TVO workers walk off job in station’s first-ever strike

Some unionized workers at TVO walked off the job on Monday morning, marking the first strike in the publicly-funded television network’s long history.

The Canadian Media Guild (CMG), which represents the employees, announced the strike effective as of 10:30 a.m.

The affected workers — dozens of journalists, producers and education employees — are currently picketing outside of the station at 2180 Yonge St. in Toronto.

Some employees at the broadcaster are represented by Unifor and are not part of the current bargaining process.

“We are deeply saddened to have not been able to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with our employer,” CMG said in a brief statement.

CMG-TVO branch president, Meredith Martin, spoke to CityNews from the picket lines Monday saying the current wage offer of 2.75, 2.5, 1.75 and 1.75 per cent over four years is unacceptable in light of current inflation.

“We’ve been dealing with below-inflation wage increases for over a decade,” she said. “They would like us, after 10 years of taking below-inflation wage increases, to take more below inflation wage increases.”

Martin said the combination of wage and funding issues means employees are “constantly being asked to do more with less, do more with less, do more with less.”

“Eventually the organization will collapse and that’s where we are at right now,” she said behind a chorus of chants from picketers. “It is not functioning well.”

Mitch Patten, VP of Corporate and Community Affairs for TVO, countered, saying “government financial support for TVO has never been stronger than it has been in the past three years.”

The Education Ministry has previously told CityNews that while it provides funding, it isn’t involved in the negotiations.

Without getting into specific numbers, Patten said he was hopeful the wage issues could be resolved.

“I will say that we are committed to reaching a fair agreement on wages, one that respects both the professional work that our CMG team does and our duty to be responsible with the public and donor dollars that we manage.”

“Our CMG team are professionals, they are among the best in the business. We want them to have — and believe they do have — a full package that includes compensation, benefits and job security that is among the best in the business.”

Martin, however, says TVO is trying to keep employees in the education department on a contract basis, rather than offering them full-time jobs after two years of service.

Patten contends the company is merely seeking “flexibility” to extend some contracts.

“We are looking for support from CMG to grow through what is a really common practice of using contract staff for new and developing initiatives, with the hope that once the value and viability of the project that they are working on is established, and there’s a decision to make it permanent, a number of contract staff can be offered permanent positions.

“And we are seeking the flexibility to do this without having an arbitrary deadline that currently exists in the collective agreement, after which an employment contract must be terminated or made permanent. Sometimes these arbitrary deadlines can result in contracts ending when we would have actually preferred to continue them.”

Patten said the company added 20 new permanent full-time CMG team positions in the past year, which he calls “a clear demonstration of our intentions in this regard.”

During the strike, Martin says new, original programming will be affected. She adds that the union has reached out to freelancers to ask them not to fill in during the stoppage.

Patten said the company will look to minimize the disruptions to viewers.

“It’s true there will be no new episodes of The Agenda and some current affair content will cancelled and pushed back, that is true, in its place we will run documentaries or segments of The Agenda that have continued relevance.

Patten says online content will continue to be created and several departments, including documentaries and TVOKids, will remain unaffected by the labour dispute.

“We think the issues are absolutely resolvable and we are happy and anxious at any time to sit down,” he concluded.

Last February, unionized employees voted unanimously in favour of strike action if negotiations failed to address job security and pay wage issues.

Their collective agreement expired in October 2022.

Ford more invisible than Polkaroo: Fraser

TVO employees and supporters rallied on Friday ahead of the work stoppage.

Interim Liberal leader, John Fraser, was among those on hand supporting the workers. He called TVO “a public good.”

“It’s about education, it’s about making sure political news in this province can be disseminated. What they simply want is some security. That’s what people need. And if you want to have a good strong TVO you have to bargain fairly.”

Fraser suggested that TVO is not a priority to Premier Doug Ford.

“I don’t think this is important to the premier,” he said. “I don’t think the premier understands how important TVO is, the history of TVO in this province.

“The premier is actually more invisible than Polkaroo on this,” he added, referring to the elusive Polka Dot Door character.

With files from The Canadian Press