| It’s not "dead air" on CBC Radio or TV, but the situation isn’t much better.
Since Monday morning, when the management of Canada’s public broadcaster locked out 5,500 employees, CBC fans have been treated to BBC programming, reruns and unusual amounts of music as managers scramble to fill the airwaves while thousands of employees walk picket lines across the country.
CBC management ordered the lockout after reaching an impasse with the corporation’s largest union, the Canadian Media Guild, over CBC management’s desire to hire more temporary employees.
Karen Wirsig, spokesperson for the Canadian Media Guild, says the scale of the lockout is "unprecedented" because the lockout affects "everybody outside of Quebec and Moncton who’s not in management or supervisory." (CBC employees in Quebec and Moncton are represented by a different union.)
Wirsig says the union recognizes that management needs to be able to hire some temporary employees, but says almost 30 per cent of CBC staff are temporary, including people on contract and casual employees.
She says the move towards hiring non-permanent staff creates a "second tier" of employees who have no job security, benefits or a pension, and who can be let go because "they don’t want you anymore and we’re going to hire the next flavour of the month."
Wirsig adds that a move towards more non-permanent employees will negatively affect programming, because people will feel less able to "take any kind of risk at all, including the risks it takes to do independent journalism" out of fear of losing their jobs.
"It sets up that kind of cutthroat, aggressive kind of workplace that really people don’t like to be in on an ongoing basis. Everybody’s vying for the favour of the boss so that they can stick around," says Wirsig.
On the picket line in Calgary, CBC employees called the lockout disappointing and surprising.
"It’s a sad day for public broadcasting," says CBC TV video journalist Rick Donkers. "I don’t see where this corporation is going. I don’t see the rationale behind what they want."
Local union spokesperson Tom Spear, a CBC Radio reporter, questions whether CBC management is looking for a "disposable workforce."
"CBC salaries and working conditions, and just quality of work, used to be the envy of the entire industry, and we had a steady stream of people wanting to come work for the CBC. It doesn’t happen anymore," says Spear. "People come and, once it’s clear there’s not going to be a commitment to them, they don’t stay. Why should they? We’re training people and they’re going someplace else. It’s really disappointing – disheartening is what it is."
Spear estimates that permanent employees make up "less than half" of Calgary’s CBC staff, higher than the national average. "It’s almost every day some new face we’ve never seen before," he says.
Arts reporter John Spittal, who’s been with CBC for 25 years, says management is "hell-bent and they’re going to take public broadcasting with them."
"I’m almost at the end of my career, but I’m trying to protect young people coming in and wanting a career at CBC, which they should be entitled to, and after a program that you work on isn’t renewed does that mean that you should be thrown out the door like the trash?" asks Spittal.
CBC management spokesperson Jason MacDonald says the lockout was a last resort after 15 months of negotiations that went nowhere. "We felt we needed to take a severe step in order to get a deal done," he says.
According to MacDonald, the corporation doesn’t want to hire more casual employees, but it needs the ability to hire more people on contracts for specific new projects or programs. He promises permanent employees will maintain their current status.
"Broadcasters have to change, have to try new things in order to keep up with the changing interests and tastes of audiences. And if you don’t, you risk becoming irrelevant," says MacDonald. "The current collective agreement puts restrictions on what we can do." |
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