Allegations that former Unifor head Jerry Dias received a $50,000 kickback from a rapid test supplier he promoted to employers have left Canada’s largest private-sector union reeling.
Dias allegedly offered half of that money to his assistant Chris MacDonald, who reported the breach to Unifor and filed a formal complaint.
The Star has obtained the summary of an independent workplace investigation commissioned by Unifor, as well as 1,600 pages of minutes detailing how the union’s senior leadership dealt with the fallout. The investigation found that Dias tried to impede the probe into the alleged kickback scandal by pressuring the whistleblower to drop their complaint, a breach of the union’s ethics.
