This morning, I invited Marc Philippe Laurin, president of the CMG’s CBC branch, and George C.B. Smith, Senior Vice-President of CBC Human Resources, to sit down for separate interviews to discuss their thoughts on the upcoming negotiations for the next Collective Agreement.

I thought it would be interesting to know what the key issues are this time around, how the last C.A. has fared, what issues are still outstanding, and so on.

Update:

• CMG replies saying it’s too early to know what the issues are. They’ll have a better sense of it after their committee meets in June.
• CBC communications says George Smith isn’t ready to discuss it yet, but will in June.

APRIL 23 UPDATE: The CBC has responded to this. See below.

The Canadian Media Guild, which represents about 5,500 workers at the CBC, along with its French union counterpart, say a Quebec judge overstepped her bounds in giving the CBC permission to not act on a resolution from the Consultative Committee on Staff Benefits dealing with a pension surplus.

From the Canadian Media Guild:

In 2000, the CBC Pension Plan reported a surplus of more than $600 million. While some of it, $134 million, was refunded, employees and pensioners passed a motion at the meeting of the Consultative Committee on Staff Benefits (CCSB) directing the CBC to distribute a further $202 million to employees and pensioners. The Corporation refused and the unions filed grievances, claiming that management was obliged to follow the direction of the CCSB in circumstances where there was no additional cost to the Corporation. After nearly a year of hearings, arbitrator Denis Nadeau ruled in the unions’ favour.

CBC applied for judicial review of the decision. More than a year after the completion of the court proceeding, Quebec Superior Court judge Jeannine M. Rousseau overturned the arbitrator’s decision.

In a statement from the CMG, the union says the judge acted outside of her authority. “Labour arbitrators in Canada have broad authority to determine the issues before them,” it said, “And under Canadian law courts must give them a high degree of deference.”

The unions are asking to Quebec Court of Appeal to reinstate arbitrator Nadeau’s decision.

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UPDATE APRIL 23, 2008 - CBC’S RESPONSE:

A few days ago, the Superior Court of Quebec rendered a decision in favour of CBC/Radio-Canada on a matter relating to pension plan surplus management.

In June 2006, a labour arbitrator ruled against CBC/Radio-Canada, finding that it had violated the collective agreement by not following the recommendations of the Consultative Committee on Staff Benefits (CCSB) regarding the distribution of a pension plan surplus in 1999.

CBC/Radio-Canada claimed that given the CCSB’s status as a consultative body, its recommendations regarding distribution of the surplus required the approval of the Board of Directors prior to implementation, which it did not have at the time.

In response to the arbitrator’s ruling, CBC/Radio-Canada filed for judicial review before the Superior Court of Quebec. In her decision, Madame Justice Rousseau upheld CBC/Radio-Canada’s position on the matter, confirming that the Board of Directors must indeed approve the recommendations of the CCSB before they can be acted upon.

The Canadian Media Guild will provide a subsidy to three members to attend the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Journalists, which is taking place May 23 to 25 in Edmonton.

Selected people will be reimbursed for 75% of their travel costs to attend the convention. Winners who live in Edmonton will be reimbursed for 75% of their registration fees. The deadline for submitting your entry is April 17. The winners will be asked to write a brief report for the Guild’s national executive. Members who have received a similar subsidy from the Guild in the past two years are not eligible.

Timothy Neesam and Xavier Bédard have been acclaimed as directors of the Guild’s CBC branch executive. Timothy will sit as director of new media and Xavier as director of Radio-Canada East. No one was nominated for the position of director of temporary employees. The branch executive will examine how to fill that role at its meeting in mid-April.

The CBC and the union representing 5,500 of its workers have settled a three-year-old dispute about outsourcing publicity work.

In 2005, the CBC outsourced much of its publicity and media relations to a private Toronto firm. The Canadian Media Guild challenged whether the CBC had a valid business case to outsource the work.

Under terms of the settlement, the CBC will pay the Guild $100,000 to be distributed to affected employees. In addition, three existing jobs in communications will return to the Guild’s bargaining unit later this year.

