The Canadian Media Guild has succeeded in convincing the CBC to make good on its obligation to pay retroactivity to 576 employees who were short-changed on the last two annual Time-Off-In-Lieu payouts. Today, the CBC paid the employees a total of $31,485 to fix the problem. (Individual amounts are listed as “CMG Retro 2005” on the Notifications of Deposit of the affected employees.)

The problem dates to the signing of the new collective agreement in October 2005, when CBC failed to apply retroactive wage increases to time banked in lieu of overtime by CMG members between April 1, 2004 and the October 2005 ratification.

A retroactive payment, worth 2.5% of the original payout, should have been made to employees who received TOIL payouts for the fiscal year 2004-5 on May 5, 2005. The TOIL payouts on May 25, 2006 should have included an extra 5.06% worth of retroactivity on time earned between April 1, 2005 and October of that year.

The CMG contacted the CBC about the error on May 25, 2006, the day it was detected. Nevertheless, the problem was not solved until two grievances were filed on November 30, 2006. One dealt with the case of a single member in Toronto. The other was a policy grievance filed by the Guild.

In addition, 188 retired or separated employees were affected. The total amount due them is $4,858.22.

The Corporation says it is moving to correct the error for 78 people who left the CBC after the collective agreement was signed in October 2005. The cases of the 110 employees who left the CBC before that time will be held pending the outcome of an ongoing arbitration on retroactive wage increases.

For more information, contact the Guild (info@cmg.ca) at 416-591-5333 or 1-800-465-4149.