[Swprograms] Noah Richler in the Globe & Mail: "Burst That Union Bubble"

[Richard Cuff <rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx>]

In yesterday's Globe & Mail, someone who has been a noteworthy
"contract worker" for CBC Radio faults the CBC's union *and*
management for the current lockout, and cites the BBC as an example of
an organization who has transformed its programming strategy.

I find his singling out of Ideas" as noteworthy -- it's one of my CBC favorites.

Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA

---

COMMENTARY

Burst that union bubble

The CBC can only maintain its creativity by letting in more outside
talents, says contract producer NOAH RICHLER

 By NOAH RICHLER

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Outside the CBC office I occupied for a year, down the corridor from
the typically silent offices of radio management, was a Canadian Media
Guild bulletin board -- a symptom of CBC's labour relations so utterly
bereft of trust. One of its notices read: CLAIM ALL YOUR OVERTIME. IF
YOU DO NOT YOU ARE CHEATING YOUR FAMILY. It might have read: IF YOU DO
NOT, YOU ARE MAKING IT POSSIBLE FOR OTHER PEOPLE TO WORK HERE. The
union did not represent me -- I was a freelance contract worker -- but
took dues from all my paycheques, nonetheless. I was told there was no
way around it. I was paying the CMG for permission to work.

The current labour dispute comes at a critical time for public
broadcasting. The issue of whether or not contract workers can be
hired is the crux of the Canadian Media Guild's standoff with CBC
management, and the outcome will determine whether or not Canada ends
up with a thriving network -- or one that peters out on its way to
obscurity.

A word about credentials. I was a producer and presenter of features
and documentaries for BBC Radio for 14 years. I worked on two major
projects for CBC Radio that took the better part of the past three
years. During all my time in public radio, I have been employed on
contracts. I am one of the workers that the CMG does not want. I am
one of those it says is a threat to program quality.

It is possible to be dedicated to public service, as I am, but against
the union's position. The CMG's argument that quality depends on
full-time jobs is being made in bad faith by a union that has one
goal, and that is to defend the already guaranteed jobs of its members
against the possibility of creative competition. This just will not do
in an age in which the rapid evolution of technology, and of public
capability, means that a bright 12-year-old is quite able to produce a
program of broadcast quality.

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The battle over the employment of producers on short-term contracts is
one that the BBC won more than a decade ago. The BBC knew that the
only way for it to flourish, more than just survive, was to open
itself up to a competition of ideas. It needed to create a nimble and
reactive organization out of one that had previously been an extended
Oxbridge campus. It deliberately acted to create an independent radio
sector in an industry where previously there had been none. The BBC
remains committed to a core of full-time staff, but purchases a
sizable quota of programs from independents. The process helps reflect
the nation -- and keeps in-house producers on their toes.

No such competition -- no such vitality -- exists at CBC Radio.

A lot of this is the fault of a stultifying, overly regulating
management style, as the currently unfettered broadcasts of various
CBC workers "unlocked," is proving. The CBC's program-makers are a
talented bunch, and they would have freer rein, were there not so many
bosses. The irony, however, is that the CBC's ludicrously overpadded
management is the direct result of the corporation having no place but
in these jobs to put the redundant workers it cannot shed.

CBC Radio is a much loved but very sick patient. Evening programming
is a mess. Radio Two needs fixing. Radio One is increasingly the
province of DJs. Huge swaths of the schedule are handed over to single
shows and repeats. The CBC Broadcast Centre, awash with studios, is
virtually empty in the evenings, on weekends, and during the summer.

Any sensible business manager would be livid.

The beauty is that it can be fixed. However, both parties must
recognize that the CBC's first obligation is not to its employees, but
to the Canadian public. It is there to offer Canadians the diversity
and quality they deserve. The CBC's place is not to be the ground of
coddled workers who regard themselves as entitled to benefits that it
is really the job of government to guarantee. It is also a form of
arrogant foolishness for the small pool of people permanently employed
by the CBC to believe that they are the only ones capable of coming up
with good programs.

In this, the flagship program Ideas is instructive. Ideas depends more
than almost any other CBC radio program does on freelance provision,
as it also does on its nucleus of committed, seasoned producers and
its engineer. Consequently it has a variety of tone and treatment that
other programs lack. What is true at Ideas should be the case with
radio as a whole.

The CBC has the opportunity to reconfigure, just as the BBC did --
reforming and expanding at the very time when Margaret Thatcher's
reigning Conservatives hated it. But for the CBC to do so, each side
must co-operate -- and give something up. Management must go to the
CMG and promise to cut its own numbers (by half would be a good
start), thereby freeing money for programs. It should offer, as a
matter of course, to divulge exactly what part of its budget is
allocated to program-making, and commit itself to improving this
figure as much as possible year by year.

The CMG, already promised job security for its current employees,
should work with management to encourage an independent radio
production sector. God forbid, it might even begin to represent
contract workers -- as opposed to exacting their dues and then
silencing them. Noah Richler's 10-part radio documentary series, A
Literary Atlas of Canada, will be published as a book in 2006.

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