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21 December 2005
News service employees OK deal
that ends wage rollbacks
Canadian
Media Guild | TNG Canada
Local 30213
Guild members at Canadian Press/Broadcast
News (CP/BN) have voted 84 per cent in favour of an agreement
that boosts paycheques four per cent in January.
The Guild represents about 340 CP/BN employees in editorial,
technical, finance, administration and sales/marketing departments.
The new contract officially ends a two-per-cent wage rollback
for 2005 that employees had accepted to help the financially
troubled company. The deal provides a two-per-cent increase
effective Dec. 31, and restores the two per cent workers
had given up for the past year.
There will be an additional two-per-cent raise effective
Dec. 31, 2006. And all full-time employees will get an extra
two days of paid vacation in 2006, in recognition of the
contribution they made in 2005.
Of the 184 ballots cast in the ratification vote, 155 were
in favour of the tentative agreement and 29, or 16 per cent,
were against.
In recommending acceptance of the
deal, the bargaining committee told members the agreement "recognizes
the improving financial strength of CP, the needs of employees
not to see wage rates fall further behind other media workers
in Canada and the continued strain caused by special CP
pension payments.
"Because there is a possibility
those payments could be reduced in 2006, we have negotiated
a way to ensure employees share in that, if it happens.
The two-per-cent increase at the end of 2006 would become
retroactive to the date payments are reduced."
The committee acknowledged that not
everyone was going to welcome the agreement with open arms: "We
recognize that the annual two-per-cent increases we have
negotiated are still not going to close some of the ground
we have lost to employees at many of the newspapers which
own CP. Management also recognizes this fact and it will
be an issue when we negotiate an agreement in 2007."
(This is a compilation of stories that
first appeared on the Canadian
Media Guild web site.)
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