Friends of ours had a baby yesterday - the kind of news I really want to hear at a time like this, and the sort of thing that puts things in perspective. Welcome, Euan ... hope to see you soon.
Blackout continues
The news blackout that was triggered Thursday evening continues. It expires at suppertime (dinnertime, depending on what you call it) this evening.
The Globe and Mail reports in this morning's edition that some MPs in Ottawa are expecting more than just a statement when the blackout lifts.
"If they don't have anything after the blackout, I want back-to-work legislation," Quebec MP Denis Coderre said yesterday. Mr. Coderre said a majority of the Quebec caucus wants the government to intervene because "it's a lockout, it's not a strike."
In addition to Mr. Coderre, Ontario MPs Sarmite Bulte and Don Boudria as well as PEI MP Wayne Easter want the government to intervene immediately. "In rural and remote areas, the CBC is it," Mr. Easter said. "We're not living up to the standards of the 1991 Broadcast Act."
Other Liberal MPs, while slightly more circumspect, have signalled growing impatience with CBC management. Gatineau MP Françoise Boivin, a labour lawyer on the management side before she entered public life, said she thought the lockout was difficult to justify, given that CBC employees had not been engaged in any work to rule or other job action beforehand.
"I'd strongly advise Mr. Rabinovitch not to test the government's patience," she said.
Later on in the Globe yarn, the minister of heritage is queried:
Heritage Minister Liza Frulla, while declining to comment on the negotiations, said pressure is intense on both sides to reach a deal.
"If they're intelligent, they'll prove that they're intelligent and they'll come to an agreement," she said. She played down the likelihood of back-to-work legislation. "It has to be a long-term agreement . . . if it's not dealt with right, it's going to have implications for next year," she said, referring to pending labour talks at Radio-Canada.
Rabinovitch under the gun
Chris Cobb, who covers media for the Ottawa Citizen, has an article in today's Ottawa Citizen (and other papers, including the National Post, from which the above link is taken, and the St. John's Telegram, which carries it in the front section) about CBC president Robert Rabinovitch.
The lead indicates the article won't be clipped and framed for the president's office:
CBC president Robert Rabinovitch could be headed for a major defeat as management and union negotiators close in this weekend on a deal to end a six-week lockout of 5,500 employees.
Another point:
Although CBC board meetings are secret, insiders at the public broadcaster say several board members were unusually critical of the strategy being pursued by Mr. Rabinovitch and his senior vice-president of human resources, George Smith.
Cobb interviewed MPs across the political spectrum and found a common bond: support for getting the CBC back on the air, and quickly.
"I've had a dozen calls a week from people who say they miss CBC radio," said Jim Abbott, the Conservative MP for Kootenay-Columbia in British Columbia. "In my riding it's usually a choice between the CBC and one commercial station. CBC radio has a high value for Canadians and keeps the country connected." Mr. Abbott said he had received no complaints about the absence of regular CBC television programming.
Todd Russell, the Liberal MP for Labrador, said CBC radio is vital to his constituents. "Without CBC it has been much more difficult communicating about important issues. People are feeling cut off from each other. They're telling me they don't know what the hell is going on. We want the CBC back."
An interesting comment from Ian Morrison and the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, who are leery about MPs flexing their muscles. Firing Rabinovitch, he says, will not be welcomed:
"If they try to muscle him out," Mr. Morrison said, "we will be the first to complain. That would be too close to treating the CBC like a state broadcaster. But the lockout will leave him with a lot less freedom of action for the remainder of his term."
Heritage committee's agenda ...
On The Line, the Canadian Media Guild's online magazine, follows up on the heritage committee's plans to call senior management before them, once the lockout ends. The article also notes that Guy Fournier, the newly appointed chair, is scheduled to appear Tuesday, but is not expected to run into trouble with a confirmation.
At the end of the piece, this quote:
One Liberal member of the Heritage Committee told On the Line that having Rabinovitch act as both chair of the board and president of CBC "breaks every rule in the book of governance. Something like this can never happen again."
'Is this what we've become?'
