Big labour is bracing for a big battle, but Tory Leader Tim Hudak isn’t the only target.

Ontario’s union leaders are also waging a war of words against each other, jousting over who should lead the counterattack against Hudak’s enduring anti-union tactics.

The bitter, behind the scenes turf war threatens to undermine labour’s efforts to defeat Progressive Conservative MPPs in an expected spring election. Unions are descending from unity into enmity over a bid by Ontario Federation of Labour president Sid Ryan to spearhead the anti-Tory crusade.

Ryan was enraged to discover that some of the province’s most influential labour leaders had huddled privately without him earlier this month, ahead of his own election strategy meeting scheduled for Wednesday.

Working Families, an ad hoc coalition of Ontario unions, was making a pitch to top labour leaders to resurrect its successful $2-million advertising and organizational campaigns that helped keep the Tories out of power in 2007 and 2011. But the OFL president viewed this as a pre-emptive move to marginalize him in the coming campaign, warning that the union movement could be “decimated” by disunity.

With special fury, Ryan lashed out at Canadian Labour Congress leader Ken Georgetti, accusing his federal counterpart of bigfooting him on provincial turf behind his back. In a Jan. 13 letter, he demanded the CLC “immediately halt facilitating” further planning meetings for a “parallel provincial election strategy.”

The CLC’s participation “severely undermines unity” when unions should be “working together to ensure Tim Hudak doesn’t become premier,” Ryan lectured. It didn’t work.

A blistering “Dear Brother Sid” reply came right back from Dave Ritchie, vice-president of the influential machinists’ union, who helped organize the meeting and asked the CLC to share its public opinion research: “If I want to call a meeting with labour leaders for any purpose, I do not need your permission,” he fumed.

“You may want to rethink why you believe that unless you are involved, nothing in this province happens. I can assure you, Brother, that this is not the case.”

Ritchie suggested the meeting was an attempt to broaden their base of support — reaching out to big unions that have defected from the OFL in long-running disputes over its finances and Ryan’s leadership.

Warren (Smokey) Thomas, head of the 130,000-member Ontario Public Service Employees Union, told me he attended to hear a presentation from influential union leader Pat Dillon, who has run past successful campaigns for Working Families. His union dropped out of the OFL “because I don’t have a lot of confidence in them,” but Thomas wanted to hear “what we can do to keep Hudak from getting elected.”

The OPSEU leader is still mindful of gratuitous attacks from the Tories last month, who sent him an open letter taunting the “union elites” who have “had it pretty good these past 10 years.” December’s unprovoked attack on OPSEU was the culmination of Hudak’s 18-month campaign against “union bosses,” proposing that workers be permitted to opt out of union membership and dues.

While Hudak has lowballed that controversial strategy during a byelection campaign in union-friendly Niagara Falls, labour leaders have little doubt his fondness for American-style “right to work” laws remains a core belief that will resurface in due course.

Other union leaders attending the Working Families meeting: Representatives of the steelworkers, Catholic teachers, UFCW, Unifor and CUPE.

One of the underlying concerns about Ryan’s role is that his pro-NDP leanings might get in the way of strategic support for the Liberals in ridings where they are better positioned to defeat the Tories. But the OFL leader is determined to lead the charge.

“This is not the time to have multiple campaigns all purporting to be fighting the Tories,” Ryan wrote last week in yet another missive to the machinists’ union. “We need one campaign co-ordinated through the OFL and the CLC.”

If union leaders flirt with a “parallel” campaign, “I can guarantee you we will be decimated as a trade union movement following the next election.”

Yet Ryan’s admonitions failed to silence the machinists, who replied with commendable brevity and alacrity:

“Dear Sir and Brother,

“It would appear Brother, that if you were the only person in an empty room, you would pick a fight with yourself. A war of words is not what I want to get into — this is over.

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“Yours in Solidarity, Dave Ritchie.”

Appeals to labour solidarity rarely stop union leaders from shouting each other down. A Tory showdown might just do it.