Ryan Cleary's push for new fishermen union a 'raid' of FFAW: labour congress president

The president of one of Canada's biggest labour groups says he'sjustified in calling Ryan Clearyopportunistic for trying to start a new fishers union separate from the Fish, Food and Allied Workers Union (FFAW).

HassanYussuff,president of theCanadian Labour Congress (CLC), wrote a letter to Cleary on Monday where he describedthe former MP's attempts to start a new union as a "raid" on the currentFFAW membership.

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YussuffdismissesCleary's claim that the letter was harsh and included personal attacks.

"He's tryingto raid that union to create his own unionfor his own purposes, in my view," Yussuff told the St. John's Morning Show.

"We have a process in the CLC structure to address issues that members raise, andwe have not received any complaint from the members of that union."

'I don't doubt that there's some conflict'

Yussuff saidthe discontent among FFAW members is understandable, but arguesthe CLC has to deal with similarissues of conflict of interest with the 52 member affiliations he workswith every day.

He said the discontent amongfish harvesters in Newfoundland and Labrador can and should be resolved through the current union structure and not through cutting ties with the FFAW and joining Cleary's proposed FISH-NL union.

"I don't doubt that there's some conflict from time to time," said Yussuff.

"The way to go about solving it is not to tell your members to break up their organization to join that one that Ryan Cleary decides he wants to create.If Mr. Cleary were to sit in my shoes and do my job, he would appreciate that complex issues can often be solved within the structure of organizations."