I hope you enjoyed our Sovereign’s birthday yesterday. For my part I received varied correspondence from across the Dominion, which I faithfully reprint here unmolested:
Are parts of La Maison to be rented out? There have been rumours of it for years, but Montréal newspapers reported last week that condos will be built into certain floors of the tower. Radio-Canada vehemently denied the plan, but said it was open to any possibility (so send ’em in).
Vancouver CBCers wrote to tell me that the renovations on the monolithic Vancouver CBC building are a waste of time. Better to tear the whole thing down and start afresh.
The CMG wrote to tell me the stop the sellout pizza party in Simcoe Park was moved to this Friday. I was also formally invited, so I will be there.
Were parts of Suzuki photoshopped? No doubt the-world-on-the-shoulders was, but doesn’t it look a little odd around the belly button? You can check this bigger photo and inspect it yourself (NSFW unless you W at CBC).
What’s with all the all-staff emails lately?
This may be the most communicative senior management has ever been in the history of the CBC, but it is having the undesired effect of making employees jumpy. Of course, there’s a difference between communicating and issuing proclamations.
The soon-to-be-gone Design Department wrote to tell me that the CBC are letting them go on the 9th of the month so as to prevent them from accumulating an extra vacation day for August, which they would be entitled to on the 10th.
They also say the CBC is declaring them “redundant” rather than “laid off,” as this allows the corp to pay ex-designers for only 2 weeks for each year they worked, rather than 3.
They also say that being redundant means you have no rights to re-training.
Quite honestly, I can’t be arsed to check the collective agreement to see if any of this is true. We will have to rely on the gnomelike Arnold Amber for that.
I’ve personally heard layoff rumours for every department except radio. If they are all true it’s going to be pretty quiet around here.
And lastly, Hockeywille recently went down to the paint and carps shop with a rush order, and was quoted $6,000. Shocked at the price, they squawked and went outside, as all productions will have to very soon.
And they paid $19,000.
Now that’s progress.
4 Comments
Good to know that the new home’s being sought out and preparations have been made accordingly. Thanks for pointing out the new info.
He’s trying to find a new home for it.
The rest of us will just have to wait for the book.
Off topic, but has anyone noticed that Tod “I Will Not Erase History” Maffin appears to have done just that for some reason.
The CMG wrote me with some clarifications.
The difference between being redundant and laid off is this:
When a layoff is more than 50 employees it is classified as a “mass termination.” The CBC has to give 16 weeks notice to the employee, and for the first 8 weeks of that the employee is redundant. If they haven’t been reassigned by 8 weeks, they are sent a layoff notice, and are laid off.
The issue around eligible severance is this:
A so-called “protected employee,” or someone hired on before 1983, gets 4 weeks pay for every year served with a cap of 24 months.
A “non-protected employee” will only receive 2 weeks per year.
But here’s the catch:
When you have a contracting-out situation, then every employee, protected or not, will receive an additional week severance per every year served with a cap of two years. The CBC says this is not a a contracting-out situation, and the CMG says it is, and this is part of what the fight is about these days.
The issue of annual leave for the month of August is this:
The CBC can’t ask people to leave prior to August 11th. But even working up to the 11th wouldn’t get you an annual leave credit for that month, as you have to work 10 days that month to get it.
It’s smarter to take any annual leave you have after the 11th. This way might just bump you over the 10 says, as ironically, vacation time counts as working days in this case.
If you have any questions, please contact your local CMG rep (did I just say that?)