TORONTO – The Canadian Media Guild (CMG) has filed grievances against multi-faith broadcaster S-VOX “to fight the way employees are being treated” as a result of the company’s decision to layoff nine employees last Friday.
“We believe strongly that S-VOX has violated our collective agreement, and we’re prepared to make our case before a third party if necessary,” said CMG staff representative Keith Maskell, in a statement. “We are seeking remedies for the affected employees.”
The CMG said that the affected positions were in the on-air promotions and post-production departments, including positions in closed captioning, video editing and promo production. At the same time as the video editor and promo producer jobs were being eliminated, new positions – known as producer/editors or "preditors", were being created, the statement claimed.
"We don’t dispute that an employer has the right to eliminate positions when work is actually disappearing", Maskell continued. "But very little of the work is actually going away. In fact, the expectation seems to be that the volume of promo production will actually go up. It’s outrageous that the company is ignoring some of the most important provisions of the collective agreement and shoving once-valued employees out the door, when there’s work available for them to do."
S-VOX properties include Vision-TV, the Christian Channel, and One: The Body, Mind and Spirit Channel. These are the first grievances since employees chose the CMG as their bargaining agent in 2004.
