Our collective agreement with TVO expired well over a year ago. Last spring we met a couple of times with management representatives to start the bargaining process. At those meetings – termed “pre-bargaining” by management because they didn’t yet have a mandate to negotiate – we presented the union’s bargaining objectives and said that we were looking forward to hearing about the company’s views on what a new collective agreement might look like. The last meeting of the two sides was in late spring 2013.

Since that time, we have continued to push for negotiations to pick up again. TVO felt we should hold off until the end of our hearings before the Ontario Labour Relations Board to deal with the jurisdictional disputes between the Guild, TVO and Unifor. We respectfully disagreed: we believed then as we do now, that there are important issues we can deal with that have nothing to do with any matters of jurisdiction.

TVO has now agreed to set aside some time for negotiations: three days in April and May. There’s no reason to believe that we will be able to reach an agreement in such a short period; indeed, it may take that long just to lay out the issues we want to talk about. We are, however, looking forward to hearing how the leadership of TVO sees the workplace. Once we have a clear idea of what the two parties think about the present, we will be able to start thinking and talking about the future.

We realize that it’s been quite a while since the objectives document was prepared and presented. Here it is again for your reading pleasure. If there are elements that have changed significantly over the past months, or areas that you think deserve more (or less) time and attention at the bargaining table, please let us know.

Please note that Daniel Bourré is stepping down from the bargaining committee. He is being replaced by Mike FitzGerald.

Your bargaining committee:

Drew Dafoe (alternate)
Mike FitzGerald
David Hawkins
Liane Kotler
Gregg Thurlbeck
Keith Maskell, CMG Staff Representative