Tuesday, September 06, 2005
CBC 58: CBC strategy: Unite and conquer
This is a follow-up to the "intelligence analysis", Fort Confusion, I filed last week. As with the first report it is based on a combination of solid verifiable information and "chatter." This is the first of a couple of intelligence reports that together will show the emerging pattern as the CBC lockout enters its fourth week.
Summary
Additional information received over the past few days indicates that the CBC management strategy both in labour negotiations for the past year and a half and in triggering the lockout is a case of what could be called "Unite and conquer," the opposite of what any competent strategist or tactician would recommend. It could also be said that senior CBC management is not maintaining the forest because it wanted to cut down a few trees.
Correction
In an earlier post I reported that the Canadian Media Guild's strike mandate expired on September 8. It would have expired--if management had not ordered the lockout. Under a Canadian Industrial Relations Board ruling when the CBC locked out its Quebec employees, a lockout voids the best before date on a strike vote.
Unite and conquer
After the Fort Confusion post I received a number of e-mails from Guild members and there were posts on other blogs asking why integrating two contracts with the same employer would be so difficult? At the same time my sources inside in the Toronto Broadcast Centre reported the opposite, that there is is great difficulty in merging the two contracts.
The answer came from those involved when CBC employees chose the Canadian Media Guild over the Communications Energy and Paperworkers in the CIRB ordered vote and in the resulting merger of the two unions.
If the CBC wanted a fair and reasonable merger of the two contracts (perhaps with the usual give and take in negotiations) then it would be easy.
CBC senior management does not want a fair and reasonable merger of the contracts.
It is here that their strategy becomes clear.
It was not just a case of diluting the perceived militancy of the CEP technicians.
To be accurate, let's call it "Unite, so we can divide and conquer."
One of my sources puts it this way: "The CBC decided to merge the bargaining units in the belief that it would create a unit which was impossibly diverse and lacking in any internal cohesion so that it could assert bargaining demands that would never have been achieved under the previous arrangement."
An anonymous post on Tod Maffin's blog puts it in a slightly different way, calling it the "business case." The poster, perhaps a locked-in manager, says "The real reason for the merger was to re-establish Segregated Clausing."
That idea is this, dilute not only the perceived militancy but the support for people in other units. Thus if one clause in the contract affects only a small group, then in larger union, in theory, that small group doesn't have the clout in a strike vote or in ratifying a contract. According to this post, the CBC's aim is to chip away at the contract, "Merge and now you have new units with the need to have segregated small group clauses for the special needs of these small groups of workers."
Management's theory is that with a large number of small groups, it could "tear up the clauses again... A clause that once affected 50 per cent of Guild members is now only affecting 30 per cent of members - finally easy to eliminate in management's eyes."
The irony is that this strategy might even have succeeded, if the Senior Management Committee was competent. All was needed was patience.
Instead they locked the doors and threw everyone out on the street. Now we know each other. In Toronto, executive producers have walked around the building with cable pullers. I have met people who were just faces in the elevator and people whom I have never seen before even though I have worked in the Toronto Broadcast Centre for more than ten years. I have met people from audience services and set construction, people who write the contracts and people who monitor the audio going out of network master control.
We are all talking about integration. A TV writer working at Toronto Unlocked on CIUT; a TV reporter learning how to do an audio report for a podcast; a radio producer who wants to learn about photography.
At today's Simcoe Park concert, Jian Ghomeshi, before his group Moxy Fruvous began singing, pointed at the locked building, and he too, talked about everyone he has met and said: "We are integrated; we are now integrated," to applause from the crowd.
After all this, and if the CBC survives, is that executive producer going to vote to screw a cable puller he has walked the line with? We'll have to see if that ever comes, but given the past weeks of walking, it is not as likely as it would have been if the Senior Management Committee hadn't pulled the plug.
I did some checks and found out that "divide and conquer" was originally a Roman maxum, in Latin, divide et impera, divide and rule.
The opposite, the "united we stand" phrases all come from our friends south of the border.
It was Benjamin Franklin who said, after signing the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
The original "united we stand, divided we fall" comes from the American revolutionary "Liberty Song," written by John Dickinson in 1768.
The answer to the Senior Management Committee's "unite and conquer strategy" comes from a phrase I found in Abraham Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech before the Republican Convention on June 16, 1858. While Lincoln was trying to unite the Republicans, part of what he said applies to CBC employees across Canada.
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,
Abraham Lincoln
5:36 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
Links to this post
This is a follow-up to the "intelligence analysis", Fort Confusion, I filed last week. As with the first report it is based on a combination of solid verifiable information and "chatter." This is the first of a couple of intelligence reports that together will show the emerging pattern as the CBC lockout enters its fourth week.
