The University of Toronto Students’ Union (UTSU) is suing three former members over alleged “improper” severance and overtime payments.
The union has launched a lawsuit against former executive director Sandra Hudson, former president Yolen Bollo-Kamara, and former vice-president Cameron Wathey, according to a statement of claim released Sept. 21.
The claim alleged Hudson was improperly paid over $277,000 in severance and overtime payments. It stated both Wathey and Bollo-Kamara terminated Hudson as director two weeks before the end of her employment at the union, and she received over $247,000 as a result.
Hudson allegedly received the rest of the money through overtime cheques amounting to over 2,500 hours and was marked to receive over $100,000. The payments were allegedly approved by Wathey and Bollo-Kamara.
Combined, the money paid out to Hudson was about one-tenth of UTSU’s annual budget.
Ben Coleman, current president of the UTSU, said he discovered the payments the day before he took office in May after looking through previous union financial transactions and documents.
“A lot of the time has been figuring out the best way to go about resolving it and what exactly to do,” he said.
Coleman said the union checked Hudson’s old computer for additional evidence.
“We had asked our legal counsel what sort of evidence they might need to put the claim together, and they recommended that we attempt data recovery on [Hudson’s] old computer,” he said.
He said the union took the computer to a data recovery service only to discover the hard drive had been completely wiped.
“It’s hard to unintentionally completely delete a file,” he said.
The statement of claim said the union is seeking to reclaim the amount paid to Hudson, and an additional $200,000 in damages for breach of fiduciary trust, but the union is also open to mediation or arbitration.
“By being open to arbitration and mediation, we wanted to show that it’s really just about getting the money back and not really about anything else,” Coleman said. “We don’t want to do it to ruin anyone’s name—we want to do it to protect the resources that sort of left the door.”
Coleman said reclaiming the money is important for the union’s long-term financial planning because it would go towards a new student centre expected to open in two years.
“We’ve had to make some cuts to save up money, so we can get the businesses off the ground in that student centre, which we wouldn’t have to do if we had this money,” he said.
Bollo-Kamara said she was unable to comment, while Wathey and Hudson could not be contacted for this story.
