Marc-Philippe Laurin, the CMG branch president, who helped negotiate the new tentative agreement offers his thoughts on the deal. He said the deal is a watershed agreement that changed the “perception each had of the other as the enemy.” Laurin added it also avoided an ugly fight that would have made the 2005 lock-out “look like a picnic.”

Below is the full text of the email Laurin sent me after the deal was announced.

The overall deal is very good for both sides on many accounts… We have reached agreement with CBC management on many issues thought settled during the last bargaining round. They were not, and they threatened an even uglier fight in 2009, one that may have made 2005 look like a picnic.

The proposed salary increases are a reflection of the current financial crisis and the limits in funding for wage increases for the public service set by Treasury Board. Other public service Unions are seeing rollbacks, we fortunately are not. If the [Treasury Board] rate goes up in year three, four and five, we get the difference.

What is most important is the new and different approach both sides took to reach this agreement.  We reached a better understanding of each other’s needs. One would think that as  obvious, but not so for the past decade.

Is it a watershed agreement?  I really believe so.  For too many years, CBC management and the Guild have been at odds on pretty much everything. Sharing of information was, for all purposes, non existent let alone having any honest and forthright discussions.  Many things changed in this round of bargaining, but mainly the perception each had of the other as the enemy.  We are, for lack of a better word, partners in public broadcasting.  They run the shop and we do the programming, maintenance and office work. So we had better know what the other is thinking and needs to ensure both our prosperity.  You cannot do that if you don’t even speak to each other except through lawyers and arbitrators.

So that was the challenge I put to Hubert Lacroix in January of last year. Let’s put the lawyers out of business and deal with our problems ourselves in house.  We know what is best for us.  It is tough at times to face some realities, but a deal you get yourself is better than one that an arbitrator imposes on you. Hubert impressed many delagates with his straight talk when he was invited to this year’s Guild convention. Many started to believe things could change.

So the key to this round was that many were the same players as in the last round, and we changed the way they do business.  It was not about what each side wanted but more about what each needed, and understanding the reasoning behind the need. That is reflected throughout the agreement.

So here we are today, at the beginning of a new relationship based on honest dialogue and principles. This I hope will carry us through the future, but one can only hope. It will be up to the new folks who participated in this round to make it happen, because the real work may not be getting the realtionship on track and the deal done, but nurturing it through the next few years to ensure that this new way for us of doing business sticks and we stay on track.

Regards,
Marc-Philippe

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