Solidarity goes only so far at one of Ontario’s biggest public sector unions, which is embroiled in a bitter dispute over how sexual assault and harassment are handled in the workplace — in this case, its own headquarters.

Five senior executives at the Ontario Public Service Employees Union have served a notice of libel against local OPSEU leaders who raised questions about the “workplace culture” at headquarters when its spokesperson, Donald (Don) Ford, was charged with 12 counts of sexual assault last November.

Now, both sides — top union brass versus elected local leaders — are lawyering up instead of talking it out.

Undeterred by the threatened legal action — and lawyers’ letters demanding a retraction and apology over their allegedly defamatory email — the elected union leaders will make a public plea for a new, transparent investigation into OPSEU’s headquarters when its annual convention opens Thursday in Toronto.

Despite their resolutions being ruled out of order by organizers, they will take to the microphones to demand an open debate on an emergency basis about how OPSEU handles harassment. And how the union deals with dissent by litigating, not negotiating.

The unprecedented battle pits OPSEU’s top unelected administrators against grassroots union leaders representing college teachers across the province — for whom free speech and democratic dissent are part of their cultural DNA.

The “intended plaintiffs” in OPSEU senior management include its general counsel, labour lawyer Eric O’Brien; the “intended defendants” in the litigation include a college professor who teaches labour studies at George Brown College, J.P. Hornick.

“We will keep pushing this — we’re not going to drop it, it’s not going to go away,” said Hornick, who chairs OPSEU’s divisional executive for CAAT-A (Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology - Academic) representing about 12,000 unionized members across the province.

“We need to set a gold standard in terms of workplace relations,” she told me.

These two antagonists — a labour lawyer versus a labour professor — are locked in a legal battle over whether their union did its due diligence to protect its own employees at its own headquarters. And it comes against the backdrop of police charges against Ford, the 51-year-old former public relations officer at OPSEU headquarters, who has a scheduled pre-trial court appearance Friday in Toronto.

OPSEU president Smokey Thomas, who is barred by union rules from suing other members of his own union, is not part of the legal action. Asked why his top OPSEU executives are firing off lawyers’ letters, Thomas insisted he played no part in it, and didn’t know whether the union was bankrolling it. And he has no intention of paying the mounting bills of the elected local leaders, who say they’re out of pocket after defending themselves against his top executives.

A day after I interviewed Thomas, he issued a pre-emptive news release to all other media late Wednesday declaring: “Martin Regg Cohn, Toronto Star columnist, informed OPSEU of his intention to publish a column questioning the union’s handling” of sexual harassment issues.

“I am disappointed that a journalist from what is supposed to be Canada’s leading newspaper is trying to use this serious matter to try to diminish the integrity of our union,” Thomas said in the written statement, entitled: “OPSEU leads the way against sexual harassment.”

The news release added: “Following the incident last year, OPSEU took decisive action by terminating the accused, offering victims extensive support, consulting staff unions, engaging legal firms and experts in the field of workplace harassment to strengthen policies and procedures, and undertaking a full and thorough external investigation.”

Bob Eaton, who heads communications for Thomas and is part of the libel notice, declined comment and refused to say who was paying his legal fees.

But Barry Casey, also named as an intended plaintiff in the libel notice, told me he had no idea how the threatened legal action even came about, nor who was paying the fees for the letter sent on behalf of him and other senior administrators. Casey said he left OPSEU last February and is “no longer part of this action,” and has never been billed for the libel lawyer’s services.

Along with O’Brien, who is OPSEU’s general counsel, three other OPSEU executives — Laurie Chapman, Catherine Bowman and Maurice Gabay (“collectively the ‘Intended Plaintiffs’ ”) — did not respond to requests for comment, nor to questions about who is paying the bills for their notice of libel.

Their lawyer, Peter Jacobsen, writes in a covering letter to the “intended defendants” that the threatened legal action is offered “in the spirit of encouraging dialogue.”

But Hornick says she and her fellow activists were stunned by the threat of a libel suit, rattled when “process servers showed up at each of our workplaces in order to deliver these,” and daunted by the spectre of mounting legal bills.

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“I was shocked and disappointed” adds Kevin MacKay, vice-president of OPSEU local 240 at Mohawk College, where he teaches sociology. “I could see the effect of such a suit being to silence and chill, so I definitely felt that.”

The formal libel notice complains of an email shared with other union leaders and activists last December, asserting that it contains “innuendo” and is “defamatory” because it “states that the Intended Plaintiffs are responsible for the existence of an overall climate and toxic culture at OPSEU that allowed an employee to engage in systemic sexual harassment for years and for their failure to ensure a harassment-free workplace.”

The disputed email — deemed defamatory, unproven and untrue by the plaintiffs — seeks an “open dialogue” and cites a letter sent to Thomas at OPSEU headquarters requesting “an external inquiry into the systemic sexual harassment experienced by staff and that has culminated in the sexual assault charges against senior communications officer Don Ford.”

As reported in the Star last November, Ford is alleged to have sexually assaulted three women between March 2011 and March 2015 at the OPSEU office. Police believed there may have been more victims and asked them to come forward.

The libel notice complains “in particular of the following words as underlined . . . ” citing this passage, among others:

“As a Divisional Executive, we decided to call for this inquiry according to our belief in union principles and our desire for transparency . . . . We call on our union to take a principled stand; one that we would fight to enforce with our employers, but expect from our union.”

Hornick, Mackay and three other “intended defendants” hired their own lawyer, Jacob Wilson, who disputed the allegations of libel, citing a legal precedent that “qualified privilege protects communications made honestly and in good faith among union members with respect to union affairs (in addition to the defences of justification and fair comment).”

Wilson’s letter notes he has “advised our clients that good faith communications among OPSEU leaders on serious OPSEU matters have been, and will continue to be, protected from legal action of the kind threatened.”

It’s a persuasive argument in favour of free speech among unionists acting in good faith, even if it comes at a cost — the OPSEU activists are already out of pocket more than $10,000, and their union hasn’t replied to their request for reimbursement by its Solidarity Reserve Fund.

Did OPSEU overreact by trying to shut down questioning from the grassroots? Did the union’s top leadership, including Smokey Thomas, do everything it could and should do to protect its own workers?

It’s often said that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, but without more information we don’t know enough to say that. But it’s fair to say that where there’s Smokey, there’s libel chill.