An Insider Comment on Layoffs
While a number of CBC insiders are commenting on the possibility of deep cuts at the CBC, one comment stood out for me. It’s from Tony:
I have to say I something about people who are unwilling to step out of job descriptions. Most of us are paid by the hour. We should all be willing to do whatever needs to be done. End of story. Those attitudes are so out of date. In the real world grads are arriving ready to shoot, edit and report. They will also be more than willing to grab a few stills for the web and write a little blog at the end of the day. They are taught all those jobs as ONE job now in school.
I couldn’t agree more.
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I agree that there should be a willingness to do this. (In fact, there’s a LOT of that in the building right now. The place would have long since fallen apart were there not.)
But there’s also an awareness of the old saying ‘Jack of All Trades, Master of None”.
We kinda supposed to be professionals here. As in, we have standards and are expected to produce the best possible result.
It just looks sad when we do a half-assed job because we’re not playing to our strengths.
I think anyone in the news department has to start thinking of themselves as broadcasters in the broadest sense – which includes Twitter, blogs etc. as well as TV and Radio. I can understand that it’s a balancing act, especially when you’re chasing a big story, but broadcasting to a single medium is simply a missed opportunity to draw attention to the work.
Not sure what departments you folks work but for years we’ve worn many hats in ours.
Most of us happily do functions that are out side of our roles to get the our programming to Canadians.
Great idea to help out and multitask.
Unfortunately the higher ups see this as an opportunity to bring in lower paid staff and have them do every thing while folks who have talent are shown the door.
Giving some one a mic in their hand does not make them a reporter, giving someone a camera doesn’t make them a cameraperson or plopping someone in front of a key board doesn’t make them a web designer.
As for traditional deadlines, we feed our content platforms all day now.
Laurence and Paul, I agree with both of you, especially when it comes to Newsroom operations, of which I am very familiar.
I am not a content provider in any sense, I provide technical services for the content providers and I can tell you, at least in my part of I.T. we never had a box to get out of. We have no idea what our Clients ( I dislike “end-users”)are going to break or ask us to do.
Frankly, this is a main reason I like my job. I would be bored if I knew exactly what I was going to be doing each day
.
To be Devil’s advocate, I don’t think you can really extend the same empowered flexibility to some of the other crafts at CBC. Manipulating a story to address multiple media is one level of flexibility. Asking a lighting tech. to rig a human without the proper training is an entire other.
Asking a coal-face tech. to backup a server may be intuitive to some, but I gotta tell ya, if I did it, you Groupwise is toast!.
Here’s a suggestion: I have always wondered why HR, or Training doesn’t do a ongoing series of “Lunch and Learns” on “CBC-What we do”. So that different facets can actually get a primer on what other people deal with on a daily basis. “Why CBC Purchasing is not Like Future Shop?”, “So what the heck is a Grip?”. “Dalet for TV Maintenance Techs”, “Vision TV vs. The Vision Project” That sort of thing.
Knowledge is power.
(and Paul, thanks for the spellchecker
)
my talent is wasted ,i was called an artist ,those days are are gone, ill take a layoff , package ,ASAP , thank you, it was fun , not any more LD
This is a total crock of BS. The 10% of us who do 90%
of the work are run ragged and barely have time to pee.
It’s no wonder that the employees who actually work
on under staffed and under funded broadcasts
balk at additional duties.
We’ve all heard the do morewith less rant for 15 yrs. It’s now the standard response rom a creatively bankrupt management that has no social or leadership intelligence.
CBC employees have performed miracles to continue
producing content under duress. Their reward? Squeeze them some more and blame the unionized staff while
Stursberg and his cronies spend the company into
oblivion.
Bye meme …. don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out. If you apply for unemployment tell them the reason you left was because you are an artist and your job wasn’t fun anymore. I’m sure they will understand.
You’re so funny!
There are a couple good points here. You loose expertise when you do this by making your trained and skilled professionals do work they aren’t trained or skilled at.
It’s pretty bad for moral when you make people do jobs they don’t want to do or weren’t hired to do.
Aren’t you just asking for layoffs when you can get 1 person to do 10 jobs?
I’ve seen a lot of forced flexibility around here lately. But these employees aren’t interns you can just get to do whatever you want them to, we still have job descriptions around here…for now, until we loose those too in the next contract
I think I was the first to mention job descriptions in the previous thread, and Tony’s kind of gotten the wrong idea about what I meant. It’s ridiculous to say that someone fresh out of school is going be as effective as veterans in a bunch of different roles. It’s also ridiculous to expect people to track and utilize every technology-de-jour while still doing their main jobs effectively. It’s the role of the techies in the organization to make that kind of stuff as transparent as possible for the non-techies. And some people are already displaying adaptability and covering an awful lot of roles they were never hired for.
