Lockout Facts

If you've turned on the CBC lately, you might have noticed it's been somewhat... thinner lately. This is because as of 12:01 am yesterday, the CBC management locked out the 5,500 workers of the Canadian Media Guild.

Full disclosure: My father is a member of the CMG, and is currently on the picket lines.

So what is the dispute over, and why has management locked out the workers? For once, this is a strike that has essentially nothing to do with pay raises or pension plans. The main sticking point is management's plan to dramatically increase the number of temporary and contract workers to provide "flexibility" for the CBC.

So is the union simply objecting to change, wedded to the status quo? Hardly. The CBC's workforce is already 30% temporary and contract workers - it hard to imagine how much more "flexibility" the CBC needs. Furthermore, the CMG has made a serious, substantial proposal to help management retain a flexible workforce, without sacrificing the experienced core of the CBC.

Make no mistake: The CBC currently has one of the best news organizations on the planet - nevermind in Canada. Management's drive to replace some of the best journalists in the world with temporary and contract workers is a blow to public broadcasting, and a blow the Canadian people.

Given that management has so thoroughly hung their hat on the "flexibility" motive for this lockout, we should analyze what it could possibly mean. Like I said, 30% of the CBC's workforce is either temporary or contract, so it's hard to see what the CBC could gain in "flexibility" that it doesn't already have. Surely if the CBC needs to cut it's workforce quickly, it doesn't imagine it'll need to cut more than 30% - and if it does, then the problems at the CBC go deeper than the public have been led to believe!

Oh, and before you say it, this isn't simply about the incumbent workers protecting their jobs - the management has already said it won't be firing the existing staff. What the union is doing is protecting the right to have a career in the media - something that is almost forgotten as an ideal, but something that is still valuable personally. Career journalists are also valuable for the public, which I'll go in to a bit further down.

However, there's an underlying problem with the whole "flexibility" excuse. The CBC, in case you'd forgotten, is a Crown Corporation. It's revenues are provided mostly by yours and my taxes, not by sales. (A smallish fraction are provided by ad revenue from CBC's TV stations.) Exactly how much flexibility does the government need? The CBC knows, to the penny, how much money the government will give it next year - something no other broadcaster can say. The CBC is forbidden by federal law from ever running a profit, so it's really hard to imagine why all of the sudden, the CBC needs so much flexibility.

But suppose the CMG is forced by the lockout to cave in (something Antonia Zerbisias is already predicting.) Is this that big a deal? Well, yes. You don't get good journalists (or editors, or technicians) quickly. The decline in private news organization is the United States is exactly paralelled by the increasing marketization of the news - as it becomes more and more of a private commodity, the news becomes worth less and less. The faces at CNN are changing so quickly these days I don't even bother keeping track anymore.

The career of the recently-departed Peter Jennings is instructive: He bounced around from reporter to anchor to reporter to anchor again before settling down. It's difficult to see how he would have lasted in the CBC's "flexible" regime - he would have been canned after one of those "failures", certainly. If he'd been contract, arguably he'd never have made it past reporter. That's important - without good journalists, the public suffers. Again, look at the US Press for an indication of what it can lead to. Never mind that an experienced news team is an incredibly valuable "brand", and therefore good for business.

Alarmism aside, the CBC has been a bright light for Canadian news in particular, and recently has even produced a great deal of Canadian drama fiction (watch This is Wonderland!) Not surprisingly, I'm very proud of the CMG and my father. They're engaged in the best form of labor action - they aren't looking out for themselves, they're looking out for us.

And, a special shout-out goes to Adrienne Arsenault, who was covering the Gaza pullout but is now in Neve Dekalim holding a hand-made sign reading "Locked Out by CBC Management."

I love that image.