TORONTO – Yesterday it was the Steelworkers, today it’s CUPE throwing its support behind the locked-out CBC employees.
CUPE (the Canadian Union of Public Employees) is Canada’s largest union and they, too, have long opposed the increased use of contract employees.
"CBC management’s decision to lock out its workers is an aggressive and desperate action undertaken to force its outsourcing scheme," said Paul Moist, national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), in a release. "This kind of hostility can only weaken the CBC and result in even worse labour-management relations when the dispute is over."…
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REGINA – The lockout at the CBC has taken the Canada Games off the CBC airwaves, so Regina’s cable co-op Access Communications and APTN are pitching in to show the closing ceremonies this weekend, along with help from CTV and SCN.
"The Council is thrilled by the support Access7 has offered for the closing celebration,” said president and CEO for the Canada Games Council, Sue Hyland of the cable channel. “Throughout the Games they have done an incredible amount of work to broadcast entire games to their viewers across the province, and now, at the eleventh hour, for them…
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TORONTO – United Steelworkers’ national director Ken Neumann said Tuesday that the CBC’s decision to lock out its 5,500 Canadian Media Guild employees is foolish and jeopardizes Canadian cultural sovereignty.
As well, Steelworkers’ Ontario/Atlantic director Wayne Fraser said the CBC’s funding of scab labour should be considered scandalous by the federal government.
"The careers of some of Canada’s most recognizable broadcast personalities are being put on hold and Canadians will soon start to tune out the CBC," said Neumann in the press release. "The CBC is just another run-of-the-mill broadcaster without the creativity of career journalists, producers and broadcasters."…
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TORONTO – Talks between the CBC and its union, the Canadian Media Guild, broke off at around 10:30 Sunday night, with no new negotiations planned.
A message on the CMG hotline from bargaining committee member Barbara Saxberg announced “with considerable regret,” that no deal could be made by the 12:01 a.m. Monday August 15th deadline.
This means no Peter Mansbridge, no CFL football (although the Corp. may try to broadcast the games with fill in camera operators and no announcers or replays), and some kind of national radio feed which has yet to be determined (look for something music-heavy)….
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DEAR MEMBERS AND COLLEAGUES,
So it’s come to this.
CBC’s managers are shutting the doors and locking us out of the places where we have devoted so many hours working, reporting, producing, shooting, hosting and creating CBC programming. It seems unthinkable, unnecessary, wasteful.
More than that, this is an aggressive move by any standard. I would call it un-Canadian for a major national employer, a public broadcaster no less, to be locking the door on 5,500 professionals. In retrospect, it would seem that plans were in place to do this all along. It explains the absolute wall that our bargaining committee…
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TORONTO – Talks between the CBC and its union, the Canadian Media Guild, broke off at around 10:30 tonight (Sunday), with no new negotiations planned.
A message on the CMG hotline from bargaining committee member Barbara Saxberg announced “with considerable regret,” that no deal could be made by the 12:01 a.m. Monday August 15th deadline.
This means no Peter Mansbridge, no CFL football (although the Corp. may try to broadcast the games with fill in camera operators and no announcers or replays), and some kind of national radio feed which has yet to be determined (look for something music-heavy)….
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TORONTO – Late yesterday, the CBC gave its union, the Canadian Media Guild, a 72 hour lockout notice, meaning that if the two sides can’t somehow come to an agreement by Sunday night, 5,500 English TV and radio workers across the country will be locked out Monday morning.
"We are disappointed to have to take this action," said Richard Stursberg, executive vice-president of CBC Television. "However, after 15 months of negotiations, our key issues remain unresolved – issues which are crucial to CBC’s success as a national public broadcaster and as a well-managed company in a competitive media marketplace."
"We…
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VANCOUVER – As Internet-using Canadians spend more and more of their time online, it appears as though radio listenership is suffering the most because of that, according to a recent report from Ipsos Reid.
Internet-using Canadians averaged 12.7 hours per week on the web in 2005 (up 46% from 8.7 hours in 2002). The increase appears to have come at the expense of radio, primarily, as the typical Internet-using adult reports spending 11 hours per week listening to the radio, down from 16 hours per week in 2002, says the survey results.
While weekly Internet usage has surpassed radio…
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TORONTO – Unless things start happening very soon, like today, 5,500 CBC TV and radio employees could be off the job Monday, affecting dozens of hours of programming.
The CBC says the union quit the bargaining table on Monday and has yet to return. “Monday night the union walked away from the table and since, we’ve been ready, willing and able to negotiate with them,” CBC spokesman Jason MacDonald told www.cartt.ca.
The strike/lockout deadline is midnight Sunday. “At 12:01 Monday morning there could be a strike or lockout,” added MacDonald, who declined to say whether or not CBC would…
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WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN to TV News?
Two stories this week prompted that question: the death of the excellent Canadian-born ABC anchor Peter Jennings; and www.cartt.ca’s own feature on the first baby steps of Independent World Television News.
Obviously, very little will happen to TV news in the short term. The world (not to mention the newsrooms of broadcasters) is still so full of baby boomers and others a little older and a little younger who can’t remember – or envision – a TV world without the six o’clock and eleven o’clock news that nothing is going to…
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