Blayne Paige, a videographer in Ottawa, writes an essay in On The Line about what a succession of labour disputes - but, more importantly, the climate in the CBC - has accomplished. Excerpts:
The other day, one of the locked-out employees was talking to her old friend (who is now a small “m” manager), when someone came up to them and told them that they should not be talking together. I asked myself, “Is this what we’ve become?"
The real conflict is between the CBC (the people on the line) and its senior management. Caught in the middle with no voice is the rest of the CBC, who cross our lines everyday. With the exception of a few, none of us are enjoying our lives or our jobs. When I first started at "Mother Corp.", I couldn’t find you two people who wanted to leave, now I can’t find you two who want to stay. ...
It is time for all of us on both sides of the picket lines to affect real change in the CBC. Not only should we not give in to the current “demands”, we should ensure that this “culture of conflict” ends now, before we find ourselves back in the same predicament in two years.
Recalled
Antonia Zerbisias' blog has a posting about Paul Workman, who refused to file while the lockout continued (foreign correspondents work on separate contracts) and who has evidently been recalled to Canada. The material in Zerbisias' posting is inside-baseball, but since most of the people reading this blog likely know (or know of) all the players, dive in.
Maffin's forecast
Tod Maffin has posted the text of his essay on the future of the CBC. About three weeks ago, I applauded Tod for his essay, which was then produced as a podcast. Tod has since performed it twice for locked-out CBC workers (and posted the audio from each online). The full text is now available for those who prefer to read rather than download-and-listen.
Tod's conclusion, written three weeks ago, holds up:
For all the belly-aching CBC’s senior executive make about how they need flexibility in their workforce, remember this: CURRENT locked-out CBC employees -- in less than three weeks -- have self-organized, learned new technologies like podcasting, set up training programs, tweaked ftp settings, launched interactive web sites, and exploited new technologies to connect with Canadians.
And through it all-- management has one web site. CBCnegotiations.ca.
If the CBC is looking for a flexible workforce, they don’t have to hire outside. They just have to unlock the doors.
'Just another group of fatted civil servants'
The Telegram, the daily newspaper in St. John's, has written editorials calling for an end to the CBC lockout and the resumption of full services. Brian Jones, the Tely's Sunday editor and columnist in its Friday edition, does not see any benefit to the lockout ending. Excerpts from his column (please note: this link will likely lead to another column next Friday):
I’ll let you in on a little trade secret. The CBC obtains some of its “scoops” from newspapers. Toss a handful of pens across any given newspaper newsroom, and you’re bound to hit a busload of reporters who have had the unpleasant experience of hearing their stories read — sometimes almost verbatim, and usually without attribution — over the CBC’s airwaves ...
By stressing the rights of full-time employees with full benefits over the rights and needs of freelancers, CBC journalists are revealing themselves to be just another group of fatted civil servants whining and complaining about the possibility of losing their privileged feeding spot at the public trough.
My understanding is that The Telegram has been collecting examples of outright plagiarism - but involving another broadcaster. Perhaps Mr. Jones should bring his evidence to Telegram senior management.
Web notes
Ivor Tossell, who writes on websites for the Globe and Mail's online site, applauds what locked-out CBC employees have been doing on the web since the lockout started.
In the weeks since the lockout began, CBC workers have achieved the next best thing to saturation coverage of themselves on-line. (The Internet, being more or less infinite, is impossible to saturate.) There are at least 53 individual blogs about the lockout, which feed a handful of very professional top-level websites. CBContheline.ca is a good source of updates on the lockout negotiations, and CBCUnplugged.com is still going strong as a source of links and multimedia.
Strike that thought
Eleanor Wachtel, the locked-out host of Writers & Company, has the guest column in the Three For Thought series in the Globe and Mail's book section today. (The series involves a retrospective look at three not-necessarily-recent books linked by a theme.) Wachtel's topic: labour relations.
In her introduction, she writes:
"No one wins a strike" is the refrain of one of the novels I've chosen, and an ineluctable theme of this literature is that although no one wins, some lose more than others.
Of musk and meth
A colleague based in Toronto chipped this in to the mailbag yesterday:
I don't know how you find the time to keep it updated, and with commentary, but kudos to you. I'm assuming you either have the stamina of a musk ox or a big crystal meth lab at home...
The photo above, from this morning's Dot Dot Dot story meeting, should answer the question.
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