Article content continued

ONA reps keep saying: I didn't know . . . It's deplorable. Muneeza Sheikh

That inquiry should serve as a wake-up call for unions that are so trigger-happy about filing grievances that some file first, and only investigate, if at all, later, said Muneeza Sheikh, a labour and employment lawyer with Levitt LLP in Toronto.

“I hope unions will do fact-finding first,” she said.

Wettlaufer was convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder involving residents of two Southwestern Ontario nursing homes, trying to kill four others and injuring two more.

At the provincial inquiry into the Wettlaufer case, officials for the Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) have testified about how little they knew of her transgressions that included medication errors, laziness, bizarre conduct, a lack of competence and ongoing challenges with substance abuse and mental illness.

“ONA reps keep saying: I didn’t know,” Sheikh said. “It’s deplorable.”

While unions have a responsibility to serve their members, they also have a duty to the public, and that’s most true when they work in health care, she said.

“That’s where we see a disconnect. (Too many unions) have a laser focus on members alone,” she said. “I worked as in-house counsel (for a union) and many unions do operate this way.”

None of the criminal charges against Gauthier has been proven in court.

The head of OPSEU defending the filing of the grievance. “All employees in Ontario have a legal right to file grievances concerning discipline or alleged breaches of their collective agreement, and there are tight timelines within which to do so. Trade unions have a statutory responsibility to fairly represent members in respect of their grievances,” OPSEU President Smokey Thomas wrote in an email to The Free Press.