Members have voted to approve the tentative agreement reached with Shaw Media last week, with 85% voting in favour. In all, 75 members — more than 90% of the bargaining unit — participated in the vote.

The new deal runs to April 30, 2014.

CORRECTION: The company has said that the first pay increase will be in your August 31 deposit (covering the Aug 15 to 31 pay period). The $500 cash payment is to be included in your August 15 deposit.

We would like to thank everyone for your involvement and support throughout the process. We have an agreement we can build on to improve our working lives at Shaw and we want to work together with all of you over the next three years to make it happen.

Since we signed the tentative agreement, the company has made a couple of unusual announcements. First off, a good one: they will contribute 5% to everyone’s pension beginning immediately. We are glad they have decided to do the right thing.

The company also announced this week that they have a budget for ?merit? increases for our members. We’ll be watching closely to ensure that increases are applied as equitably as possible. As we have said, our preference was to improve the salaries written into the agreement so that you would have something you can count on; this remains a goal for future agreements.

This was our first round of bargaining with Shaw. We’ve learned some things and we hope they have as well.

We look forward to our next meeting with management and we’ll continue to report to you regularly.

As always, if you have questions, get in touch with any one of us.

Your bargaining committee and executive:
Mike Duong, Shaw branch president
Christopher Beesley, Shaw branch VP, engineering
Katy Boudreau, Shaw branch VP, closed captioning and post production
Brent Tennant, Shaw branch VP, master control, library, dub, presentation, QC
Sherisse White, bargaining committee
Karen Wirsig, CMG staff
Keith Maskell, CMG staff representative