TORONTO – Canadian Media Guild (CMG) members working at Ontario public broadcaster TVO will be in a legal strike position on Friday, Aug. 18, CMG announced Tuesday.
This comes after 95.8 per cent of CMG members at TVO rejected the provincial broadcaster’s latest offer two weeks ago. The collective agreement between TVO and its employees who are members of CMG, including journalists, producers and education workers, expired in October 2022.
“Workers feel they are being forced to take job action that will interrupt services the public relies on, such as The Agenda with Steve Paikin, TVO Today’s Ontario-focused journalism, children’s programming, and online courses used by teachers in schools across the province,” reads a CMG statement.
CMG collective agreement negotiators have been “unable to make progress at the bargaining table for two main reasons,” according to the statement.
Firstly, “Ontario’s Ministry of Education has given the order to create only temporary contract jobs at TVO, even if the work is permanent in nature,” the statement says. This forces education workers in particular “to accept perpetual contracts and forego permanent employment,” it adds.
“These are public sector jobs that the government is trying to turn into gig work and CMG members at TVO cannot abide it,” CMG says. “By keeping workers in precarious contracts, TVO is denying workers health benefits, dismantling job security, and impairing the stability needed to deliver strong public services for all Ontarians.”
CMG’s statement claims that, during bargaining, “after the union refused to sign a waiver entrenching precarious jobs, a threat was made to cut jobs from TVOKids and The Agenda with Steve Paikin.”
Secondly, CMG says “[t]he offer of 2.75%, 2.5%, and 1.75% increases over three years with a potential 1.75% raise for a fourth year is well below the wage improvements workers need during an affordability crisis.”
Furthermore, this offer “also comes after below-inflation increases since 2012, including three years of zero increases from 2012-2014,” CMG adds.
The trade union notes these proposed increases are “well below the increases obtained in the latest noteworthy education, energy and health care Provincial settlements. Our members refuse to be professionally devalued by the Government of Ontario.”
CMG is calling upon the Ontario government “to withdraw these waiver demands and to grant the workers of TVO a fair wage increase so they can afford to live in the city where they work.”
CMG is holding a rally on Wednesday, Aug. 16 at noon in Toronto in support of TVO workers, the trade union said.
