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“The labour movement was so afraid of Tim Hudak being elected that they sold their souls to the Liberals,” said OPSEU president Smokey Thomas.

The PC leader was straight forward during the campaign about his vow to cut 100,000 public sector jobs, but Premier Kathleen Wynne was not as clear about the Liberal’s plan to reduce the number of government workers, added Thomas.

“Hudak was honest in what he was going to do, and he paid a price for it,” he said.

“Now Kathleen Wynne’s $1.25 billion in savings is going to cost jobs (and) she needs to come clean with us about her plans.”

Hudak complained during the campaign about the fact 19 unions — including those representing Ontario Provincial Police as well as nurses and firefighters — paid for anti-Conservative attack ads that saturated TV and radio airwaves, spending more than the political parties.

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Unifor national president Jerry Dias said the decision to go their separate ways was “absolutely mutual.”

“This will be an amicable divorce,” Dias told the Canadian Press.

“Their position is they want to belong to a union that has complete, blind loyalty to the party and I understand that … But the facts are that one local union within Unifor is not going to dictate the politics of an organization of over 300,000 people.”

While Unifor is largely supportive of the NDP, Dias said sometimes its priorities are different than those of the party.

In the Ontario election, the priority was stopping Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. Hence, Unifor urged Ontarians to vote for incumbent New Democrats or whichever local candidate — NDP or Liberal — was most likely to defeat the Conservative contender.