CBC changes policy, wants to deny reimbursement for passports
CBC has introduced a new travel policy that denies employees reimbursement for passport fees, even if the passport is required for their work. In the past, employees who needed a passport to travel for the CBC were reimbursed. The Guild believes that practice should continue, regardless of the new travel policy. We urge you to file an expense claim for your passport fees if you needed the passport for purposes of your employment at CBC. If your claim is denied, please get in touch with the union.
Does your boss tell you what time to be at work?
If you answered yes to that question, you are “daily scheduled” under our collective agreement. That means you get to claim overtime for time worked beyond 7.75 hours. The vast majority of CBC employees are ? and should be ? daily scheduled.
Unfortunately, the Guild continues to find employees who are told they are “weekly” scheduled, but who actually don’t have control over their schedules. If you’re truly weekly scheduled, your boss shouldn’t tell you what time to come in and what time to leave. That’s up to you, as long as you work the days of the week you’re scheduled to work. And remember: when you come in to work, you’re expected to work a full shift, unless you’ve booked leave. If you need to work a long day on Monday to get something done, and you work the rest of the week, you should claim overtime. Your boss does not have the right to come to you on Thursday or Friday and tell you to take Friday afternoon off.
It’s the same principle if you’re self-assigned, except you have the flexibility to choose the days and hours you work. The catch is that you are expected to complete your work in regular work hours and cannot claim overtime. The CBC is required to review your assignment annually and, if you’re regularly putting in extra hours to get the job done, management should negotiate a workload agreement that compensates you as much as if you were being paid for overtime. The union can help you negotiate such an agreement.
The way you are scheduled should fit the work that you do. It should not be used as a way to try to deny you pay for overtime. If you have any doubts about how you are scheduled, get in touch with a union representative in your location.
CBC continues to use technicalities to deny benefits to temporary employees
Some temporary employees at CBC are still being denied benefits on unreasonable grounds. If you are a temporary employee who has worked at least 13 consecutive weeks and you generally work at least four days per week, you are probably eligible for benefits.
The CBC is quick to call any missed day a break in service. The Guild’s view is that there is only a break in your service if there is a lack of work and you aren’t called in, or you take an unapproved leave.
If you appear on a schedule and you’re sick and you let your supervisor know you can’t make it into work, that’s not a true break in service. Nor is it a break in service if you take an approved vacation, or a day off on a statutory holiday. If you are being denied benefits because HR is telling you that in a certain week, or weeks, you worked less than four days, and the reason is one of the above, or another reason pointing to a legitimate leave from work, get in touch with a Guild representative in your location.
Guild fighting a series of improper terminations
There are no fewer than eight cases of improper termination headed for arbitration. People being let go unfairly from the CBC is one of the most common grievances that members have filed in the last few years. These cases are generally fast-tracked to arbitration.
Guild and CBC settle a number of grievances
Since the beginning of the year, the Guild and CBC have settled five grievances, some of which involve more than one member. A settlement was reached last month on a case dating back to the 2005 outsourcing of CBC publicists. CBC will pay the union $100,000 for distribution among the affected employees. In other cases, extra severance money was obtained for employees who had been laid off, either because the employee in question had been denied severance or because employees were denied additional severance when their layoff resulted from a change in work methods and practices. Another employee received compensation for the time he could have been recalled, but wasn’t, after being laid off last year. Finally, a settlement was reached for an employee who grieved after being moved to a job in a lower classification. The union argued the move by the CBC was constructive dismissal. Under the settlement, the employee in question will retain the original classification and pay, while remaining in the newly assigned job.
This has been a report of your National Grievance Committee:
Elaine Janes (chair) – doubleej@hotmail.com
Annick Forest – annickozie@hotmail.com
Christian Massey – massc@telus.net
John O’Connor – dldigital@sasktel.net
Bob Sharpe
Jonathan Spence – jonathan@cmgtoronto.ca
Bruce May, CMG Staff Representative – bruce@cmg.ca