Hi folks,
Long time no seethe, eh? I gotta say, this 9-5’in’ it isn’t all bad, but it has thrown a wrinkle into my Megalomedia ways.
Here’s the slightly-more concrete plan. I’m moving in a little less than two weeks, at which point I’m going to get a subscription to the Globe and hopefully also the Toronto Star (though you have to go through an intermediary company for that, so I have to see how that works), and I’ve even considered getting the Citizen too. Once that happens, I’ll have a lot more to say here.
Until then, however, you’ll have to make do with these sporadic updates.
I just wanted to mark the start of the CBC lockout. My alarm went off at 7 a.m. today (oh, so much nicer than when it went off at 3:30 a.m.) and I was treated to the sound of a voice I didn’t recognize reading me the news.
I am not going to pretend to know the ins-and-outs of the dispute, but I will say a few things:
– they’re talking about contingency plans for NHL broadcasts, which doesn’t make me confident that this will end soon
– as a rule, I am wary of anyone who wants to hire more contract workers. Contract workers in industries where there’s clearly a need for long-term employees smacks of cost-cutting bullshit. It’s a way to have employees without paying them benefits or pensions, and it takes a toll on the worker who has no job security (conflict of interest alert, I just switched to salaried employee status after three years of being a contract worker. I much prefer salary).
– I have a lot of friends who work at the CBC and this can’t be good for them. Hang in there guys.
– I have a few friends whose jobs rely on the CBC being aired. Also hang in there guys.
– This will make tomorrow’s MediaScout interesting (I’m doing it, you see). What happens to the Big Six when The National is in lockout mode?
Yeah… I was weirded out by that stranger in my bedroom this morning too. The weird thing was, without the inane chatter, it was almost like waking up to a regular radio station.
I tend to agree on the contractor status thing, too. I know a few people who have been fired just before they would have had to have been given employee status (after two years, I believe). In this case, one of her supervisors emailed her to say that it had nothing to do with the quality of her work, as was cited, and everything to do with that.
I hate unions. I hate strikes. But this is one that I actually have respect for. That is to say, if Beardo stops me in the street, I won’t threaten to kick his ass.
This thing has been coming for a long time. I haven’t had much contact with CBC folk this summer, but the few that I have met complain about the contract situation often. And these are young people, trying to start out in the industry with less and less hope of getting steady jobs.
I’m not sure how things are in Ottawa, but here on Front Street West it’s a merry circus. There are hundreds of people, with professional-looking (and, naturally, bilingual) sandwich boards circling the Mother Corp. headquarters like a belt of human asteroids. They were very courteous and quiet as I passed them on the way to work today.