Monday, August 22, 2005
CBC lockout XIV: We have a problem
Memo to:
Canadian Media Guild
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation middle managers who do the real work
Subject: We have a BIG problem
Among the people who are locked out at CBC across the country there are those who have one of those "dirty jobs but someone has to do it" kind. In this case I am referring to the people in Audience Relations, a producer at News Online, a hardworking woman at the National and junior folks at shows across the country, who have to weed through thousands of spam messages each day to find out what the Canadian public are thinking.
Believe me the CBC does pay attention to those letters. (Wonder who is handling them now? Or will the people mentioned above have to clean up the mess when/if they get back in).
This blog, thankfully, doesn't get much spam. I left comments turned off because I don't want to have go through "comment spam" and I am not going to make people register at yet another site. Anyway my e-mail box is there and I am getting a feel for what intelligent, articulate Canadians feel about this lockout.
I have come to the conclusion that we have a BIG problem, and it is not confined to the right-wing CBC haters whom we can never please no matter what we do.
The problem: A large number of articulate, intelligent Canadians seem to think we are the equivalent of the highly paid hockey and baseball players (also airline pilots)when they were off the job.
Thus there is this image out there that goes something like this. A promising young journalist (it is always a journalist in the blogs not a technical person), is spotted by a talent scout at a journalism school, spends a few months as a casual, lands a staff job and then lives off the taxpayer gravy train until they retire at 65.
The facts, of course, are very different.
First we have to look at one key factor in the CBC wage structure. With a national broadcaster that reaches across the country and a national union, the wages are paid nationally, not depending on the size of the local market. That means money that is okay in Toronto and barely adequate in Vancouver (with its expensive housing) is great in places like Nelson, BC or Gander, NL. So that impression, along with years of propaganda from the right, may the source of the problem.
To go back to the sports analogy. It's as if the AHL also got NHL salaries or AAA baseball got major league money. (And don't forget that often a lot of people in the AHL or AAA are as a good as or better as those in the majors)
The fact is, of course, that in the major markets, CBC salaries have steadily been falling behind for the past fifteen years. Before the lockout and now on the picket lines, people in Toronto are comparing what they get at CBC with CTV and other broadcasters, which at least in the technical areas is a lot more (the reason for the past two "labour disruptions" with the technicians) and, wistfully, with the American networks. (As one production assistant said the people in the US get four times the money and do half the work of people either at CBC or CTV).
This problem came very clear at CBC.ca during the past year or so. CBC.ca is a print service, and a print service needs copy editors, so we began hiring copy editors. But in the Toronto market the competition for a good copy editor is fierce, whether they are staff or casual. The Toronto daily newspapers pay a lot more money for a good copy editor (about 10 to 12 percent).
So if the CBC wants a good, experienced casual copy editor, they have to compete with the day rates paid by the Globe, the Star and the Sun. At the moment the CBC can't compete. We get casual copy editors on days there isn't work at the big dailies.
The same is true for those casuals, usually in technical fields, that work all over the city, at Global, CTV, CITY and the speciality channels.
This is one factor upper management is ignoring in their quest for casualization. It may actually back fire, at least in Toronto and Vancouver. If they succeed, they may find that they are going to be more market driven than they want and have to chose between someone cheap and someone good.
That got me thinking. So as a photo editor, I can easily compare my salary with those on newspapers in various locations, since that information is generally available for papers with union contracts on union website s and unlike some other jobs in television, they are directly comparable.
I chose the position of assistant or deputy photo editor on the big metro dailies, and photo editor on the smaller ones (where their contracts don't mention deputy or assistant). Where an experience rate is mentioned, I chose the two years because I have done the job as photo editor for two years, even though I have been a web producer for 10 years and a journalist for almost 30.
So someone doing a similar job at Canadian Press (people I work with often when I am on the job at CBC) on The Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Sun, the Vancouver Province and the Vancouver Sun, gets $12,000 to $15,000 a year more than I do. I make roughly the same as a photo editor on the Kitchener Waterloo Record and I make about $18,000 more than someone on the Nelson Daily News, where CBC Radio has a bureau.
(I note that an assistant photo editor on the Toronto Sun, under the current contract, with four years on the job would get $16,000 more than I do).
I don't know how we overcome this impression that we are overpaid and do little work. BUT again no matter what happens in this dispute, it's a problem that has to be solved.
By the way, the CBC up until the last minute, refused to talk money until the CMG agreed to the CBC's request for casualization. Just before the lockout they did a table a money offer, which the CMG rejected. I suggest to my friends who are reporters and producers at CBC go to the newspaper contract websites and say what your print colleagues are getting.
Ontario
Canada
It's not apples and oranges, its journalism.
