IT’S BEEN OVER THREE months now since 5,000-plus locked out CBC employees went back to work. 
For those who were locked out, is everything now back to normal? Not really, says union president Lise Lareau. Sure, the job’s the same and the money’s a little better for Canadian Media Guild members, but morale has cratered as the resentment festers while working under the managers and other company leaders who locked them out.
The Corp.’s leadership has lost their authority to lead, says Lareau (right). What follows is an edited transcript of her chat last week with www.cartt.ca editor and publisher Greg O’Brien.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s start with the lockout. What has been the result of the lockout? What has its conclusion meant for your members?
Lise Lareau: In terms of how their working lives have changed, ironically, not very much. And that’s what was so sad about the lockout – which in our view was very unnecessary. Not just because lockouts or strikes aren’t really the best way to settle, it’s just that in the end, what happened was that the parties agreed to a collective agreement that is really quite similar to the old one.
The main difference is that we have a line in the sand about the numbers of non-permanent contract employees… which the CBC can employ and that’s 9.5% of the permanent workforce, plus 80 jobs. So, there’s now a numeric line in the sand about how many the CBC can have on contract. That’s a first and frankly a good thing.
(CBC management) had wanted their ability to hire non-permanent people to be almost indefinite. They didn’t want to sever it any way or limit it. And that’s really what the focus of the dispute was. Depending on how you do the math, (the result is) 100 to 200 more people on contract than we have now.
GOB: Any specific job titles that applies to?
LL: They’re mostly on-air, rather than technical people. They’re mostly hosts and producers.
So, you asked how people have been doing since the lockout ended? Frankly, the collective agreement isn’t that different for most people. They got significant money increases and that was good. They’re probably, with their retroactivity payments and so on, right about now financially recovered, but I would say the biggest thing for most people is they feel that the chapter just isn’t closed.
I know they feel this way. I certainly do.
By any third-party neutral observer point of view, this lockout was not a good move for the CBC. That’s probably a gross understatement – and yet nobody has been accountable for it. Nobody has been sidelined, demoted, fired, and in fact, two people very closely linked to the lockout have received promotions.
GOB: Who are they?
LL: Fred Mattocks (executive director of production and resources) and Steve Satchel, who was the chief negotiator at the time and became the director of industrial relations.
All the vice-presidents of the CBC are still there and of course, so is the president, and I think in most companies, public or private, media or non-media, a screw-up of this magnitude – somebody’s job would be lost as a point of saying to the rest of the folks there that this was not good behavior, this was not a good corporate move.
GOB: So, in your mind, what did the CBC lose thanks to the lockout?
LL: Oh, I could go on and on. Morale has been horrible and I think it’s because there is a workforce of 5,000 people who… were locked out by those managers and they were truly affronted. They were insulted by it. You have to understand you have an intelligent workforce who were deeply insulted coming back in and yet they don’t see any closure to it. They see their managers and senior managers just going on as if nothing happened. So, it’s a lockout that was totally demoralizing. There were no positive aspects to it.
In other words, the corporation as an entity didn’t gain anything from it – so there’s no upside to those eight weeks… as a corporate entity, the CBC has only suffered. The ratings have been abysmal since and it’s depressing to work on programs when ratings aren’t what they should be and could be. And, they still see the same group of senior managers in charge now of other aspects of their lives – the programming part of their lives – but they don’t necessarily trust them to the same degree…
The CBC miscalculated about what is important to people. And those same people are still in charge – the same people making the same types of decisions in the same type of aggressive way. It’s not like anyone has learned from this. No one has said – and this is where the accountability comes in – “we learned we actually were doing things wrong, this was a mistake and we want to learn from this and move on.”
It’s been instead, “let’s put this behind us and move on” and there’s a big difference. Nobody has learned that the employees make the public broadcaster strong… they are the CBC.
And, there’s got to be a new, fresh, focus on them and their training and place in the CBC. Instead, we’re really back at a lot of the same kind of communications and decision-making from the same managers who made the same miscalculations – and life goes on as if nothing happened. I think it’s distressing for all.
GOB: Are you still calling for Mr. Rabinovitch’s ouster?
LL: We never stood on a stage and said, Mr. Rabinovitch has to go. My own view is that anyone would see that (the senior managers) don’t have the authority to lead that they once had. I think the most impartial observers would acknowledge that and it’s sad that no one has the confidence to acknowledge that from within the senior management ranks at the CBC now.
