafe, uncertain and fearful.
Hart accepted that gossip from the most senior person in the building made staff reasonably fear for their standing and their jobs.
Abuse of power by executive
For the more junior of the two, it went further. The investigator found that the executive director raised the prospect of extending the employee's probation in the office kitchen, in front of a coworker, and that she acted in a threatening way during a one-on-one meeting in July 2023.
The investigator found that, at that meeting, the executive director said something to the effect of: "I trust people and I'm good to people, but the minute they try to bring me down, I will bring them down." The employee took it as a threat, and Hart agreed it could only have been meant to intimidate.
Viewing the conduct as a whole rather than incident by incident, Hart saw an abuse of power by the workplace's most senior figure. He found that both employees' rights under the collective agreement's anti-harassment article had been violated, and that both had been subjected to workplace harassment under Ontario's Occupational Health and Safety Act.
Not all of the complaints were upheld; the arbitrator relied on what the external investigation had substantiated, and other allegations were found not to amount to harassment, were untimely, or were not pursued.
Termination after harassment
The union quickly removed the executive director, later terminated her, and proposed measures from annual harassment training to a new onboarding package.
Hart acknowledged that an employer can sometimes limit its liability by showing it responded reasonably once a complaint surfaces. But because the harasser was the executive director, the directing mind of the organization and its highest-ranking manager, he found the union directly liable for what she had done.
He awarded less than had been sought on their behalf, $5,000 and $12,000 against requests of $10,000 and $25,000, and declined to add interest. But Hart left little doubt about how he saw the conduct, writing that to call the comments "gossiping" "understates both the egregious nature of the highly negative and abusive comments that were made by the [executive director]."
