13 June 2006

Unique agreement spares design department — for now

Canadian Media Guild | TNG Canada Local 30213

The Canadian Media Guild has won a last-minute reprieve for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's English TV design department in Toronto.

In a joint communiqué to employees today, Richard Stursberg, Executive Vice-President of CBC Television, and Arnold Amber, President of the Guild's CBC Branch, announced that closure of the department and the related layoffs would be delayed until May 31, 2007.

The deferral is intended to give the Guild time to pursue alternatives to the dismantling of the department. Options include the possibility of an employee co-operative that could compete for future business at the CBC and other broadcasters. CBC management has agreed to provide financial information employees need to carry out a feasibility study.

The selloff of props, sets, costumes and other equipment, which was scheduled to begin next month, will also be delayed a year. As well, CBC programmers and co-productions will have time to prepare for the coming change.

“In all my years with the Guild and the CBC, I’ve never before seen an agreement like this,” says Amber, who is also Director of TNG Canada/CWA. “The delay will benefit everyone. It will give us time to work with design employees on alternatives to keeping the service afloat and it will give CBC shows another year of top-notch design work.”

Employees will continue to enjoy all of their rights under the layoff and recall provisions of the collective agreement between the CMG and the CBC. The Guild is planning to hold a meeting with those members later this week and will provide more details on the agreement in the next couple of days.

The deal called for the CMG to shut down its Internet-based StopTheSellout campaign, which allowed supporters to email letters of protest to Heritage Minister Bev Oda. The federal Heritage Committee had asked the minister at the start of June to express to CBC management its concern over structural changes, such as the design department closure, taking place before the upcoming review of the public broadcaster's mandate.

In late May, Toronto MPs Peggy Nash and Olivia Chow raised the planned closure of the design department in the House of Commons, asking that the decision be reversed.

"The agreement was a difficult one to reach for both parties but management and CMG leadership believe it could mark the beginning of a new era in union-management relations at the CBC," Amber and Stursberg say in their communiqué. "CBC and CMG are working hard to improve our relationship and this agreement is an important investment in achieving this."

When the decision to shutter the design department and lay off 79 employees was announced on April 20, management said it was doing so to save $1 million annually. It also said that other broadcasters don’t do inside design. However, Radio-Canada (French CBC) has a design department in Montreal with at least 133 employees. There are, apparently, no plans to close that department.