Broadcaster's technical operations
employees
find salvation in unionization
Canadian
Media Guild | CWA Canada
Local 30213
Technical operations employees at
Alliance Atlantis Communications (AAC), after an arduous
three-year journey from organizing to bargaining a
first contract, can finally enjoy the fruits of their
labour union membership.
The 100 members of the AAC branch
of the Canadian Media Guild (CMG) last week voted 97-per-cent
in favour of ratifying a tentative three-year agreement.
Masaaba Mwambu, president of the branch, says that
many of the dissenters at the time of the certification
vote in December 2005 are now pro-union.
It's been a lengthy learning
process for the branch executive as well as management,
says Mwambu. And the first contract they arrived
at is "a framework
to build upon."
Michelle Smith, who was involved from Day One of the
organizing campaign and is now the branch secretary-treasurer,
says technical employees had become extremely frustrated
and despaired of ever being able to improve working
conditions.
"Before, we felt like
we were being ignored. Now we have a way of fixing
things. People have an outlet now (through the grievance
process), even if it's just to vent."
She sees the collective agreement
as a set of ground rules for members and for management. "It takes
all of the guesswork out of it," she says.
Rob Van Sickle, who now works at S-VOX, was one of
the core group of people at AAC who decided enough
was enough and that joining the Guild was the only
solution to their problems.
In an article published in the February 2006 edition
of the CMG's newsletter, G-Force, Van Sickle described
the root causes of employee disgruntlement at AAC:
"The problems faced by
the people in Operations have been brewing since
the merger of Alliance Communications and Atlantis
Communications. There was an obvious difference in
the treatment of Alliance versus Atlantis employees
... (and when they) added seven digital specialty channels
... favouritism and unfair treatment by management
flourished. ... People who were doing the exact same
job on separate floors were being treated and compensated
much differently."
Van Sickle wrote that his colleagues were unhappy
that their pay was lower than the industry standard,
the company contributed nothing to their retirement
and offered few prospects for promotion.
Scott Edmonds, Western Vice-President for TNG-CWA
Canada and national VP of the CMG, was in on the very
first meeting near the end of 2004 with about 10 Alliance
employees who wanted to join a union.
"They had issues the employer wouldn't deal with," he
recalls, and they wound up running "a proper inside
organizing campaign because they were really motivated."
With gung-ho employees putting
up posters in the workplace, management finally clued
in that an organizing drive was under way and moved
decisively — on the same
day the union called its first public meeting.
Van Sickle remembers that raises up to $10,000 were
handed out that day, and the company announced it would
be instituting a form of pension plan in that it would
set up and match contributions to an RRSP for employees.
He also has a vivid memory of how many people attended
the union's public meeting: zero.
But, he points out, just the threat of unionization
greatly improved conditions in the workplace.
Edmonds says operations people
ran a "classic
sort of campaign." When the certification vote
was held, a "solid majority" said Yes to
joining the CMG.
It took 16 months of bargaining to reach a tentative
collective agreement. What galvanized the negotiators
was the proposed takeover of AAC by CanWest Global
Communications Corp. The media giant had proposed the
purchase early in 2007, but required the blessing of
the Canadian Radio-television Communications Commission
to consummate the deal.
That approval came in December,
shortly after AAC management got serious about negotiations
because, for both sides, CanWest was "the 800-pound gorilla
in the room," says Keith Maskell, the CMG staff
representative who shepherded the bargaining committee.
CanWest has earned itself a reputation for laying
off employees in order to bolster its bottom line.
There is certainly no guarantee the same will not happen
at AAC once it assumes control of the operation.
But Maskell says the collective agreement will go
a long way to ensuring CanWest cannot treat its workforce
arbitrarily.
The contract introduces:
basic minimum salaries (which didn't
exist before) with no top-of-scale ceiling
to bump into;
an improved pension plan;
a joint committee process to deal
with questions, problems and disputes;
a grievance/arbitration process;
seniority as the primary criterion
in the case of layoffs;
layoff pay significantly above the
provisions of the Canada Labour Code, as
well as recall rights;
a performance improvement plan based
on remediation of skill gaps, rather than using
discipline as the primary means of improving performance;
clearer rules on overtime and scheduling;
improved provisions on bereavement
leave in the event of death in the
immediate family.
As for protecting some things that people already
had, says Maskell, the contract locks in:
no freezes or red-circling of salary;
some flexibility in individual schedules;
clarification of the principle that
employees on standby are entitled to
compensation;
two floating vacation days per year;
a phase-out, rather than outright
cancellation, of the employer's pre-existing
employee bonus plan.