News about the Journal de Montréal is still trickling in, but more slowly than just a few days ago. If this conflict goes on as long as people expect it to, this daily digest could turn into a weekly or even monthly one.
The link of the day is to this story at Rue Frontenac, in which copy editors respond to Pierre-Karl Péladeau’s assertion that their jobs are redundant (because Journal writers always file perfect copy, I guess) by taking part of a story from a Journal manager and re-editing it, showing before and after versions with explanations of the changes.
It sounds similar in idea to this post at Readers Matter (my union’s blog), which points out a problem when you outsource copy editing to a company outside the province.
The rest
Journal managing editor George Kalogerakis (funny story: he hired me at the Gazette, but took off for a higher-paying job before I had my first shift) was on CBC Daybreak this week. The audio of the interview is here (in streaming RealAudio format, ugh)
Speaking of freelancers, Raymond Gravel writes his final column, in which he says he’s quitting under pressure, not because he wants to. He repeats the argument that the union is doing nothing for him. He says he’s upset that he has to take a side in a conflict that he has nothing to do with.
All this gave the union a kick in its step as it took to the street today to protest against Quebecor. The theme speficially was the we-take-all-your-rights contracts that Quebecor is making freelancers sign. (I can’t help but point out how self-serving it is to only worry about freelancers’ contracts now that you’re on the street.) Plenty of coverage of the pickets from:
There’s still lots of confusion over how much journalists at the Journal make in a year. The employer says the average is $88,000, while the union counters that the average salary is more like $50-$60,000 a year. (Editor Lyne Robitaille, feeling that her reputation is being threatened, took another page out of the Journal (PDF) to explain her position to readers again.) Richard Martineau rakes Richard Therrien over the coals for Therrien’s blind acceptance of the union’s figures, I guess as revenge for all the stuff Therrien has written about Martineau lately).
I don’t have access to the figures, but I’m willing to bet this is merely a difference in interpretation. The employer is using figures on T4 sheets, which represent the total money being paid to employees, including overtime and other monetary benefits. The union is probably using the base salary as set in the contract for its figure, which doesn’t include the perks and is therefore significantly lower. If you’re getting paid $88,000 for 30-hour weeks, that’s one thing; if it’s for 42-hour weeks because of all the overtime, that’s another.
Also of note (and nobody disputes this) is that the staff at the Journal is tilted toward the higher end of the scale because the average age is high and the average level of experience is also high.
In other news
Bernard Landry is going on Tout le monde en parle next Sunday night. No doubt he’ll be asked about that whole thing with him and his Journal column. Patrick Lagacé will also be there, a week after Richard Martineau (I’m assuming that’s a coincidence). Steve Proulx writes about how the guest list for that show is haphazard.
Le Soleil’s Jean-Simon Gagné writes an interesting piece (via ProjetJ) about how none of the columnists who left the Journal de Montréal cared when their articles were used in the Journal de Québec during its lockout. Only Lise Payette refused to write. Though I agree largely with the idea, I’d only add that these columnists write for the Journal de Montréal, which means they’re more directly tied to this conflict.
Martineau’s company is fading fast: Cardinal Jean-Claude Turcotte has apparently become the latest freelance columnist to quit the paper (once again, according to a Le Devoir paywall-blocked article).
Pierre Foglia (ladies, control yourselves) writes about the idea of crossing a picket line, and how doing what Richard Martineau does a few decades ago would have been looked down upon by society. He also takes Bernard Landry to task for his shifting ideals.
Quebecor, tired of the “misinformation” being put out by the union representing locked-out Journal de Montréal workers, has responded with a website of its own at www.lheurejuste.ca. It features management responses to union talking points, though nothing we haven’t heard in the media and in articles in the Journal over the past week.
It also has PDF copies of those two-page spreads from the employer repeatedly re-explaining its position (one of the links is broken – the rest are giant images rather than properly-created PDFs). And you can download copies of ads saying how great Quebecor Media is at creating jobs, complete with stock photos of happy employees.
Last night was the big night with Richard Martineau and union boss Raynald Leblanc on Tout le monde en parle. There are plenty of summaries, analyses and just plain ranting of what happened:
The best rundown comes from TV critic Richard Therrien, who criticizes Martineau for siding with the Journal against the union and for saying that the Journal and TVA have editorial freedom to criticize each other.
