Fighting temporary work is a union priority.

CMG has created an “Award of Recognition” to draw attention to the plight of long term temporary workers at CBC. The first installment of the CMG Long Service Awards will be handed out this Wednesday.

In recent years the proliferation of temporary workers at CBC has reached unprecedented proportions. The union estimates the number of precariously employed staff at CBC across the country at various times ranges between 25% to 30% of total staff. In May this year, there were 1,137 temporary workers according to numbers provided by the corporation.

That means that any given time, 1 of each 4 people you work with does not know from day to day whether they will have a job the following day.

The growth of non-permanent employment has a personal toll. It also lowers the floor of acceptable employment conditions for a generation of media workers, undermines the value of the work we do, hurts the profession, and continues to damage the reputation of the CBC as a progressive employer.

Forcing journalists and other Canadian workers in the industry into long term precarious work has reached a tipping point. And we know how hard it is to do the exemplary work we want to do when each day could be your last on the payroll.

The union has spent the last three years working with the corporation to find ways to return many of these jobs back into stable, long-term careers.

To little avail.

There are too many loopholes, but more importantly, too little interest from CBC’s senior management to make real progress on this issue.

In addition to the stressful instability temporary workers suffer, the CBC refuses to include them in the annual long service award program, even though many, possibly hundreds, have worked at the corporation for decades.

For these reasons, and to recognize the significance of the work an estimated 1,000 temporary workers do each day at the CBC, the union has created an alternate long service award.  

In this first installment, the CMG will honour a dozen employees from across the country. The virtual ceremony will take place via Zoom on Wednesday, June 29, 2022 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. ET.

Click here to read more about the Award
and
Click here to read the story of this year’s recipients.

All CBC-CMG members are invited to come share our appreciation to those among us who work tirelessly and yet are not afforded the respect of being included in this long-standing practice at CBC.

“These recipients represent the many temporary workers whose service the corporation refused to recognize the way it does with permanent employees. We think that’s wrong,” said Kim Trynacity , CBC Branch president. “So we wanted to share our appreciation for all they do every day but under precarious conditions.”

“There are currently up to 1,000 temporary workers, working 100,000 hours a month at CBC (at Radio-Canada in Québec, it’s over 1,100 temporary workers working an average of 83,000 hours a month), so clearly the ongoing work exists,” CMG president Carmel Smyth noted. “Why would the public broadcaster, a media leader, create a two-tiered system where so many are treated unfairly.  Let’s work together to fix this.”