Catherine Handfield looks at which freelance columnists will bolt and which will stay on if there’s a labour dispute at the Journal de Montréal. Jacques Demers and Martin Brodeur (who obviously don’t need the money) would be out.
No word on Richard Martineau.
Steve Proulx places odds on those who haven’t declared, and discoveres Chroniques Blondes’ Geneviève Lefebvre also refuses to scab.
Quebecor, meanwhile, accuses the union of intimidating freelancers.
Despite yesterday’s decision that said many of the people who stepped in at the Journal de Québec were scabs, the union representing workers at the Journal de Montréal held a news conference and issued a press release this morning saying that they expect to be locked out within days of their contract expiring on Dec. 31. They’re calling for a conciliator to step in and get negotiations started again.
UPDATE: The government has appointed Pierre-Marc Bédard as conciliator.
Patrick Lagacé has some comments, and Steve Proulx also has some thoughts, including the fact that the Quebecor-owned free daily 24 Heures has practically doubled its staff recently.
This comes as negotiations at The Gazette are set to resume in January, and an arbitration hearing about outsourcing of editorial work is set to be heard in February. The prospect of two of Montreal’s four major daily newspapers being crippled by labour disruption is very real.
Oh, and Sun Media (which owns the Journal) just announced they’re cutting 600 jobs.
You know, part of me imagines that everyone reads the Journal de Montréal like this.
Or 24 Heures like this.
There are, amazingly, hundreds more where these came from.
Proving once again that Canadiens fans will buy anything, the Gazette and the Journal de Montréal got involved in this scheme marketing idea whereby Couche-Tard would sell medallions for each player and would need a corresponding coupon from the newspaper to get it (actually, requiring the purchase of a newspaper to get such a thing creates legal implications, so you can bypass the newspapers altogether, but they hope you won’t notice that).
Unfortunately,the people involved didn’t realize how truly gullible Canadiens fans really are, and the medallions sold out in record time. Reports of people getting up at 4am every day and still not having any luck. Those who are lucky enough to get them are now selling them on eBay for $20 a pop, a 669% profit on the original $2.99 purchase price.
The two papers are falling over themselves apologizing for the shortfall and have ordered new ones, but they will only come in December. Suckers readers are being asked to hold on to their coupons until then.
Perhaps they’ll use that extra time to rethink spending $72 on glorified Pogs.
…
I’m sorry, I’m being told this scheme is keeping me employed. Please disregard all of the above.
Steve Proulx has the scoop on the employer’s demands for the Journal de Montréal union, whose contract expires Dec. 31.
Some are debatable points that the Journal de Québec union eventually conceded, like bringing the work week to a more reasonable 37.5 hours per week (5 days) instead of the spoiled-rotten 32 (4 days), or having people work in multiple media and being able to reuse content online.
Others go against the entire point of having a union, like having carte blanche to subcontract and outsource work.
And then there’s the 20% salary reduction. Ouch.
Needless to say, the union has rejected all of these demands.
UPDATE: Lagacé has more insight, and Michel Dumais has some inside perspective from La Presse.
I’ve been a bit quiet about contract negotiations at the Gazette since the strike vote, and that’s mainly because there’s nothing to report. Both sides were in talks Thursday and will return to the table Friday. People are optimistic, but the work-to-rule campaign and byline strike continue, and the guild has suggested employees bring personal effects home.
The Montreal Newspaper Guild website has the latest update, which also points out that talks for the 37 employees in the (non-classified) advertising department have broken off.
UPDATE (Oct. 10): No strike is being called for the foreseeable future. Friday’s talks had progress, though jurisdiction remains a roadblock. Conciliation talks are set for Oct. 20 and 21, and the guild says that “additional measures” are necessary to show that the union is “serious” about its demands.
Meanwhile, management is apparently preparing for the worst, with Canwest News Service making inquiries of Concordia University journalism students (and Gazette freelancers) who might want to work freelance for them in the event of a strike. Because they’d be working for Canwest and not The Gazette (even though Canwest owns The Gazette), they would not be breaking Quebec’s tough anti-scab laws, even if what they write is of local interest and would only appear in The Gazette.
Concordia’s journalism department director, Mike Gasher, has sent a letter to students cautioning them against working as freelance scabs, Macleans reports.
UPDATE: CBC has picked up the story (with requisite “CBC has learned” which implies they didn’t just read it from Macleans’ blog), and J-Source has picked it up from CBC. The CBC story includes a denial from Canwest News Service’s editor-in-chief that the inquiry has anything to do with a possible Gazette strike.
Thanks mostly to the CBC, other blogs are also picking up the story.
UPDATE (Oct. 14): La Presse also writes about the story, this time including a new explanation from Canwest: that the freelance copy would be needed in the event of a Gazette strike in order to provide material for Canwest News Service and other newspapers across Canada, to compensate from the loss of Gazette copy (Canwest has no non-Gazette journalists in Montreal). Of course, as a subscriber to Canwest News Service, The Gazette would have access to this copy as well.
As if that weren’t enough, workers at the Journal de Montréal are also at the bargaining table for a new contract, mere months after their sister union at the Journal de Québec accepted a new contract that removes their four-day work week and requires journalists to perform multiple multimedia jobs.