However, an example of the kind of rigidity that I was referring to, and one that really gets to me, is when effort and resources are spent producing tools that make the process as easy as possible, with some workflow changes, and those tools are dismissed out of hand for not mapping exactly onto older systems. When this happens, A) there’s going to be duplication of effort all the way down the chain, B) you don’t get value for money for the effort put into the new system, and C) you lose out on the potential benefits and revenue from it. We’ve all seen this, and I’d really like to see it go away now that we can really not afford it.
The kind of expansion of job descriptions that you’ve been talking about in this thread will lead to crappy work as people get spread thinner and thinner, and will also probably lead to burnouts and layoffs of the most dedicated and hardworking people, which is ass-backwards, while the rigid types just hunker down and store up resentment for the next round of union negotiations.
My Job description has not been even remotely accurate for 10 years, things just change too rapidly. Fortunately, I toil in an environment that is relatively Niagra-Free, so when I say “we can probably do it, but I have not idea how right now” I get a little slack.
I admit fully to being one of the lucky ones and support my Union just as they have supported me both professionally and personally.
As to Workshare. My old company used it during the crash of 1991-92. Sorry, but you don’t get long weekends, you get 4 days work (can go to three) and 1-2 days UI. I believe it is actually done via percentages with a 4-6 hour minimum.It is highly unpleasant, stressful and a tactic of last resort. It was like taking a nap when you head was in the noose.
Hell, I Love me a good Union-vs-Mgm’t rant as much as the next guy. Waste is everywhere. From an extraneous new Director/VP(or Supervisor, or Manager of other managers or other Power Point Position), to a demoralized and bitter work force. And yes, sometimes under-utilized, at both ends.
There is nothing stressful of having additional duties, if you have the skills to do them and a reasonable amount of time in which to accomplish them. If anything, it can enhance your job security.
Perhaps our top-heavy Management structure could also be reduced if they could be forced to multi-task, instead of appointing yet another VP-of-nothing. They’d have less time to expense lunches, if they had to work at their desk.
It goes both ways.
This time, I don’t think we can blame this fully on our historic, Management/Unions disconnect. I’d love to, it makes for better blogs ( ;p ) but this time even if we were _all_ at the top of our game, we’d still be in this station.
And I worry. I worry that , along with increased Union infighting. Some Cabal in Ottawa, Toronto or Montreal is already drafting a Job-Description for a new “VP of Restructuring”.
Please don’t. I don’t want to see a posting, I shudder to think of the wage wasted. Mgm’t can just flex that job into their current numbers.
I wonder if all the CBC unionists would run their own households with the forced inefficiency of union mandated inflexibility. “Oh no honey, I’m a camera dude – I can’t clean the toilet. We must hire a maid.” Imagine the cost of your lifestyle.
Now, imagine that imposed upon the taxpayers of Canada. Union inflexibility is an intentional method of creating unnecessary employment. Money for nothing. It’s no wonder that career CBCers can’t imagine flexibility when they’ve spent decades in this environment.
I guess it’s okay when it’s someone else’s money.
Anon – do you have any lose change? Or, did you loose it all? You’re union will make sure that your not going to have to pitch in to much too help. The morale of the story is that workers’ moral is number one. you must be shop steward. Keep up the good work!
And God forbid people were asked to do work that they don’t want to do. What a horrible CBC is would be if people had to do what the cake eaters call work.
I don’t know where you all are working, but here in Quebec I get my hand slapped if I go anywhere near a mixing board.
I can tech, work the phones, write, report, announce… but I am boxed in, not by job descriptions, but by firmly drawn lines between unions. All of which means wasted potential.
tony i received an emmy , what have u accomplished , ill take a layoff , package ASAP
Noting all of the great comments, pro and con, the CBC needs some clear-headed leadership on the future of the company.
Now that we know the government isn’t going to help us, will we see some creative sacrifce at the Executive branch? Will they take a pay cut? Will there continue to be a hiring freeze at the executive level? and How about a cut in the Real Estate division? Do we really need to have that many people [50-plus]? Or this question: Will the $50 million allocated to “drama” be better used in digital media?
Somebody has to step up and take us into the future with a new business model and new thinking. Clearly, the old model is dying.
My brother just got let go . Family of 5 , the only way to help was to start a business together.
http://www.tibetangoji.ca
Mike: enough. Please. No more.
Wow, SEO spammers are setting up Facebook profiles now. Times really are getting tough.