Friday 22 January 2010

PKP & unions

Philippe Gohier over at macleans.ca provides a revealing stat involving PKP and Quebec unions.

His article focuses on an open letter from PKP published in his French-language Journal de Quebec "blasting unions for hampering the province’s economic progress."

The heading: Why Péladeau’s anti-union plea is more than a bit disingenuous

Gohier writes:

"Perhaps no other Quebec employer has as gleefully locked out its employees as Québecor has in recent years. To wit: the ongoing, year-old lock-out at the Journal de Montréal, the 16-month-long lock-out of workers at the Journal de Québec between 2007 and 2008, the year-long lock-out of Vidéotron employees in 2002.

"In fact, since 2002, Québecor has resorted to locking out unionized employees no less than 10 times."

An unsettling stat for the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild as it prepares to negotiate new contracts for five Sun Media papers in Ontario later this year, including the Toronto and Ottawa Suns.

4 comments:

  1. Might as well start gathering up the wood for the fire barrells...could be a chilly spring.

    Of course he hates unions because they protect their workers for working for minimum wage.

    When is an union going to step in at the so-called Centre of Excellence setups?

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  2. A centre of excellence in action .. this was printed in the Timmins Daily Press. Do people not look at photos before they publish them?

    http://www.timminspress.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2270028

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  3. The Centres of Exellence was not PKP's idea. The management of Sun Media came up with the idea. If any of the current Centres of Excellence became unionized, the Sun would just move it to a new location.

    Unions only usually have jurisdication in the city that the workforce operates. This is usually laid out in one of the first articles of a collective agreement.

    Therefore if a Centre of Excellence was to unionize, it would ultimately result in the employess losing their jobs.

    The problem with the Toronto Sun newsroom is that they have a union. This has resulted in a great reduction in the newsroom staff... a bigger percentage reduction than the other dailies since they became unionized.

    I feel sorry for the Toronto Sun staff who bought into the theory and promies of unionization who are now looking for work.

    The Toronto Sun would be the Centre of Excellence for most English speaking areas if it they had no unions.

    Management basically broke the Prespress union at the Toronto Sun by downsizing and outsourcing the work. Almost all of these employees are now unemployed.

    Be careful what you wish for as you might find yourself like the Toronto Prepress employess.

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  4. Sorry, I tried to read his letter, but the run-on sentences quickly lost my attention and I stopped reading. Perhaps PKP should spend a week in one of his budget-strapped, manpower-strapped newsrooms to see how remaining journalists are trying to retain readers' interest by trying to write short, concise sentences that will hopefully keep people wanting to read newspapers well into the future

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