The most unintentionally funny one comes from Pour un monde à droite, a blog with pictures of Stephen Harper and Conservative Party logos all over the place. Naturally, they see the show as a huge win for Richard Martineau against the evil unions and Radio-Canada. It’s one of the few blog posts defending Martineau’s appearance on the show.
Matt Ouellett-Boucher’s blog is also worth reading. He writes a long piece about how Richard Martineau changed when he moved from Voir to the Journal, and how he’s become insufferable since.
Sadly, Radio-Canada still doesn’t put TLMEP online, so if you were busy watching the Super Bowl, you’re out of luck.
UPDATE: Therrien points out that TVA’s Le Banquier (which had Quebecor boss Pierre-Karl Péladeau on board in what I can only assume is a funny coincidence) had better ratings than TLMEP.
Premier Jean Charest says his government shouldn’t encourage the Journal and discourages his ministers from giving interviews, but he says they won’t kick the paper’s journalists out of press conferences.
Patrick Lagacé speaks of the Journal this morning, pointing out that many of the newly-hired managers look more like journalists than managers (I noticed that too), and that layout being done in Toronto is what’s keeping the Journal publishing – if they had to do that as well, their jobs would become a lot more difficult.
Blogger Ken Monteith writes an amusing anecdote (complete with Google-bombing links) about how he’s been trying to stop the Journal (a paper he never subscribed to) from delivering to his home. (Lagacé also says he got a Journal this morning, despite not being subscribed for a while.)
Today is Buy a Newspaper Day, which won’t help the workers at the Journal much.
His reason is about as stupid as you can imagine: He objects to the fact that the production of this scab paper is being done out of Toronto. That, it seems, goes against the whole Quebec-can-do-things-on-its-own idea, apparently moreso than the paper being filled with material produced by non-unionized journalists and translated copy from Sun Media … in Toronto.
Methinks he might have been looking for an excuse to weasel his way out of a decision that he has recently realized goes against just about everything the PQ stands for, especially after all the proddinginthe media.
Steve Proulx is running a pool to see who the next columnist to leave will be. I’ll put my non-money on Louise Deschâtelets.
Video
Proving that they have no problem with this whole Internet/video thing, journalists at Rue Frontenac produced their first journalistic video, a profile of boxer Antonin Decarie.
The video is a bit too reliant on still pictures, but it’s a good start. You’ll note the credits at the end: a photographer, a videographer and an editor are three separate people.
Quebecor’s paper in the Saguenay, Le Réveil, might also be facing a lockout. The situation is similar, with the employer demanding concessions from the union so drastic they have no choice but to refuse.
An anonymous crazy-leftist person says that the Journal journalists aren’t worthy of left-wing support, because they’re The Man. Which I guess means they support Quebecor? They do specify, though, that they support non-journalist union members who are locked out.
Most of the errors are fairly small (misspelling hockey players’ names), some are a bit more severe (getting a hockey player’s team wrong), and some are just grammatical nitpicking. What is clear, though, is that they spent a lot of time going through the paper in order to catalog and report on these flaws. I guess they have a lot of free time on their hands now.
One of their criticisms, of the use of the phrase “setting a new record” (as if one could set a record without it being new) made me smile because it’s something that I’ve done a few times in headlines and has been marked in red ink by fellow editors more than once.
The rest
Patrick Lagacé, who was impatient about Rue Frontenac launching, is now praising it.
Raymond Viger says the Journal, made up of mostly wire stories, has no soul.
Last week I got a consumer survey in the mail, inviting me to fill it out and win crazy prizes. I actually started filling it out until I noticed it was asking me information that went way beyond what I’m prepared to divulge.
I did notice it had a section on what newspaper you read. But something didn’t seem right.
Le Devoir looks at QMI, the wire service setup by Quebecor to allow its publications to share stories (in other words, have underpaid kids at 24 Heures scab for the Journal)
Michel Dumais says neither side of the conflict has come out on top in the public relations battle yet, and both are putting out an acceptable product.
