Why the NDP Cleared a Union Local’s Pro-Eby Effort

A Vancouver Island union headquarters is behind a letter that sparked an investigation into David Eby’s NDP leadership campaign and complaints about double standards from disqualified rival Anjali Appadurai.

BC NDP chief electoral officer Elizabeth Cull said she spent weeks investigating the source of the letter, which was printed on United Steelworkers letterhead, urging members to join the NDP in support of Eby’s bid for leadership.

“We are not asking people to sign up and stay as NDP members,” the letter said. “We believe that by electing Eby and lowering the vote for the anti-deforestation candidate, we can push back on the green agenda.” It said supporting Eby “gives us leverage over him after he’s elected.”

Cull’s six-page report on her investigation of the letter found no evidence that Eby colluded with the memo’s authors to influence the race or fraudulently recruit members.

She found that it did not violate the BC Election Act or party rules. But she was also unable to identify the source of the memo.

The Provincial Bureau of Steelworkers dismissed the note, saying it did not know where it came from.

The Tyee traced the memo to United Steelworkers Local 1-1937, which represents about 6,000 forest workers on Vancouver Island and along the coast. The local has been a vocal opponent of efforts to curb logging of old-growth forests, arguing that the policy is costing jobs and harming communities.

The local distributed the letter and emailed members urging them to join the BC NDP and support Eby, adding that union staff would also call members and facilitate registrations.

United Steelworkers Local 1-1937 did not respond to a request for comment.

The memo resurfaced on social media after climate activist Anjali Appadurai was dropped from the race after a separate report by Cull found she had failed to coordinate properly with third-party environmental groups when signing up members.

Appadurai says the party’s decision reflects a double standard.

“We were expected to take responsibility for the actions of others,” Appadurai said last week before her disqualification. “And we haven’t seen that standard applied to all candidates.”

Mysterious note

Scott Lunny said that when he first saw the memo online, he found it ridiculous that anyone would think it came from one of the most powerful labor unions in British Columbia.

“It’s clearly not an official document of our union,” said Lunny, a former BC NDP vice president and president of United Steelworkers District 3, which includes BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

“It’s not signed. It’s not on official letterhead. It’s not well written…it’s clearly not from my office or our national office.”

Lunny said he decided not to engage in debate about the letter.

“I’m not interested in people just berating me and telling me I’m in the pockets of big oil, that I’m a ‘union brother.’ I don’t have to get into this debate with anyone on Twitter,” Lunny said.

The letter, posted on Twitter by Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee, who supported Appadurai, was unsigned.

But The Tyee tracked down the second page of the same document, which was not posted online. It was signed by Local 1-1937. The Tyee also confirmed that a second letter was emailed to union members on August 22.

“We are asking members to join for the sole purpose of gaining votes for a candidate who does not engage in politics that Steelworker members cannot live with. We must elect David Eby,” read a letter signed by local officials and business representatives.

“If a USW activist contacts you and asks if you will do your part to ensure we have leadership in government that supports industrial workers, we hope you will support the challenge before us we all stand and register to vote,” it said later.

Cull’s Oct. 14 report on the memo says that in August and September she received complaints about “third party involvement” related to the writing, as well as attempts to recruit members who did not genuinely support the BC NDP. She reported that the Eby campaign met with steelworkers’ representatives three times in five weeks, from mid-August to mid-September, but found no evidence that they had discussed a campaign for Eby.

According to Lunny, the Steelworkers have opted not to support any candidate in the race.

It’s not clear what Cull did to find the source of the letter. Her report establishes Lunny’s correct hypothesis that one of the local steelworkers’ union had put it forward.

However, she found “no basis for concluding that the USW locales did so in a way that was not independent of the Eby campaign.”

The affair highlights the nuances of what third parties can and cannot do in BC elections and leadership races.

In the case of Appadurai, Cull concluded her campaign with coordinated member sign-ups at Dogwood, noting that the environmental organization’s public sign-up efforts were counted as campaign contributions that had exceeded the donation limit.

Eby’s campaign denies any knowledge of the local’s activities, saying they only found out about their campaign from social media. The union letter does not appear to have been public. And the election law exempts a union’s communications with its own members from restrictions on campaign spending.

The two cases “seem like apples and oranges,” Lunny said.

The Tyee provided the Appadurai campaign with a copy of Cull’s report, but received no response before publication.

Political science professor Hamish Telford agreed that the two allegations are fundamentally different, even if they appear similar at first glance.

“I haven’t seen enough evidence against David Eby to suggest that there is a double standard here,” said Telford, a professor at the University of the Fraser Valley.

But he added that the Steelworkers’ letter highlights a rift in the BC NDP between private sector workers whose jobs depend on resource extraction and a more environmentally conscious wing of the party alienated by Appadurai’s disqualification. He said it was up to Eby to mend that rift.

“It will really be his job to repair the damage, not just with the environmental movement, but I think the NDP has damaged their credibility here in terms of their progressivism, their commitment to diversity and inclusion and their commitment to younger voters,” said Telford said.

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