Further, the CBC and Guild will discuss other publicity work being handled outside the Corporation for shows like The Hour and The Steven and Chris Show.

In all, the Guild says 33 jobs were eliminated as a result of the outsourcing, mainly in Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver.

A screen-shot from the prehistoric Taleo jobs web site the CBC uses (try opening a couple of job postings in different browser tabs):

See? That’s been the problem all along. As #2 suggests, you should be applying while you’re on the job. Really, it’s silly to be doing these kinds of things on your own time!

Tuesday, April 1, is the last pay- and freelance-scale increase in this collective agreement. Download the Collective Agreement [PDF] to see how the new rates affect you.

Here’s a fun little game to brighten your Monday (it’s dreary and drizzly here in Vancouver, so we’ll take all the light we can get).

Here are two job listings for sports positions. One is from the CBC. The other is from the Score Media channel. Can you figure out which is which?

LISTING #1

• Minimum 3-5 years on-air experience in broadcast journalism
• Superior writing, vetting and editing skills
• Able and willing to effectively engage in lively ad lib conversation with program hosts
• Experience with radio studio operation
• Flexibility to work overnight and / or evening shifts from time to time
• Interest and knowledge of a broad range of news and current affairs issues including sports, business, and arts
• Skilled in digital audio editing
• University degree or equivalent

LISTING #2

• Know your s**t
• Know how to put a story together
• Have energy that works on camera
• Don’t take yourself too seriously
• Hustle
• Are fearless (obviously no one is, but some balls would be nice)
• Can shoot (with a camera, of course)
• Are not conditioned to speak in an unnatural way
• Clichés anger you
• Want to be part of something revolutionary

Please, no wagering.

CBC management has responded to a Canadian Media Guild statement accusing the Corporation of leaving too many people in “temporary” positions, when they should have been hired as permanent staff.

The CBC, no surprise, denies the charge. Further, it says the CMG “abandoned several months of good faith problem-solving discussions where substantial information was shared in favour of commencing this arbitration.”

The CBC-CMG collective agreement negotiated in 2005 after a prolonged and bitter lockout, gives the CBC greater flexibility in being able to hire contract and temporary employees and freelancers.

• Restrictions regarding who, what, where, when, why, and how CBC engaged contract employees were eliminated. The only restriction on the use of contract employees was a numeric cap: 9.5% plus 80 positions of the permanent workforce (or about 11.5%).
• For temporary employees, the reasons for which CBC can engage temporary employees were expanded. There is no numeric restriction for temps, rather there are reasons that must be followed in order to engage temporary employees.

The CBC says the Guild insists that temporary staff can only be used for backfill and special events or projects. CBC management says the reasons it can hire temps are much broader than that.

The Corporation says the use of temporary employees (engaged in excess of thirteen weeks) is at a historical low at CBC. In 1994, it was 11% of its permanent workforce. Today, the CBC says it is at about 6%. Further, it says use of short term temporary employees is pretty much the same as it was before the 2005 collective agreement was negotiated.

The CBC’s largest union, the Canadian Media Guild, says the CBC is employing “temporary” workers far longer than what it agreed to.

Under the collective agreement, the CBC can hire temporaries to replace absent employees, to use in emergencies or when special circumstances or events warrants. The CMG says it has spent more than a year uncovering abuses of this where use of temporary employees goes well beyond what it says is permitted under the agreement.

“The CMG has allocated an unprecedented amount of money for research and other resources to resolve this grievance,” said CBC branch president Marc-Philippe Laurin. “Beyond helping individual employees fix their job status problems, we realized it was necessary to get to the root of the culture of abuse of temporary employees at CBC.”

Arbitrator Innis Christie has been brought in to mediate the dispute.

The Guild and the CBC held a series of meetings over four months but says the discussions “did not produce a timely path to resolving the dispute.”

The National Post — always, of course, 100% unbiased and fair in their coverage/opinion of CBC/Radio-Canada — is reporting that the pigs RCMP were onto us.