Chrystian Guy says that the newspaper industry is in crisis and Quebecor has to do something about it. He adds some rapid-fire comments in another post, including the opinion that journalists should be well-paid but that “dead wood” overhead jobs (like accountants) should be eliminated. I’ll just quote him directly: “on devrait niveler les salaires par le haut, mais couper le bois mort ou mourrant”
In a half-hour panel discussion with Radio-Canada’s Christiane Charette on Wednesday, some of the most respected minds in Quebec media analysis discussed the lockout at the Journal de Montréal and the debate over whether freelance columnists like Richard Martineau, Stéphane Gendron and Joseph Facal should continue writing their columns.
One comment (there were a bunch of guys there and it’s hard to distinguish them by voice alone) was that unions and freelancers need to come together and not see each other as the enemy. One of the arguments Martineau and others use for continuing to write is that the union does nothing for them, they wouldn’t get strike pay nor would the union intervene if they were suddenly fired.
Now, Martineau is a world-class douchebag. He’s a product of the Quebecor Media empire, with a column in the Journal, a blog at Canoë and a show on LCN. He’s paid to be a blowhard and scream fake outrage at everything while being politically incorrect for its own sake. (This is a stark contrast to his work at Les Francs-Tireurs, which I actually like because there he asks people questions and listens to their answers.) He holds quite a bit of influence and wouldn’t be on the street if he stood with the locked-out journalists. He’s refusing to stop on principle, and to continue being a douchebag.
But he’s right. The union does nothing for him. It does nothing for any freelancer. And neither do most unions.
That needs to change.
Freelance isn’t free
Way back when, before my time, the idea of a freelance columnist was a rarity. Really, it seems like such a contradiction in terms: a columnist is relied upon to have a regular presence in a newspaper, whereas a freelancer is a one-time contributor who’s being given a few bucks for an article.
But freelancing has become such a useful tool for media companies: You can fire freelancers whenever you want, there’s an almost endless supply of them, they don’t take vacations, and they’ll sign just about any contract you put in front of their faces. When taking total cost into account, it’s much cheaper and more flexible to get a freelancer than a full-time or part-time employee.
And so we enter the age of the freelance columnist. Some are that way by choice, because they want the freedom to work for other organizations, or to syndicate their content. Some are former columnist-employees who have taken buyouts but decided to continue their columns under a different contractual relationship. And some are just people who have real day jobs in other industries and don’t want to become full-time journalists.
Along with these vedettes, though, are the freelancers who aren’t that way by choice. Those aspiring young journalists whose souls haven’t yet been crushed. The ones who sign overly abusive contracts, work for peanuts and beg for more. With such a compacted media landscape, and so few corporations in charge of so much media, they have no choice but to accept whatever abuse is thrown at them in order to realize their dream of being a journalist.
It sets minimum wage rates for specific types of original freelance work, and requires additional remuneration for additional use of the work
It provides certain minimum rights (copyright, moral rights) for freelance work
It includes a provision which spells out that related expenses are paid by the employer
It bans working “on spec”, in which work is done before it is sold, and provides for a minimum “kill fee”, for work that’s approved but then never used.
It bans employees working freelance gigs on the side and requires that such work be paid at overtime rates
Finally, it states that the freelancer is (for the limited purposes of the contract) a member of the union (the union even has a freelance chapter and a guide for freelancers), and must pay dues from the freelance pay.
The standardized contract is probably the most important part of this. The company can’t go around and start demanding more rights of powerless freelancers without first getting it approved by the more powerful union. It’s part of the reason why the Periodical Writers Association of Canada supported the union in the lockout.
And by protecting freelancers, the union makes it less attractive for employers to use them instead of salaried employees to save money. Instead, freelancers are used where they are supposed to: For occasional work that can’t be done by regular employees.
While regular employees aren’t exactly swimming in cash at the CBC, freelancers at least are not overly exploited (so-called “casuals” are another problem entirely, and that’s another post).
Wishful thinking
Of course, this is the worst time for media unions to start demanding sweeping new rights. A union in negotiation going to the employer and trying to set a standardized contract for freelancers would quickly get laughed out of the room. The time to create a common front between freelancers and employees was years or even decades ago, and it’s not coming back anytime soon.
And so Martineau is right. Sadly. He’s not turning the other cheek, and he’s siding with the employer in a dispute with the employees, making it easier to continue putting out the newspaper and try to break the union. He’s being a douchebag, but he has every right to be.
If the union had focused more on bringing freelancers into the fold and less on protecting their short work week and inflating their salaries, they might not be in this boat now.