Updates are on the Journal du Journal website. So far nothing too serious is coming out, besides low-level pressure tactics like wearing yellow lanyards.
Still, management at La Presse are no doubt creaming their pants multiple times over at the thought of their two main competitors both being crippled by work disruption simultaneously.
Just figured I’d throw this in there: the Writers Guild of America is telling members not to work for Freemantle Media, which produces a new Ozzy Osbourne “reality” show, because they couldn’t reach a deal that would involve paying writers less in order to write less (because it’s “reality” and therefore “half-scripted”).
Catch pedophiles. Tailgate the transport minister. Discover the evils of being hired as an anglophone. Follow ceremonial appointments and complain about how they’re so ceremonial.
Those are among the selling points, apparently, of being hired as a reporter for the Journal de Montréal. And if such … let’s call it “journalism” … appeals to you (and you write well in French), you’re in luck: Montreal’s biggest newspaper is hiring.
Check your dignity at the door and send an application to Gazette turncoat traitor managing editor George Kalogerakis.
UPDATE: I see I’m not the only one to notice this.
The Journal de Montréal has stopped a practice of demanding that its employees sign draconian rights waivers when doing additional freelance work, which require the waiver of moral rights, among others.
Whether an author can waive moral rights in the first place is a legal debate that hasn’t happened yet, but this is a good sign. Hopefully other media will follow and be a bit more fair in their freelance contracts.
Public security minister Jacques Dupuis has been seen on the television quite a bit, but for some reason the Journal de Montréal hasn’t been able to secure an interview. Rather than accepting that newspapers simply aren’t as cool as television, the Journal is whining about it, and has published a list of questions for the minister about Sunday’s riot and the relationship between police and citizens.
The questions are pretty standard reporter questions, but as a fellow journalist pointed out to me, and as I now ask the Journal:
Doesn’t publishing a list of questions in advance of an interview go against most newspapers’ journalistic policy?
Quebec is tolerant. Crack Journal de Montréal undercover investigative reporter Noée Murchison found that out by not being assaulted at St. Jean Baptiste in a red t-shirt with a maple leaf on it, speaking English like a tourist.
You’ll remember Noée from previous hard-hitting exposés like how bus drivers don’t check transfers and how anglos can get jobs too during a busy shopping season.
Incidentally, if you’re doing undercover reporting for the biggest-distribution newspaper in the province, is it such a good idea to always have your picture in the paper? Aren’t people going to catch on eventually?
There seems to be no end in sight for the Journal de Québec labour conflict which began in April 2007. As much as local unions are standing behind the workers and their MédiaMatinQuébec newspaper, those funds aren’t infinite. At some point, MMQ or the Journal are going to fold for good. Maybe both.
Meanwhile, Canadian Press has an overview of the difficulties getting Quebec Sun Media employees (basically now the Journal de Montréal) to “adapt” to the Internet. It casts the issue as if it’s the union being resistant to change, which I imagine is not how they see it.
Well, not exactly. The Journal’s union has a website. Hot off the success of union websites from such outlets ad the Journal de Québec, TQS and The Gazette, workers at the Journal de Montréal concerned about the possibility of a lockout have started their own website called Journal du Journal (cute).
Well, actually the archives suggest the site’s been up for more than a year, but it’s the first I’ve seen of it (which is its first problem), so let’s pretend it’s new.
Accomplished Asian columnist Franco Nuovo has left the Journal de Montréal, because he’s gotten bored with trying to give his opinion on things (probably why he doesn’t like blogging). Instead, he’ll focus on radio, which apparently doesn’t involve any of that.
He stresses he’s leaving the paper on good terms.
The Journal’s Noée Murchison is really stretching for “investigative” stories. In her latest EXCLUSIVE SCANDAL REPORT, she determines that bus drivers don’t always check transfers, and that metro ticket-takers will stand by while people take multiple transfers from the dispenser.
And while I’m here, why does she insist on referring to herself in the third person? Does she think that makes her sound more serious?
(via mtlweblog)
Also: Way to go LCN, way to show your editorial independence by re-reporting a non-story.
The Journal de Montréal’s Benoît Aubin took a shot at my dear Gazette last week for its big feature taste test between Hamilton and Montreal bagels. (Via Steve Proulx)
The Gazette, you’ll recall, had taken the Journal to task for its “exposé” on businesses that dare to hire anglophones, calling it bad journalism. (I still think the fast food thing was worse.)
Needless to say, the dual-blind taste tests (which involved flying bagels from one city to the other to maintain freshness) ended in Montreal’s favour, and the city is now 3-0 in Gazette bagel taste tests. Hamilton is licking its wounds, or at least it will be once its Chamber of Commerce CEO realizes that coming in second in a two-man race isn’t “like getting the silver medal in the Olympics.”
Of course, I might point out that this had nothing to do with taste and everything to do with naming. But trademark lawyer battles aren’t as interesting as blind taste tests I guess.
So now you can sleep tight, confident in the fact that the best place to get a Montreal-style bagel is Montreal.
Now what about this “Montreal-style” steak spice mix?
Oh, and if you’re captivated by pointless newspaper gimmicks like I am, be sure to check out the most boring video ever made, featuring the Hamilton Spectator’s taste test and some bad pronunciations of “assuage” and “St. Viateur”.