Guild 'plays hardball'
to prevent
CanWest's massive layoff
Montreal
Newspaper Guild | CWA
Canada Local 30111
CanWest Global is facing a battle
royale in Montreal over its plans to lay off 46 of
the 59 employees in The Gazette's Reader Sales & Service
department and ship the work to a company call centre
in Winnipeg.
Mona Leroux, president of the Montreal
Newspaper Guild (MNG), says the newspaper owner's bid
to export those operations, as well as the work of
other departments, is "a clear violation of our
jurisdiction."
The Local had already filed a grievance in December
when the company arranged to have some of the newspaper's
pagination performed in Hamilton. Another grievance
is to be filed Monday over the transfer of work from
the electronic photo desk to Hamilton, says Leroux.
"We believe we can win on all of these," she
says, noting that language in the MNG's contracts is
similar to that found in collective agreements negotiated
by another CWA Canada Local, the Victoria-Vancouver
Island Newspaper Guild. Attempts by CanWest to export
work from the Victoria Times-Colonist to Winnipeg have
been thwarted by rulings in the union's favour.
The MNG contract "clearly prohibits the assignment
of such work either to employees of the same employer
not covered by our collective agreement or to employees
outside The Gazette," according to a bulletin
to members on Feb. 18.
When management summoned the
MNG executive to a meeting on Feb. 15 where they
learned of the layoffs planned for May 30, "this
was quite a shock for people in the department," says
Leroux.
She says she immediately informed the publisher that
the Guild would request a direct referral to arbitration,
bypassing early stages of a grievance. The company
has agreed to do that and the case is expected to be
handled expeditiously.
"We're in the early stages of playing hardball," says
Leroux, adding that nothing changed as a result of
a second meeting with management yesterday morning.
More than 50 people turned out for a general membership
meeting later that day because they were upset about
the announced layoffs in RSS, she says.
In the bulletin to members,
the executive said the Guild "feels strongly
that this move is part of a series of actions aimed
at exporting work over which it has exclusive jurisdiction.
Management has already sent pagination and other
editing work to a CanWest operation in Hamilton,
a clear violation of our collective agreement. We
feel that the continued efforts by management to
remove and export work ... seriously undermine the
quality and integrity of our newspaper."
People working at CanWest's facility
in Winnipeg are non-union and underpaid,
says Leroux.
"It's a very serious situation within the industry.
Yes, some of the (restructuring of operations) is due
to technical change, but a lot of it is greed (on the
employer's part)," she observes.
Irwin Block, an editorial department
staffer who recently moved from the position of secretary
to vice-president, replacing Charles Shannon who
took a buyout last month, assured members that the
Guild would fight the layoffs "with
all of our resources."