Sometimes Leo Gerard just can’t get out of the way of his own mouth. Waste-deep in a three-month-long strike against metals company Vale, the native Canadian managed to tick off the good folks of Sudbury, Ontario, by publicly suggesting that local merchants who didn’t support the USW were supporting Vale.

The inference, of course, was that striking union workers and other unionists should boycott the local merchants. And that didn’t sit too well with the locals.

According to a Sudbury Star poll, 76% of local residents and businesses said they were not at all on the union’s side in the dispute.

And a number of Sudbury bloggers and callers to the paper lent their takes:

• “Drumming up support by fear and intimidation with public threats by union management is meaningless. If I operated an independent retail business in Sudbury, I would post up a sign out of fear, not to demonstrate support. If you want my support, earn it by respect, not through terrorism."

• “Terrorism is all the union knows.”

• “Leo Gerard went too far this time. I’m for the Steelworkers, but there’s a limit to how much you can push people."

Too far? Leo, as we all know, knows no bounds.