Four and a half days after they were locked out of the Journal de Montréal (too much time for the impatient Patrick Lagacé), 253 unionized workers launched their competing news site, RueFrontenac.com at a press conference at 2pm Wednesday.
In a welcome message, Raynald Leblanc says the union was willing to negotiate about increasing the work week and moving toward multimedia. But they wouldn’t stand for the elimination of entire departments (the Journal wanted to outsource accounting) and the laying off of dozens of staff.
The site is based on Joomla, and definitely could use a bit of tweaking (Arial as a body typeface? Would it kill you to use serifs somewhere?), especially in the design of individual articles, but it’s a start.
Locked-out workers picket outside the Journal de Montréal on Tuesday
Le Soleil did the rounds of the provincial parties and found they’re not about to anger journalists in the Journal de Montréal labour dispute. The Parti Québécois and Québec solidaire are, as you might expect, solidly behind the union. The Liberals and ADQ are more on the fence, but aren’t going out of their way to grant interviews to scabs.
In other Journal news today:
Stéphane Gendron (remember him? He used to be a small-town mayor or something) says he’ll continue writing for the Journal. His excuse is that he’s not a journalist and he loves hearing himself think too much to cut off that avenue of communication. He also thinks the union is evil.
ProjetJ has a piece about media convergence and how this conflict is all about Quebecor wanting Journal writers to promote the activities of other groups in the Quebecor Media empire.
Le Devoir’s Paul Cauchon has an analysis of the situation, which he says could go on for a long time. He also mentions that Pierre Karl Péladeau got a 28% pay raise last year, so the economic crisis must not be hurting him too badly.
The Journal de Québec, who have totally been there, are trying to support their colleagues, though their options are limited because they can’t refuse to have their articles reprinted in the JdM.
Early Saturday morning, management at the Journal de Montréal locked out 253 of its employees, mere minutes after an agreement with the union not to launch a labour dispute had ended. The lockout apparently came during the night, late enough that workers would still contribute work to the paper, but early enough that management could sneak in a note to readers about the labour disruption.
Both sides, naturally, blame the other for failing to negotiate. In reality, both sides have held firm on their demands since the contract expired on Dec. 31, and a lockout has been all but inevitable when both sides left the table this week.
Journal management plan to continue publishing during the lockout. The union is also planning a publication called Rue Frontenac, which right now just has a video of employees who are on the picket lines.
Rue Frontenac
In what has become the norm for journalist labour disruptions ever since the Journal de Québec’s incredibly successful MédiaMatinQuébec, the union launchedRueFrontenac.com, a website which they will use to continue working as journalists. Unlike MMQ, there are no plans for a print version of the paper. Right now the website contains a video with black-and-white pictures of locked-out employees. They’ve also started a Facebook group.
The Journal’s side
In its press release announcing the lockout (conveniently available in English), the Journal says the Syndicat des travailleurs de l’information du Journal de Montréal “has left the company no choice.” It says the lockout is needed because of the “urgency of the situation and the need for far-reaching changes to the Journal de Montréal’s business model”.
The company suggests there were pressure tactics that were disrupting the functioning of the newspaper, which is the first time I’ve ever heard of such a thing. Naturally, they don’t hint at what those tactics might be.
In its analysis of the current economic situation facing newspapers, it stresses the need for the Journal to have more flexibility with online operations (the reason it doesn’t have a real website is because of restrictive clauses in its union contract) and the need for employees to become more efficient. This, of course, means they want to lay off a bunch of them:
“…as it will be impossible to maintain all jobs at the paper, we have already made a commitment to offer employees who will have to leave the Journal generous separation packages accompanied by relocation support.”
The press release closes on the fact that the Journal’s workers enjoy some of the best salaries and working conditions in the Canadian media industry. This is true, and a source for much jealousy among fellow journalists like myself. But as Patrick Lagacé points out, the Journal makes no mention of not being profitable (suggesting that it is still very profitable). Any cost savings from payroll would go straight toward that bottom line.
In a two-page letter to readers in Saturday’s paper, editor Lyne Robitaille says they want to increase, not decrease, the number of journalists working for the Journal. She also says the union’s suggestion that the paper made $50 million in profits in 2008 is false, though she refuses to provide budget figures to corroborate that statement.