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news
11:30 AM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
Links to this post
Canadian Media Guild
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation middle managers who do the real work
Subject: We have a BIG problem
Among the people who are locked out at CBC across the country there are those who have one of those "dirty jobs but someone has to do it" kind. In this case I am referring to the people in Audience Relations, a producer at News Online, a hardworking woman at the National and junior folks at shows across the country, who have to weed through thousands of spam messages each day to find out what the Canadian public are thinking.
Believe me the CBC does pay attention to those letters. (Wonder who is handling them now? Or will the people mentioned above have to clean up the mess when/if they get back in).
This blog, thankfully, doesn't get much spam. I left comments turned off because I don't want to have go through "comment spam" and I am not going to make people register at yet another site. Anyway my e-mail box is there and I am getting a feel for what intelligent, articulate Canadians feel about this lockout.
I have come to the conclusion that we have a BIG problem, and it is not confined to the right-wing CBC haters whom we can never please no matter what we do.
The problem: A large number of articulate, intelligent Canadians seem to think we are the equivalent of the highly paid hockey and baseball players (also airline pilots)when they were off the job.
Thus there is this image out there that goes something like this. A promising young journalist (it is always a journalist in the blogs not a technical person), is spotted by a talent scout at a journalism school, spends a few months as a casual, lands a staff job and then lives off the taxpayer gravy train until they retire at 65.
The facts, of course, are very different.
First we have to look at one key factor in the CBC wage structure. With a national broadcaster that reaches across the country and a national union, the wages are paid nationally, not depending on the size of the local market. That means money that is okay in Toronto and barely adequate in Vancouver (with its expensive housing) is great in places like Nelson, BC or Gander, NL. So that impression, along with years of propaganda from the right, may the source of the problem.
To go back to the sports analogy. It's as if the AHL also got NHL salaries or AAA baseball got major league money. (And don't forget that often a lot of people in the AHL or AAA are as a good as or better as those in the majors)
The fact is, of course, that in the major markets, CBC salaries have steadily been falling behind for the past fifteen years. Before the lockout and now on the picket lines, people in Toronto are comparing what they get at CBC with CTV and other broadcasters, which at least in the technical areas is a lot more (the reason for the past two "labour disruptions" with the technicians) and, wistfully, with the American networks. (As one production assistant said the people in the US get four times the money and do half the work of people either at CBC or CTV).
This problem came very clear at CBC.ca during the past year or so. CBC.ca is a print service, and a print service needs copy editors, so we began hiring copy editors. But in the Toronto market the competition for a good copy editor is fierce, whether they are staff or casual. The Toronto daily newspapers pay a lot more money for a good copy editor (about 10 to 12 percent).
So if the CBC wants a good, experienced casual copy editor, they have to compete with the day rates paid by the Globe, the Star and the Sun. At the moment the CBC can't compete. We get casual copy editors on days there isn't work at the big dailies.
The same is true for those casuals, usually in technical fields, that work all over the city, at Global, CTV, CITY and the speciality channels.
This is one factor upper management is ignoring in their quest for casualization. It may actually back fire, at least in Toronto and Vancouver. If they succeed, they may find that they are going to be more market driven than they want and have to chose between someone cheap and someone good.
That got me thinking. So as a photo editor, I can easily compare my salary with those on newspapers in various locations, since that information is generally available for papers with union contracts on union website s and unlike some other jobs in television, they are directly comparable.
I chose the position of assistant or deputy photo editor on the big metro dailies, and photo editor on the smaller ones (where their contracts don't mention deputy or assistant). Where an experience rate is mentioned, I chose the two years because I have done the job as photo editor for two years, even though I have been a web producer for 10 years and a journalist for almost 30.
So someone doing a similar job at Canadian Press (people I work with often when I am on the job at CBC) on The Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Sun, the Vancouver Province and the Vancouver Sun, gets $12,000 to $15,000 a year more than I do. I make roughly the same as a photo editor on the Kitchener Waterloo Record and I make about $18,000 more than someone on the Nelson Daily News, where CBC Radio has a bureau.
(I note that an assistant photo editor on the Toronto Sun, under the current contract, with four years on the job would get $16,000 more than I do).
I don't know how we overcome this impression that we are overpaid and do little work. BUT again no matter what happens in this dispute, it's a problem that has to be solved.
By the way, the CBC up until the last minute, refused to talk money until the CMG agreed to the CBC's request for casualization. Just before the lockout they did a table a money offer, which the CMG rejected. I suggest to my friends who are reporters and producers at CBC go to the newspaper contract websites and say what your print colleagues are getting.
Ontario
Canada
It's not apples and oranges, its journalism.
Technorati tags
writing, journalism, CBC, blog, news
11:30 AM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
