At 5:50 pm on Wednesday, the Corporation tabled a new comprehensive offer of settlement, saying it is designed to address the interests of each side. Unfortunately, it falls well short of establishing a platform for agreement.

Of particular significance: management has not moved on the key issues that have kept us on the street for the past seven weeks. On employment status, the Corporation is proposing to increase the number of contract employees by 225% over the life of the contract. They want to be able to hire 90 employees in 21 different classifications in each year of the agreement, which would run for another 3.5 years. The proposal, entailing a significant increase to the proportion of non-permanent employees at the CBC, which already stands at 30%, remains a real stumbling block.

On layoff and recall, the management proposal continues to include provisions that would severely limit the opportunities for employees to maintain a job in the event of a downsizing. The Guild has continually stressed that rights to reassignment or bumping must be available across media lines (eg. radio, TV or cbc.ca). Under the management proposal, you would have to have done the work in the media line to which you wish to move in six of the last 12 months. As well, you could only be redeployed within your existing location.

The sparsity of the monetary offer is also a serious concern.

We will review the package in detail before meeting with the Corporation to respond. We’ll keep you posted.