Job slashing fails to save CanWest
from investors' anxiety
The news this week went from bad
to worse for employees of CanWest Global Communications
Corp. with the media giant reporting today it lost
more than $1 billion in its last fiscal year, sending
its share price to 73 cents.
CanWest, which on Wednesday announced
it was cutting a further 560 jobs or five per cent
of its workforce, says that measure will pare operating
costs by $61 million during this economic slowdown.
Through buyouts, attrition and layoffs, the company
plans to slash 350 positions in its publishing division
which includes major metro dailies across Canada, and
210 jobs in television, including its Global network.
Leaders of CWA Canada Locals that represent CanWest
employees were dismayed to learn of the latest round
of cuts that come on top of several hundred jobs slashed
over the last two years.
Lois Kirkup, president of the Ottawa Newspaper Guild,
says buyouts are to be offered in all departments at
The Ottawa Citizen.
"But I really don't know how many more cuts we
can take in the newsroom. Staff is so stretched now
that it's difficult to get the paper out," she
says.
While CanWest CEO Leonard Asper
says in a statement issued today that the job cuts
plus other "initiatives
... will provide savings ... without compromising our
core products and services," Kirkup would take
issue with that claim.
She says she believes that "the
quality of the Citizen has really suffered. We can't
possibly cut any more staff and stay relevant in
the news industry or our community."
On Wednesday, Director Arnold Amber said CWA Canada,
which represents workers at The
Gazette in Montreal,
The Ottawa Citizen, the Windsor
Star, the Regina Leader-Post and the Victoria
Times-Colonist, fears that the latest
job cuts will send the daily newspapers into a downward
spiral.
"You can't get rid of
350 newspaper jobs and not affect editorial quality.
This is bad news for employees and bad news for newspaper
readers."
CanWest's empire-building purchase
of Hollinger's newspapers (formerly the Southam chain)
in 2000 and last year's acquisition of Alliance Atlantis
Communications — largely
bankrolled by U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs — has
saddled the media conglomerate with a $3.7-billion
debt load.
Alliance, now renamed CW Television,
has become a money maker for CanWest, with Asper
describing "digital
and specialty channel revenue (as) good, strong."
So it's incomprehensible why CanWest would risk the
health of its cash cow by eliminating more than 20
of the 100 jobs in the Canadian Media Guild's bargaining
unit at CW Television.
“It's disappointing to see that CanWest has
stripped bare what had previously been a very profitable
sector of the company,” says Masaaba Mwambu,
president of the CW Television branch of the Guild. “They're
releasing a group of extremely talented people,” most
of whom work in closed captioning and long-form post-production.
Lise Lareau, CMG's national president, wonders if
there isn't a hidden agenda behind the cuts:
"It’s puzzling that, while CanWest is cutting
its overall workforce by five per cent, the unionized
workforce at the former Alliance Atlantis is being
cut by nearly 20 per cent,” she says. “This
is especially troubling given that CanWest itself notes
that these specialty channels are healthy and growing
in the double digits.”