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CBC

Note to CBC management – This is your fault! This special should have been just one more part of a whole weekend decidated to Terry Fox. Nice job folks!!

Showdown at Signal Hill over Terry Fox special
Picketing by CBC employees in St. John’s, Nfld. has stalled management plans to use replacement workers for a scheduled television special on Terry Fox.
Nearly two dozen locked-out employees showed up around 10 a.m. Thursday to block a satellite truck and several freelance technical workers from entering Signal Hill, the planned location for Friday’s broadcast of 25 Years of Hope: The Legacy of Terry Fox.
The two-hour special, which is intended to commemorate the anniversary of Fox’s Marathon of Hope, is scheduled to air live from the national historic site at 8 p.m. EST on both the main network and CBC Newsworld.
The show was meant to be the grand finale of a summer-long series of broadcasts honouring Fox’s memory. It had been produced in cooperation with CBC employees who had been involved in its planning since the spring.
On Wednesday, Canadian Media Guild officials in St. John’s discovered that CBC management had secretly arranged to use workers from an independent production company to air the special.
In a letter addressed to Federal Minister of Labour Joe Fontana, CMG president Lise Lareau said the corporation violated labour laws by continuing to employ three people in order to air the program about Canada’s national hero.
“The CBC knew full well in the days leading up to Aug. 15 that it had to make alternate arrangements if it wanted to lock out our members while making it possible to honour the legacy of Terry Fox with dignity,” she stated.
CBC spokesperson Jason MacDonald said the program wasn’t using replacement workers, and accused CMG of attempting to score political points just as talks between the two sides enter a crucial stage.
“For the record, these are not scabs. It is an outside, independent production company producing a program that is going to be broadcast on the CBC,” he told the Canadian Press.
“We’re disappointed and sad that the guild would resort to using this program, which is intended to benefit the Terry Fox Foundation, and a program from which the corporation derives no commercial revenue.”
The CBC has not commented on how the picket line will affect their planned broadcast.
The CMG argues the hires are the same people that began work on the project months ago, before the corporation locked out 5,497 union members on Aug. 15, and believes it is the same contract.
The St. John’s local of the Canadian Media Guild said it would continue to treat people working on the show as replacement workers crossing the line.
“On Friday we will be faced with a scab situation,” said local president Bob Sharpe. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, CBC management is dragging Terry Fox, a much-loved Canadian hero into the middle of this lockout.”
CMG officials said they intended to contact Terry Fox’s family to explain the replacement worker situation, and make sure they understand their dispute is with CBC management, not them.