Tag Archives: CBC

CMG members vote 80% to ratify new deal with CBC

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There was a lot to update in a collective agreement that had not changed substantially in 10 years

CBC workers who are represented by CWA Canada through its largest Local, the Canadian Media Guild (CMG), have voted 80 per cent in favour of ratifying a new collective agreement with the public broadcaster.

The five-year deal contains wage increases of 1.5 per cent this year and next for the 4,300 employees across the country (outside Quebec and Moncton, N.B.) who are covered by the contract. Increases in the final three years of the agreement will be pegged to the Treasury Board rate that applies to unionized federal government employees.

More than 1,200 CMG members took part this week in online voting on the tentative agreement, which comes into effect on April 1. Official results released today show 977 in favour and 241 against.

Jonathan Spence, president of the Guild’s CBC branch, said there are several improvements with this deal. These include allowances for members in Canada’s North and those who do out-of-country work; relocation subsidies; and better terms for temporary workers to convert to permanent status.

“We’ve spent the better part of six months bargaining this agreement,” said Spence. “There was a lot to update in an agreement that had not changed substantially in the last 10 years, in an industry that has significantly shifted.”

CMG President Kamala Rao said, “Our bargaining team brought a great deal of goodwill and focus to the table. Members at CBC/Radio-Canada believe in the value of our work at the public broadcaster and we’ve succeeded in raising the floor for everyone who works there.”

CBC staff who work in Northern and isolated locations will see significant gains in their paycheques — in some cases as much as $20,000 annually — as a special allowance moves from 40 to 100 per cent of the rate paid to federal employees.

Spence said this amounts to $1 million in new spending by the CBC and represents a “real commitment … to improving working conditions in the North.”

Many years of a stagnant allowance meant CMG members were struggling with basic costs like housing and food. The beefed-up pay is expected to also improve employee retention and, in turn, help with workload issues.

Another area in which the CMG made significant strides involves temporary employment and precarious work.

The agreement includes a commitment to create 41 new permanent jobs, which will be distributed across the country and concentrated in news, radio and regional stations. Some of those new jobs will be as a result of conversion from temporary to permanent status.

The team also negotiated freelance rate increases in line with the across-the-board wage increases for other members. In addition, there will now be more clarity to distinguish between the various types of freelance engagements.

Other provisions of the agreement include:

  •  For the first time, members will have access to a new program of conditions when they take a position outside of Canada. It also applies to foreign correspondents.
  •  There is now a fair and transparent approach to covering the costs of moving when members are asked to relocate within CBC/SRC.
  •  Employees will not be required to use their own phones or tablets to perform work. If a mobile device is needed to do the job, it will be provided.
  •  Confirmation that CBC employees are entitled to credit for their work, on every platform, where feasible and reasonable to provide it.
  •  Union and management will conduct a joint review of compensation for maintenance and IT workers. There could be adjustments if it’s determined they are paid less than market rates.

A joint union-management committee is to meet this spring to review pension and benefit plans, which cover all CBC employees. Up for renewal is a 10-year-old agreement on pension surplus sharing and a benefits fund that expires in 2019.

Let’s stop pretending all is OK at CBC — it’s not

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Source: cwa-scacanada.ca

LISE LAREAU | CMG National Vice-President

One day, in between one major layoff announcement and another terrible revelation in the Jian Ghomeshi case, an email appeared in my inbox declaring the winners of the CBC President’s Awards. It stunned me; it seemed so wrong to pretend things were normal and the annual tradition was going on uninterrupted, while so much at CBC was disintegrating.  I didn’t read on and tried — like many of us — just tried to get through another sorry day at work.

So hats off to the Radio-Canada employees in Sherbrooke, Que., who had the same feeling, but amplified it and acted upon it. They were the winners of a President’s Award for their coverage of the rail disaster at Lac-Mégantic. When CBC President Hubert Lacroix went to deliver it this week, in person, he was rebuffed.  The employees refused the award, citing the cuts.

Lacroix is quoted as saying their move was, in effect, useless. But that’s evidence of the massive disconnect between those making decisions to dismantle much about the CBC and the people who do the programming every single day that makes the CBC what it is.

No Mr. Lacroix, what’s useless is pretending it’s business as usual at the CBC these days.

When senior managers write memos of yet another cut (this one the outsourcing of weather to another network, no less) that say people are “pleased to announce” a “new content sharing agreement” before mentioning the people who will lose their jobs, and the president of the CBC declares it’s a “good day” to announce 1,500 job losses in the next five years, one has to seriously wonder if senior CBC managers are deliberately deluding themselves in the hope that if they use words like this, it will all be OK.

There is nothing normal, usual or “good” about any of this. That’s why employees openly ask their CEO who will be their champion as the CBC is attacked by government cuts.  The answer should be obvious, but in this strange world of dismantling a public institution, nothing is as it should be.

What we do see is an increasingly empty Broadcasting Centre. We see empty offices. We see one empty studio, another one used by a former network competitor (Rogers) and a few more slated to be shuttered by next year.

We see whole areas of expertise parcelled out (documentary production, weather, hockey). We see a single permanent reporter in a city the size of Fredericton. We listen to talk about selling the Broadcasting Centre itself. And today all of us will bear witness as hundreds more people across the country get notices that their jobs are redundant.

I could go on.

We at the CMG are planning to do a full inventory of the losses in all their grim detail, mostly because we know no one else will.  Others, apparently, will keep declaring things are “good” and be pleased to hand out awards – until the very last studio door is closed.

– See more at: http://www.cwa-scacanada.ca/EN/news/2014/141113_cbc_lareau.shtml#sthash.tGmfhUJ3.dpuf