CBC employees accept tentative deal
TORONTO (CP) – After seven acrimonious weeks of negotiations and feuding, the CBC labour dispute is officially over. But the fighting may not be.
The Canadian Media Guild said Sunday that 88.4 per cent of the 3,514 members who voted chose to accept the proposed contract.
But it will take a few days before programming is back to normal and the union warns workers may not be all smiles when the cameras and microphones are off.
Most of the CBC’s 5,500 unionized workers are expected back at work Tuesday but it’ll take days, in some cases even weeks, to get everything back up to speed.
“The National will be back by Tuesday or Wednesday,” said Jason MacDonald, spokesman for the CBC.
“From a radio point of view, Tuesday we’ll have the morning show broadcast nationally out of Montreal, and the drive-home show will be out of Toronto. By Wednesday, some of the regional shows will be back and by Thursday, everybody will be back.”
Don Cherry, Ron MacLean and other familiar CBC faces already made their return to TV on Saturday’s Hockey Night in Canada and the network was to air a CFL doubleheader on Monday.
Union spokesman Arnold Amber said workers are happy to be back on the job but haven’t necessarily gotten over their built-up anger.
“Personally, I think CBC management has a very, very large task to get people back onside. This was a very, very difficult issue,” he said.
“It’s going to take some time to get everything right side up. They were really offended by being locked out, they regarded it as a great injustice,” Amber said.
MacDonald acknowledged the mood might be icy at times but said he thinks everyone will pull together to get the CBC back up and running.
“Nobody would deny (there may be) strain between employees and managers but everyone’s a professional, I think. And most people just want to get back to work,” he said.
“It may be a bit uncomfortable at first but I think people just want to get back.”
Suanne Kelman, associate chair of journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto, said the worst thing the CBC can do is dwell on the lockout in any way.
“They have to remember their problems are not the public’s problems, there should be nothing about the lockout when they get back, they should just get back to programming as soon as possible,” she said.
MacDonald said there is no specific directive from management to not mention the lockout on the air.
“If an individual host comes back on the air this week and mentions it, that’s up to their discretion and their producers. Nobody’s being given an order to say or not say anything about it,” he said.
Amber also said he can’t imagine CBC workers trying to bring too much attention to the lockout.
“Quite obviously, people are going to say, ‘Well, we’re back,’ and make note of the fact that the labour dispute is over. However, I don’t think anybody is going to break our professional approach to broadcasting and go into a personal song and dance about what this all meant.”
It’s still unclear exactly where public sympathy lies and the CBC will have to figure out if their audiences left for the competition or became fed up with the prolonged labour dispute, which began Aug. 15.
Kelman said other broadcasters made great use of the CBC’s programming lag to boost their profile among the CBC’s audience.
“For news, they may have some problems because I think some people may have discovered CTV news is better than they remembered,” she said. “It depends on how betrayed viewers and listeners feel.”
She said some may be completely unsympathetic to the CBC cause and hold a grudge long into the future.
“Because people feel it’s their own tax dollars involved, I think it’s going to take a while before this one fades.” The official tally in the ratification vote was 3,106 votes for, 394 against and 14 ballots were either spoiled, or challenged and not accepted.
The labour dispute centred on a CBC plan to hire more contract workers, which the union opposed. The deal caps contract workers at 9.5 per cent of the full-time work force.
CBC wages are to rise by 12.6 per cent over the life of the contract, which runs through March 31, 2009, including full retroactivity and a $1,000 signing bonus.
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