Man who appears in Unifor ‘Meet the Scabs’ video threatens lawsuit

Unifor could be heading to court after a man claims he was wrongly used in a video that identifies the temporary workers at the Co-op Refinery in Regina.

Employees have been locked out of the refinery since January as both sides have reached an impasse in contract negotiations.

On Jan. 9, Unifor, the union who represents locked out Co-op employees, Twitter account released a “Meet the Scabs” video that identifies some of the replacement workers at the refinery.

Kalpesh Patel was named in the video, but he is claiming he’s never worked at the refinery and he was included as a mistake.

William Howe is a lawyer at the Linka, Howe, Peterson law offices and says Patel has been a client of theirs for years. Howe said Patel approached them on Friday voicing concerns over the video.

“He was quite embarrassed by it and surprised by it,” Howe said. “He’s a Regina businessman, so the first thing that happened was when the video became public, the senior shareholder of the business advised him that if it is in fact true, he would have to depart because it would affect their business.”

Howe said Patel has received calls from others in the city who were surprised by the allegation being levied against him.

Howe said it’s difficult to know what sort of compensation for damages Patel could receive at this point.

“The issue is, has he been libelled and slandered? To his credit, in our view, he clearly was. The intent, in our view, of the video is to out people, to embarrass them and to do as much damage to the people identified in the video as much as they can,” Howe said.

Howe said Patel recognizes that mistakes can be made and believes that was the case with his inclusion in the video.

“In his world, this was a clear mistake – presumably innocent mistake – made by the union that they inadvertently picked the wrong person,” Howe said.

Since Patel believes it was unintentional, he asked Howe’s office to send a letter to the union to give them a chance to delete him from the video and offer an apology to confirm he is not a replacement worker.

“Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear the union is taking the request seriously and some would argue they’ve doubled down on it,” Howe said.

Howe said they gave a deadline of Friday night to show the importance of getting the video down. If it remained up, Howe said the issue could be headed to the courts.

“There’s clear damage to his reputation and that’s the thing. Once something is published, it can never really be taken back and that’s the reason for the public apology,” Howe said.

The process for getting the issue to court would begin on Monday.

“Mr. Patel is not involved in this dispute between the union and management at all. It’s just an example of how an innocent third-party can get caught up in somebody else’s dispute either deliberately or accidentally. If it happens deliberately, shame on them. If it happens accidentally, they have an opportunity to fix it. It’s just common decency.”

As of Saturday at 1 p.m., the “Meet the Scabs” video containing Patel remains on the Unifor Twitter page.

980 CJME has reached out to Unifor for comment.