Summary
Additional information received over the past few days indicates that the CBC management strategy both in labour negotiations for the past year and a half and in triggering the lockout is a case of what could be called "Unite and conquer," the opposite of what any competent strategist or tactician would recommend. It could also be said that senior CBC management is not maintaining the forest because it wanted to cut down a few trees.
Correction
In an earlier post I reported that the Canadian Media Guild's strike mandate expired on September 8. It would have expired--if management had not ordered the lockout. Under a Canadian Industrial Relations Board ruling when the CBC locked out its Quebec employees, a lockout voids the best before date on a strike vote.
Unite and conquer
After the Fort Confusion post I received a number of e-mails from Guild members and there were posts on other blogs asking why integrating two contracts with the same employer would be so difficult? At the same time my sources inside in the Toronto Broadcast Centre reported the opposite, that there is is great difficulty in merging the two contracts.
The answer came from those involved when CBC employees chose the Canadian Media Guild over the Communications Energy and Paperworkers in the CIRB ordered vote and in the resulting merger of the two unions.
If the CBC wanted a fair and reasonable merger of the two contracts (perhaps with the usual give and take in negotiations) then it would be easy.
CBC senior management does not want a fair and reasonable merger of the contracts.
It is here that their strategy becomes clear.
It was not just a case of diluting the perceived militancy of the CEP technicians.
To be accurate, let's call it "Unite, so we can divide and conquer."
One of my sources puts it this way: "The CBC decided to merge the bargaining units in the belief that it would create a unit which was impossibly diverse and lacking in any internal cohesion so that it could assert bargaining demands that would never have been achieved under the previous arrangement."
An anonymous post on Tod Maffin's blog puts it in a slightly different way, calling it the "business case." The poster, perhaps a locked-in manager, says "The real reason for the merger was to re-establish Segregated Clausing."
That idea is this, dilute not only the perceived militancy but the support for people in other units. Thus if one clause in the contract affects only a small group, then in larger union, in theory, that small group doesn't have the clout in a strike vote or in ratifying a contract. According to this post, the CBC's aim is to chip away at the contract, "Merge and now you have new units with the need to have segregated small group clauses for the special needs of these small groups of workers."
Management's theory is that with a large number of small groups, it could "tear up the clauses again... A clause that once affected 50 per cent of Guild members is now only affecting 30 per cent of members - finally easy to eliminate in management's eyes."
The irony is that this strategy might even have succeeded, if the Senior Management Committee was competent. All was needed was patience.
Instead they locked the doors and threw everyone out on the street. Now we know each other. In Toronto, executive producers have walked around the building with cable pullers. I have met people who were just faces in the elevator and people whom I have never seen before even though I have worked in the Toronto Broadcast Centre for more than ten years. I have met people from audience services and set construction, people who write the contracts and people who monitor the audio going out of network master control.
We are all talking about integration. A TV writer working at Toronto Unlocked on CIUT; a TV reporter learning how to do an audio report for a podcast; a radio producer who wants to learn about photography.
At today's Simcoe Park concert, Jian Ghomeshi, before his group Moxy Fruvous began singing, pointed at the locked building, and he too, talked about everyone he has met and said: "We are integrated; we are now integrated," to applause from the crowd.
After all this, and if the CBC survives, is that executive producer going to vote to screw a cable puller he has walked the line with? We'll have to see if that ever comes, but given the past weeks of walking, it is not as likely as it would have been if the Senior Management Committee hadn't pulled the plug.
I did some checks and found out that "divide and conquer" was originally a Roman maxum, in Latin, divide et impera, divide and rule.
The opposite, the "united we stand" phrases all come from our friends south of the border.
It was Benjamin Franklin who said, after signing the Declaration of Independence: "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
The original "united we stand, divided we fall" comes from the American revolutionary "Liberty Song," written by John Dickinson in 1768.
By uniting we stand,
By dividing we fall;
In so righteous a cause
Let us hope to succeed,
For Heaven approves of
Each generous deed.
The answer to the Senior Management Committee's "unite and conquer strategy" comes from a phrase I found in Abraham Lincoln's famous "House Divided" speech before the Republican Convention on June 16, 1858. While Lincoln was trying to unite the Republicans, part of what he said applies to CBC employees across Canada.
Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy.
Technorati tags
journalism, CBC, blog, news, lockout,
CBClockout,
Abraham Lincoln
5:36 PM posted by Robin Rowland
Permanent Link
