Sid Ryan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Patrick Cyril (Sid) Ryan (born 1952, in Dublin, Ireland) is a Canadian labour union leader. He has been the president of the Ontario chapter of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which has a membership of 210,000, since 1992, and is a vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

Ryan has been involved with CUPE since 1976, when he began working for Ontario Hydro. He is an intense and charismatic speaker, known for his fiery opposition to right-wing and anti-union politicians and governments. He was a particularly vocal opponent of former Ontario Premier Mike Harris during the late 1990s, and helped to coordinate several actions by the labour movement against Harris's government. In 2002, his union launched a successful legal challenge against the government of Ernie Eves which helped stop the privatization of Ontario Hydro.

In addition to his union activities, Ryan has been involved with the New Democratic Party (NDP) since the 1980s. He has served on the Ontario NDP's provincial council and Environment committee, and was president of the Durham Centre riding association for a time.

Ryan's affiliation with the Ontario NDP became tenuous in the early 1990s, when the party moved to the right under Bob Rae's leadership. On one occasion, he referred to the Rae government's Social Contract bill as the most anti-labour piece of legislation he had ever seen. He has since re-aligned himself with the provincial party under Howard Hampton's leadership.

Ryan has stood as an NDP candidate in two provincial and two federal election campaigns, but has not to date won election to a legislative body. He contested Scarborough Centre in the 1999 provincial election, and finished third behind Progressive Conservative incumbent Marilyn Mushinski and Liberal Costas Manios. In the 2003 provincial election, he campaigned in Oshawa and came within 1,109 votes of defeating PC incumbent Jerry Ouellette. Ryan moved the NDP's vote from around 5000 to over 18,000 during the course of his campaigns in Oshawa.

Ryan also stood as a candidate for Oshawa in the 2004 federal election, and lost to Conservative Colin Carrie by 463 votes in a very close three-way race. He ran again in the 2006 election, but, despite considerable support from the federal NDP leader Jack Layton, lost by 2,802 votes to incumbent Carrie.The result of the election in Oshawa was marred and clouded by a smear campaign directed at Ryan in the dying days of the 2006 election campaign. Elections Canada has laid two charges of breaching the Elections Act against a Conservative Party member in Oshawa for distributing false and misleading material in the community prior to election day. Ryan also filed a civil suit against the individual for one million dollars.

On more than one occasion, Ryan's election losses have been cited as proof of the dangers of tactical voting. During the 2004 campaign, Liberal leader Paul Martin's last minute appeals to potential NDP supporters convinced many to vote Liberal. After the election, a poll in Oshawa found that the number of voters who initially planned to vote for Ryan, but then decided to support the Liberals late in the campaign to prevent a Conservative victory, significantly exceeded the narrow margin of Ryan's loss. Martin's strategic voting was attempting again in 2006, with the full support of CAW leader Buzz Hargrove, and it also similarly hurt Ryan's vote even though he was one of the 40 NDP candidates that Hargorve endorsed. Ironically, of course, these resulted in the election of a Conservative candidate.

In 2006, Ryan threatened a political strike after Premier Dalton McGuinty brought Bill 206, which would change the administration of OMERS. Ryan was successful in convincing government to give administrative control over OMERS to the employees and employers of the plan. The employer organization AMO (Association of Municipalities Ontario)together with OMERS administrators fought hard to stop Ryans campaign.McGuinty agreed to introduce a special piece of legislation to address CUPE's concerns but refused to withdraw the bill.

In 2006, under his leadership, CUPE Ontario voted to endorse a global campaign of boycott and divestment against the State of Israel "apartheid like policies" towards the Palestinians.

Under Ryan's leadership,CUPE has grown from 150,000 members to 210,000 today.