02 July 2008

Saxberg winner of race for Canada East VP

Barbara Saxberg is The Newspaper Guild's new Canada East Vice-President, according to official results of a delayed election.

TNG's Sector Elections and Referendum Committee (SERC), which conducted elections last month at five CWA Canada Locals that were eligible to vote for Eastern VP, counted the mail-in ballots and certified the results on Monday. With that tally added to ballots cast in Guild-wide TNG-CWA elections in April, the total count gives Saxberg a 451-405 victory over Darren Pittman.

As Eastern VP, Saxberg, director of education at the Canadian Media Guild (CMG), will now be part of the executive of both CWA Canada and TNG, and represent those union members whose workplace is east of Manitoba.

SERC chair Tracy Simmons says it was necessary to hold late elections at the five Locals. Altogether, they had a total of 220 votes, which was more than the spread between the two candidates coming out of the April election that saw a turnover in TNG leadership.

The Locals had either not held elections in April or committed errors in the voting procedure, she says.

Although he lost the race for VP East, Pittman will still be in a position to make good on his campaign promises. The president of the Halifax Typographical Union was elected to CWA Canada's executive as a member at large during the union's semi-annual National Representative Council meeting in Vancouver in late April.

Saxberg has worked as an editor, producer and host in Network Radio at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for 20 years.

Last November, in announcing her candidacy for the VP East position, she said the Guild is “most successful defending our members, our work and our working conditions through education, mobilization and inclusion. That’s what leadership is about and those are my priorities."

Saxberg, who was re-elected in the fall as secretary of the CMG's CBC branch, has served on two bargaining committees and was a leader in the creation of the first contract language on employee rights, employment and pay equity and anti-bullying. Saxberg has been active in the CMG for more than a decade and has also served as a delegate at the national and international levels of the Guild for several years.