Local union exec does everything he can to validate Rob Ford’s stereotypes of organized labour fat cats

Rob Ford and his council allies are fond of painting union folk as exploitative and well-heeled, and one labour executive has given them a political gift to that end. Canned in 2010 for doing things like using union money to send his daughter to Disney World—not to mention for dinners at fancy restaurants, an $8,600 trip to Florida (which included the Disney World jaunt) and a laundry list of other improprieties—John Mandarino has been rehired by union trustees as an executive at the Toronto-based Labourers’ International Union of North America Local 183, at a salary of $200,000 per year. For the record, those same trustees say the allegations are evidence of a “witch hunt” and an “exaggeration of facts”—even though Mandarino was unanimously fired for a “repeated pattern of obfuscation, deception, blame-shifting and self-dealing.” Read the entire story [Toronto Star] »