When trustee Dave Phelan ran for school board in 2008, he didn’t seek a labour endorsement.
Phelan campaigned as an independent. With 2,322 votes, the married father-of-two didn’t snag a seat.
Fast forward to the 2011 election, Phelan, a teacher, was no longer on his own. This time, he had the backing of the unions with an endorsement from the New Westminster and District Labour Council, and he managed to get 5,603 votes, coming in second to fellow union-supported candidate Jonina Campbell.
Phelan spent $13,041 the second time around, a huge bump up from the $826 he dished out on his first campaign. He received $4,580 in union contributions in 2011.
Did the big hand of labour support make the difference in getting Phelan elected the second time he ran?
“It played a role for sure,” Phelan said.
But there was another critical difference, according to Phelan.
“I knocked on doors and talked to people. The first time I didn’t do that,” said Phelan, a teacher who is working as a faculty associate at SFU.
The trustee, who isn’t seeking re-election, said he didn’t have to compromise his beliefs to garner union support.
But critics of the labour-endorsement practice say the unions have too much power and pull in who gets elected to the New Westminster school board, with financial resources and the voting membership making the difference.
CUPE Local 409 president Marcel Marsolais told The Record a labour-council endorsement simply means a candidate has the “values of working people.”
“That’s one of the things that we dwell on when we interview candidates,” said Marsolais, who is the co-chair of the labour council and also a representative of CUPE on the council executive.
Those values range from how do candidates feel about working people, their families, to the environment, procurement policies and sustainable communities, Marsolais said.
Candidates seeking a labour endorsement must sit in front of a handful of labour representatives and answer questions about themselves and their beliefs.
The labour council, once based in New West but now in Burnaby, endorses candidates in communities from Burnaby to Surrey to the Fraser Valley. New West has a significant role in the council, Marsolais said because “it is a labour town.”
Speaking to the suggestion that you have to be an NDP member to get an endorsement from the council, Marsolais said that’s not the case in New West.
“There’s no requirement to be affiliated with any party,” he said, then, laughing, added, “Now, if you’re a Harper Conservative, you may have a little trouble.”
The labour council is endorsing longtime trustees Michael Ewen and James Janzen and one-term incumbent Campbell, as well as first-time candidates Mark Gifford and Kelly Slade-Kerr.
In 2011, unions gave Ewen $4,080; Campbell received $4,555; Janzen received the highest amount of union contributions with $6,093 – $4,900 of which came from CUPE. The portion of other candidates’ contributions that came from CUPE was $2,900 (a combination of the B.C. division and the Local 409 chapter, in most cases).
Marsolais also said having labour support doesn’t mean the candidates are beholden to the unions.
“That’s a myth,” he said. “We don’t expect them to do anything other than represent the values and make sure that working people and communities … are protected for the future.”
New Westminster Teachers’ Union president Grant Osborne said his members reject the practice of endorsing candidates.
“They’ve been very clear over the years that they haven’t wanted that action from the union … a lot of it is just because teachers want to make their own decisions,” Osborne said.
The neighbouring Burnaby Teachers’ Association came out this week endorsing the Burnaby Citizens Association, the left-leaning incumbent group that swept Burnaby in the last election.
But Osborne said New West has a “long-standing tradition” of not endorsing.
Still, in 2011 the NWTU sent out a letter to members stating that it had “accepted” the list of labour-endorsed trustees and named those individuals.
Osborne said the union itself didn’t endorse the candidates.
“We weren’t recommending to our members who to vote for,” he said. “It was a technical acceptance, the union did not endorse.”
But, as Osborne confirmed, the teachers’ union does have a representative on the New Westminster and District Labour Council.
