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Unifor president Jerry Dias argues his fight with the American-based Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) is absolutely the latter.

“I’m not a cheerleader in the labour movement,” Dias told Postmedia. “I’m going to say my piece. And if people don’t like it, that’s too damn bad.”

“Unifor is the largest private-sector union in the country and we have a responsibility to ensure democracy within the labour movement,” he said.

“And if we have a collection of thugs that are going to fire people, going to take their assets, going to do all these things to intimidate them, then I’m going to talk about it.”

Unifor has more than 310,000 members across the country.

U.S.-based ATU International is America’s largest transit union, representing more than 190,000 workers on both sides of the border.

The two are embroiled in a feud that surfaced after ATU’s American leadership turfed Kinnear, duck walked the union executive out the door, changed the locks on the local’s offices, placed the local under trusteeship, and blamed its actions on Kinnear’s “secretive effort to split Local 113 away from its fellow ATU Canada Locals.”

What apparently sent the American head office over the edge was a request by Kinnear and Local 113 to the Canadian Labour Congress for an investigation into the relationship between Local 113 and the U.S. head office. Specifically, Kinnear asked whether TCC workers, if they so chose, could leave the ATU and join another union. The Canadian Labour Congress said they could.