October 7, 2008 News

Taking Montreal out of The Gazette

Gazette staff won't own up to work until CanWest owns up to them

by Terrine FridayArndell Leblanc

Employees of The Gazette are stepping up their game in a bid to demand a fair contract and keep a tighter grip on their own work.

The Montreal Newspaper Guild, a union that represents editorial and Reader, Sales and Service staff of The Gazette, will resume talks this Thursday to negociate a new contract with media giant CanWest Global, which expired in June.

Guild vice-president Irwin Block says union employees currently have rights over their own content, but CanWest wants to outsource “in order to continue to have more pages laid out and handled and processed by a non-union shop in Hamilton, Ontario.”

Block said CanWest is “taking the Montreal out of the Montreal Gazette,” by centralizing production.

As a sign of protest, guild employees at The Gazette have already removed their bylines from their work. As stipulated in their contract, employees are only allowed to remove their names if they disagree with the article's content. This is how the Guild employees are showing their disagreement with CanWest as a whole—by not owning up to any of their work.

One editorial employee says he doesn't appreciate CanWest's treatment and wants to see other CanWest dailies across the nation hop on the bandwagon.

“They only like us for our content,” the employee, who requested his name not be used for reasons of job security, said. “[CanWest] doesn't like their journalists.”

Guild employees are currently on a work-to-rule schedule, arriving exactly on time, taking exactly one-hour-long breaks and leaving right on time, only doing overtime when they are asked by their editors.

English-language media coverage in Montreal about the Gazette contract dispute has been next to non-existent—the Montreal daily has no direct competition.

A guild spokesperson is slated to be named Oct. 7.