The union’s side
The STIJM’s press release focuses on how this lockout will affect families, which probably won’t elicit as much sympathy as they think considering (a) their working conditions are disgustingly generous and (b) they’re getting very generous strike pay (76% for two years) because of the massive fund that’s been built up since the Journal first started 45 years ago.
They declare outright that anyone who does their work (24 Heures employees, Journal de Québec employees, or those of mysterious fly-by-night news agencies) are scabs, and they call on advertisers and readers to boycott the paper.
The union says it wants the Journal de Montréal to start a website, and all their contract demands is that management negotiate it with them (translation: the union has to approve any plan). They say they want a professional site, not a carbon-copy Canoe-branded dumping ground for articles and photos (like what they’ve done with the Journal de Québec).
The issues
Most of the points of dispute are the result of management demands for changes to the existing contract that the union has refused to consider. They include:
Increasing the work week from 30 hours (4 days) to 37.5 hours (5 days), with no extra pay
Laying off 75 employees
25% pay cut for classified employees
20% reduction in benefits for all
Clauses that would give new hires fewer rights than existing employees
Flexibility to reassign workers to do multimedia work for the website
How this will end
This conflict could easily last for years. The Journal has plenty of sources from which it can draw “content”: The Journal de Québec (ironically), 24 Heures (where they just hired a bunch of people), Canoë, the Sun Media chain, and perhaps even TVA and LCN.
Meanwhile, the union has a vast strike fund, as this is the first labour disruption to hit the paper since its launch 45 years ago (part of the reason for that is management concession to union demands, which is why their contracts are so generous).
The Journal de Québec lockout lasted 15 months before an agreement was reached. And the two sides there were closer together than they are in Montreal.
Long labour conflicts tend to end when the union’s finances have run out, employees are demoralized, and exhausted management throw them a bone with a sweetened offer. Both sides make concessions, but the union side will make more.
Expect an end similar to what happened at the Journal de Québec. The union will agree to a longer work week, though at a salary cut much less than what Quebecor is demanding. Multimedia flexibility will be granted and the Journal will finally launch a website (though it will be of poor quality like the JdQ’s). And the Journal will gain the right to make layoffs, but with enhanced severage packages. These are all just gut feelings of mine, so take these predictions with a grain of salt.
Hear ye hear ye
One thing that might shorten this time period is the courts. A huge decision was handed down last month that decreed much of the work used for the Journal de Québec was scab labour. Though Quebecor is appealing that ruling, it severely restricts their options, No mysterious come-from-nowhere press agencies can be used to fill space, and reporters from other Quebecor-owned media can’t be assigned to do work for the primary benefit of the Journal.
There will almost certainly be disputes in court over this. If the STIJM can knock down enough of the Journal’s options, it may force them to stop publication and move fast on a new offer. If the STIJM loses enough cases (which is unlikely in a province with such strong pro-union values), their situation could become hopeless and they’d be made more willing to concede important points.
One thing is for sure, this won’t be solved over the weekend. So go ahead and cancel your subscriptions.
How this affects The Gazette
My coworkers are obviously paying a lot of attention to this development, both out of general curiosity and because we are set to vote on a management proposal for a new contract on Sunday. Hints of an impending lockout are spreading via rumour, but there’s no way to tell if this is a serious threat or not until after the vote.
The union executive is strongly encouraging employees to vote against the contract offer, as it affords little protection against the outsourcing of jobs to nonunionized Canwest employees.
Le Devoir this morning reports that concilitation talks at the Journal de Montréal (fun fact: next door to conciliation talks for The Gazette) have broken down and a lockout is now imminent. An agreement to keep labour peace expires on Friday, so employees could be out the door as early as this weekend.
The report breaks a media blackout imposed on both parties by the conciliator, so neither side can confirm whether this is true.
The gulf between both sides is huge. Quebecor is demanding just about every point in the contract be changed in its favour, a total of 233 points of dispute. The union is fighting this, arguing that even in this economic climate the newspaper is raking in millions of dollars in profit.
(UPDATE: News hit Twitter today that the lockout had already begun at the Journal, which would have totally showed how Twitter has scooped the mainstream media, if only it was true. Steve Proulx sets the record straight, and adds that the Journal has not changed its bargaining position at all)
