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.”