The management of CBC, the Canadian Public Broadcasting radio, broke the labor negotiations that had been going on for 15 months and locked out 5,500 CBC workers on August 15. The dispute is around the hiring of contractors and part-time workers. CBC, which has received no funding increase in five years, decided to solve its financial problems by proposing to increase the number of contract employees to 25 percent. This means that half the CBC employees, which have been without a contract since March 2004, will be left without permanent status. The talks were interrupted when CBC refused to to negotiate this proposal with the Canadian Media Guild, and at 12:01 AM of August 15, the lock-out was announced.
While the workerless radio is broadcasting music and borrowed programs, the locked out Canadian Media Guild workers started CBC unplugged, an alternative broadcast through podcasting. Robert Paterson, who wrote many posts on the CBC predicts that
When the lockout is over CBC staffers will have embraced the new technology and will transform CBC into more of a community organization.
Or, in the interconnected web world, the CBC unplugged experience may change podcasting.
- Read Derek Miller’s comments here and here
- Flickr pictures of the CBC lock-out.