QUIET ON SET.
By now you have either seen or heard about Quiet on Set - the documentary film series about abuse in the workplace. You’ve seen the impact harassment has on workers and the reaction of the public to that information.
By now, you’ve also had time to consider Cohen-Kusmierczyk’s performance on the first day of providing evidence. She confidently repeated racist language in front of the arbitrator. She doubled down.
In case you have forgotten me, my name is Joseph Murphy. I am a writer, director, and until recently I had a day job with the province of Ontario. While there, I was subjected to antiblack racism. When I asked for the harassment to stop, I was fired.
SEE ME FOR WHO I AM.
My lawyer insists you have no interest in admitting error and giving me my job back. He states despite the complete lack of evidence of wrongdoing on my part, my years of service, and all the precedents of a poisoned work environment, you will still force me to litigate for another year. Or more.
Perhaps you are hoping I will just go away. I say this with as much love as possible – I am just getting started.
My podcast, Alien Brain Fog, is a science-based program focused on ending systems of oppression. I’m currently filming a feminist horror movie. In a few months I record an album of music. I am not going to disappear. You chose the wrong black man to pick on.
Your days of buying victims’ silence with tax-payer money is over. Public scrutiny is coming.
So, for the sake of my conscience, I will ask you one last time.
DO YOU REALLY WANT TO DO THIS?
Are you willing to ruin your reputations and diminish your other accomplishments in life because you chose to protect a non-union manager with clear antiblack racial bias? If so, keep doing what you’re doing. And I will keep doing what I’m doing. The truth will out.
Crime is running rampant in the streets because our government is corrupt. You, the person reading this, have been involved in corruption. Paying for victims’ silence with public money could be considered corruption. Bribery. Senior officials are aware crimes are being commit and they are paying off victims to hide the crime.
Perhaps you don’t see it that way. I’m willing to be the public will.
You are aware a manager in the Windsor office has been harassing black people for years. You aware her reporting managers have been protecting her through multiple grievances. Reports to the WDHP were altered after they were signed to obfuscate the presence of racism. You fired me a few weeks before my grievance was set to begin. This is against the law. The laws you, as representatives of the crown, are required to enforce.
You have taken no action to provide a safe work environment. Instead, you fire everyone that speaks out about Cohen-Kusmiercyz and try to pay them off with public money.
I can prove every word of it. You know I can.
MANAGER INCOMPETENCY CAUSED PERMANENT DISABILITY
You took advantage of my disability, long covid. Everyone knows I caught COVID in the workplace, but I wasn’t able to prove it.
Until now.
Thanks to Cohen-Kusmierczyk’s submitted evidence, I can now prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I DID contract COVID in the workplace. And that my disability is a direct result of manager incompetence.
Cohen-Kusmierczyk’s own timeline evidence shows Windsor managers allowed a person sick with COVID – Mazin – to work in the office while awaiting test results. Mazin sat five feet from me. The last day I was in the office, I went at his desk (we both wore masks) and helped him with a work problem. A few days later, my symptoms started.
Managers have a legal obligation to provide a safe work environment. I wasn’t told the man sitting beside me was sick. Now I am permanently disabled.
Rather than focus on my work history, Cohen-Kusmierczyk spent her time trying to convince the court there was no way I could have caught COVID at work. She provided very detailed timelines and expert opinion from the Health Unit. She just forgot one simple thing.
They didn’t have rapid tests then.
The day I told her my test result was not the date I got sick.
Back then there were no instant tests. It took many days to get a positive result. Which Cohen-Kusmierczyk is aware of because the person who gave me COVID, the person who was allowed to be in the office while he was sick, was waiting on his test results.
If this keeps going, what other damaging evidence will she provide next time? When people hear her words, what do you think the outcome will be? Does the director really want to go on the record? For this case?
Maybe take a few minutes and review the facts of the case. Review who I am. Fix the problem you created.
YOU ARE AGENTS OF THE CROWN
If you want the public to believe the government follows the law it passes, your only course of action is to return employment to me. Stop playing this nonsensical game that will have only one conclusion. You are agents of the crown. You have a legal obligation to your employees and a fiduciary duty to the citizens of Ontario.
