AUPE disruption and intimidation tactics: Updated with video

This is another portion of an incident report submitted earlier by a member who does not live in the high rise.

On Saturday morning, I had to drive my daughter to work.  My daughter recorded as we tried to leave.  As the strikers moved to block me, I asked them to please let us through.  One of the strikers asked if I lived here and I said yes, and that I was informed.  He kept trying to talk to me, so I closed the window.  Even then, he continued talking at me.

On seeing the camera, one woman told me “put the camera away and you can go.”  I refused.  I called for a security guard and the strikers began to mockingly yell towards the security guards to “come do [their] job”.  One of the strikers brought out his own phone to record me (which I have no problem with).  When a security guard came over, we spoke quietly for a time.  The striker that was recording moved in, off the sidewalk, to record our conversation.  The security guard told me they could block me for up to 4 minutes.  As we were already keeping track of the time, we waited and recorded, calling out when 4 minutes was reached.  As we were leaving, the woman who spoke to me earlier said that, if we had turned off the camera, we would not have been blocked.  Essentially, she was trying to intimidate us to prevent us from recording, shift blame from their actions to ours, and informing us that being blocked was punishment for refusing to turn off the camera.

When I returned from dropping off my daughter, security was waiting to talk to me.  After I parked, I was asked if I were a resident.  On learning that I was, they told me that, as a resident, the strikers were not supposed to block me; they could only block employees (it now seems that this is not entirely accurate).  In conversation, I mentioned that one of the strikers had asked if I lived here right at the start of the earlier incident, so they knew full well that they were blocking a resident, not a replacement worker.

As I left my van to go to our unit, one of the strikers, red toque guy (RTG) came over towards my van and began talking into his phone.  He seemed to be describing my van and I heard him describe me as jaywalking.  Later that afternoon, when the strikers were gone, I went to my van.  I found two strikers were still there; RTG and a woman.  Once in my van I began cleaning my dash and replacing my camera holder, tried to fix my loose rear view mirror, clean my inside windows, etc.  As I was trying to tighten my rear view mirror, then clean my windows, RTG walked by, again talking into his phone, describing what I was doing.  While I have no objections to interactions being recorded, this was completely different.  The other strikers were gone and I was simply in my van, in my parking spot, on private property.  His behaviour was downright creepy and felt very stalker-ish.

In another incident (I cannot remember if it was Thursday or Friday afternoon) I witnessed through our window, the strikers delayed a school bus that was trying to get to the subsidised housing beside our parking lot.  Yesterday (Sunday) they again mobbed the red vehicle of a replacement worker and chanted loudly, disrupting the people in the subsidised townhouses trying to enjoy their patio, who voiced their objections.  In response, children who were among the strikers began to chant again, even louder.  My older daughter has a video recording of this incident.

On Saturday afternoon, as I was trying to leave, I found myself in a hilarious position.  I was being blocked again.  My dashboard phone camera was installed and recording, so one man pacing back and forth in front of me had his phone out to record me (which was funny, because he appeared to be trying to hide his phone or something).  A SG came over and recorded with his own phone, so another striker stood in the pee patch, recording the SG.  So I was recording the strikers, with a striker recording me recording them, with the SG recording us recording each other, and a striker recording the SG recording us recording each other, all of us with phone cameras.

Update: video added Oct. 24