Yes, Comrades-in-the-struggle, it seems the RCMP spied on CBC and Radio-Canada employees for years. In fact, they were convinced at one point that communists had infiltrated CBC Montreal, according to secret documents that have just been released.

(As most of you know, of course, they were exactly right. CBC Montreal houses most of our pinko-red-commie-bastard activities. We have a factory where we plan how we can control the means of production on the bottom floor of the CBC Montreal tower.)

But, a little bit alarming, The National Post reports:

It appears that senior CBC managers knew that the Mounties routinely investigated the political views of staff members such as Rene Levesque and kept such “adverse records” in personnel reports on file long after the employees had left the broadcaster.

In one heavily censored 1958 report marked “secret” and titled “CBC Montreal — Collaboration of Officials with Known Communists” the force says conclusively that there were communists working for the public broadcaster.

Damnit! I thought we totally had that under wraps.

The report, most likely either produced by scabs or pig-headed managers on the RCMP payroll, continues:

“If the present report serves no other purpose, it does establish beyond reasonable doubt the presence of Communists in the CBC and their active conspiracy to use its facilities for Communist purposes,” wrote the author, whose name was blacked out. “It would, therefore, give some measure of reassurance to the Minister that there is at least a proven intended threat to security on the part of such persons as (blacked out) and perhaps others as yet unknown to us.”

Turns out, the fascist, capitalistic coppers were primarily interested in Rene Levesque, the Godfather of Radio-Canada.

But in 1949, the pigs very nice police officers said in a then-secret report:

Discreet enquiries have been conducted into the character, background and loyalty,” and there was no sign of Levesque being a “subversive.”

Really? Rene was not subversive?! From what I hear, if you were ahead of him in the coffee lineup at CBC Montreal, you’d get quite the talking to.

What was their proof that Rene was the leader of our commie-leftwing leanings? Again, the National Post:

The constable who wrote the report said that Levesque had studied law in 1941-42 but quit school and went to work for the CBC in Quebec City after failing two of his exams.

They’re totally onto us. Run. Quick.

P.S. Jian — You owe me my union bullhorn back, dude.

The Canadian Media Guild, which represents more than 5,500 CBC employees, is distributing a poster around the Corp giving new CBC employees “tips” on their rights. The text:

• Make sure you’ve been hired properly. If you came on as a temporary employee, find out who you are replacing or what special event or project you’re working on. If you’re not replacing anyone and you’re not working on a special event or project (an ongoing show doesn’t count as a special event or project), get in touch with the Guild right away. If you’re a temporary, make sure you get a letter of engagement that details your start and end dates, how many days you work in a week, your job classification and the rate of pay. If you’re on contract, make sure to get a copy of your contract.
• Make sure that you are scheduled properly. If you have little control over your schedule and have to meet daily deadlines, then you are daily assigned and should claim overtime if you work more than regular hours in the day. If you have to come in on certain days, but can control your hours on those days, you’re probably weekly scheduled and should claim overtime if you work longer than regular hours for the week. To find out the regular hours and rate of pay for your job, go to http://www.cmg.ca/CBCbranchannualsalariesEN.pdf .
• Make sure you get put on the benefits plan if you’re hired for more than 13 weeks. And, if you were hired as a per-occasion temporary (sometimes called “casual”) and you have been working at least 4 days per week for more than 13 weeks, you should also be enrolled in the benefits plan. Benefits kick in for new employees after a 13-week waiting period.
• Ask around for a Guild representative in your area and get a hold of a new member guide; you can find a list of Guild reps in each location at http://www.cmg.ca/cbcbranchcontacts.asp .
• Fill out your union card, with an email address where we can keep in touch with you, and hand it back to a member of your local executive.
• Check the union contract (“collective agreement”) for all the terms of employment at CBC, as negotiated between the Guild and CBC management in 2005. You can find it online at http://www.cmg.ca/CBCbranchcollagreement2004-9-EN.pdf .

If you are in Toronto, the Guild executive holds a brief orientation session for new members on the last Wednesday of every month. Contact Jonathan Spence at jonathan@cmgtoronto.ca if you’d like to attend.