Soon, it will be impossible to contain the story. I’m filming this weekend for a trailer for my horror movie, Devil’s Mountain. I start advertising my podcast next month. If you have not done so, review Alien Brain Fog (Spotify or YouTube). I will spend the next 2 months discussing systemic racism and how the Ontario civil service repeatedly breaks the law. How the Ontario Civil Service, under the leadership of Michelle DiEmanuelle routinely fires black employees who speak up. The louder I get, the more victims will find me. It’s only a matter of time.
OR
You can stop this at any time by getting me back under an oath of office.
NO MORE HUSH MONEY
The part that sickens me is what you believe a human life is worth: $100,000. That is the same amount Harvey Weinstein’s people paid to Rose McGowan to cover up his abuse.
Is that all a human life is worth in Ontario?
To be clear, the abuse I experience at the hands of Rachel Cohen-Kusmierczyk was insignificant compared to what McGowan endured. The part that traumatized me, the part that nearly killed me, was the speed at which government officials moved to suppress evidence. My case was very clear – bias in email form. I reported it to her reporting manager. I was ignored. When I filed a grievance, I was fired. I was the third black employee in that office to lose their job because of racism. And because of your inaction, I may not be the last.
In my documentary, I am not Drake Bell. If this was Quiet on Set, I am Christy Stratton and Jenny Kilgen. Both were writers who spoke out about abuse in the workplace. They took money believing the problem would be solved after telling their employer about it. Instead, it got much worse.
Buying people’s silence is a method of circumnavigating the law. This is why I cannot in good conscious take your blood money. Because if I do, more black people will have suffer at Cohen-Kusmiercyzk’s hands. Enough is enough.
Literally the only course of action that will stop me from exposing your crimes is returning to me the job you stole. Talk to your lawyer. See how he feels Cohen-Kusmiercyzk did. Ask yourself, do you really want to do this?
I don’t know why you are protecting her. Perhaps it is because she’s connected to sitting Liberal MP Irek Kusmierczyk. Maybe it’s for a different reason. But she is clearly being protected.
And that is a crime.
LEGAL OBLIGATIONS
Employers have a legal obligation to provide a safe work environment.
Part III of Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act states employers have an obligation to ‘inform a worker about any hazard in the work”. Yet you suppressed evidence of antiblack harassment against two of my previous colleagues. If I’d been told of the danger Cohen-Kusmiercyzk represents to black workers, I would have taken different actions.
In Part 111.0.1 of the act (Workplace violence and workplace harassment) states that “an investigation must be conducted into incidents and complaints of workplace harassment”. Bill 168 states the worker is to remain in the workplace and available to take part in the investigation. You fired me because you do not want the investigation to take place.
This means that you, a government official, are breaking the law. The laws you are responsible to uphold.
Your failure to act results in me becoming suicidal. I almost killed myself because you didn’t comply with the law. But I’m willing to move past that. We are all human. We make mistakes. Let me remind you of my humanity.
I AM A HUMAN BEING
I have been driven into poverty because I asked for the harassment to stop. I was forced to sell my house and, without stable employment, I could not get another mortgage. I was forced to pay $27,000 in rent last year. Now, I’m selling everything I own and moving into one room to help a friend with his mortgage.
I’d love to move in with my boyfriend, but I can’t. Michael is on ODPS. If I move in, I would be added as a spouse which would cut him off the program. He requires life-saving medication so I have no choice. Michael’s father died unexpectedly in December. His mother is worried about losing the house. And I can’t help.
If I had my job back, I could add Michael as a spouse on my benefits. My current position (consultant with a manufacturing company to improve their systems) is only on contract. No benefits. I need my job back so we can live together I could move in with him and his mother and help them keep the house. You have many vacancies. Find me one and you’ll have the silence you desire.
Whatever imagined wrongs you think I have done, haven’t I suffered enough?
You are playing games with my life. And I’m asking you to stop.
CONCLUSION
Maybe you’ll read this, maybe you won’t. What I would hope you would do is focus on solving problems. The OPS has a significant problem with racism. Fully reinstate me with back pay and get me under an oath of office.
Allow me to be part of the solution to the problem you created. Or I will focus on solving the problem from the outside.
Quiet on Set.
Joseph Murphy
website: Official Website of M Joseph Murphy - Writer/Director
podcast: Alien Brain Fog on Spotify
Quiet on Set Trailer: Quiet on Set - The Dark Side of Kids Television
BOOKS BY M JOSEPH MURPHY:
Smashwords: M Joseph Murphy Author Page on Smashwords