GOB: So, how do you go forward so that morale gets better?
LL: It’s very, very difficult. Unless there’s an open display of a change in management culture, we’re going to be stuck in this.
So, how do you show that change? Well, you change some of the managers and bring in new types of ideas. You do something symbolic and appoint somebody who’s clearly not from that gang to a key position. You bring in a third party neutral person to bring the parties together. You make a statement that is assertive that says: “We want to change.”
None of that has happened.
I think the board of directors has a key role in this. They stood by and supported senior management during the lockout but I think they’re very aware of the damage the lockout did – and the repercussions – and it’s their responsibility to enforce a different management style – and this is management of people, not programming… the two things are very separate…
It’s been very difficult, really, for the extent of time where George Smith has been VP of human resources. There’s been, as we all know now, three lockouts and two strikes during that period – in seven years. This is what’s stunning to me. What company in Canada can you point to with a record of labour mismanagement like that and have the key people still there?
It’s just unheard of.
GOB: Have you had any similar experiences with some of the other broadcasters where you’re organized?
LL: Not at all. The CBC stands out… as very different from other major companies. We represent 400 people at Canadian Press. It’s also not-for-profit, very similar to CBC in that respect. There it’s a very co-operative style of negotiating and we just settled there. Negotiations take days or weeks rather than months.
In the private sector, time spend negotiating is money so there’s a value placed on the time spent in those rooms – so you better come up with something at the end of a day of bargaining.
I’m not saying if any or all is right or wrong, but CBC stands apart from everything that I watch in this business. The auto industry – they bargain huge contracts in days. During the same time we were locked out, (the Canadian Auto Workers) did (contracts with) all of the big three in that period.
Now, if you talked to the CBC, they were saying this is a complex round, merging three collective agreements into one, because we had consolidated three old unions into one. That’s true, but most of those (agreements) were very similar, so the fact of the matter is the reason why it took so long is there is a very aggressive management style that wanted extreme concessions and wouldn’t budge until we gave in, and we didn’t give in.
So, they decided the only way to make us give in is to lock us out… and it backfired.
GOB: Moving away from the CBC, the Media Guild is growing. This year you organized in Alliance Atlantis and VisionTV.
LL: We did Toronto One, which is now SUN TV about a year ago, too. They all have their interesting elements and are all smaller than the CBC but very important media players in their own way.
Alliance Atlantis was really the last non-union, major player in television. It’s an important player in this country and we organized the technicians. They were the ones who called us in and wanted help and the reasons they wanted unionization is very interesting for this industry generally.
What they found – and this is very similar to Vision and SUN TV – is the television industry attracts young people – it’s a bit of a glam industry. But, unless there is a very good employer or a union in there to push the issue of training and career development, people often stay static in these jobs and they stay stuck. You can see that in all three places – that they weren’t going anywhere, that they couldn’t build a career.
The other thing is young people do want pensions. I think there are a lot of people who want to tell the world “young people don’t want pensions anyway” when actually, they do. Young people want to be able to get married and have kids and houses and a little stability in their lives. They don’t want to be locked into one job for 50 years, but they do want a sense of a career and a bit of a future, like all the people before them.
And, I listened to Rabinovitch and others say: “No, no, the under-30 crowd doesn’t want that.”
Well, that’s a huge myth. That’s the reason why we were called into all three of these places. People want a pension and a career path and at Vision, SUN TV and Alliance Atlantis, these things were not happening for them.
GOB: What did you think of the statement I passed on to you that I heard from a senior broadcaster who said to me during the lockout: “These aren’t steel mills, why do we need unions in media companies?”
LL: These aren’t steel mills and we’re not mining coal, that’s for sure. Our lives are somewhat better than that. But, people are still employees and they still work eight, nine, whatever hours a day putting out a product and they want to be part of it and get more out of it – and have a voice in it, too.
As an employee you want to be able to vocalize a problem without your job being threatened whether it’s a high paying television job or a coal mine. You want to be able to fix it without being fired.
People want challenge in their careers but they also want a sense of where they’re career is going and want to be on a path forward. I’m not saying a union is the only way to have an employer being sensitive to people’s careers but often those issues get overlooked, especially as companies grow.
