Days after a lockout ended with 80% of employees getting severance and only three journalists remaining, those three journalists have said they’d rather quit than return to work at the paper, according to Radio-Canada.
Which begs the question: Why did they approve the contract? Just to get the severance?
Le Réveil, the other Quebecor paper whose workers were locked out early last year, has ended its labour conflict after its workers voted today to accept the employer’s final offer.
Quebecor put a final offer on the table on Thursday, adding that if the workers refused, the paper would be shut down at the end of the month. (Coverage from Radio-Canada, Rue Frontenac, Projet J.) The final offer would result in the layoff of 20 of the paper’s 25 unionized employees, leaving only three journalists and two office workers. The rest would get severance of two weeks’ salary for every year of service, up to a maximum 42 weeks (14 of the 20 will max out, the rest will receive less).
The union voted 68% in favour of the offer.
UPDATE: After-the-fact coverage from Journal de Québec, Argent, Le Quotidien
A similar deal was reached last week at Le Plein Jour in Baie-Comeau.
You know how the Journal always has little boxes pointing you to Canoe.ca? For Richard Martineau’s blog, or photo galleries, forums, or various other Quebecor cross-platform stuff? A grievance from the union that dates from before the lockout (in fact, dates so far back it mentions Canoe blogs from Patrick Lagacé and Dominic Arpin that no longer exist) has finally been decided on. The ruling from arbitrator Diane Sabourin (PDF) says that these promos in editorial space were promotional material, which violates the collective agreement’s clauses preventing the mixing of advertising and editorial content.
This case is actually somewhat complicated because of the Journal’s union contract. The contract prevents the Journal from setting up a website without union approval, so instead Journal stories have been published on canoe.ca. The Journal has been pushing the limits of this ability by pointing to columnists’ blogs and other material on Canoe. Here, it was determined that the employer crossed the line. Either the contract will have to be changed or such promotions will have to be done in advertising space.
The union, of course, is celebrating.
Rue Frontenac’s Jean-Philippe Pineault has been “invited” on a trip to Switzerland sponsored by the Swiss tourism bureau. Apparently there are no ethical issues involved here.
Christian Vanasse’s take on PKP during what was otherwise a fairly uninteresting AJIQ awards ceremony.
Journal retro from 1994 thanks to ladyjaye27
The STIJM, the union representing Journal de Montréal workers, was busy this week. First they crashed a lecture given by freelance columnist Joseph Facal, accusing the former PQ minister of being a scab in no uncertain terms (especially because he’s now writing two columns a week instead of one). Shockingly, Rue Frontenac was there, admitting that students were not amused, but mitigating that by saying some were on Facebook or browsing other uneducational websites.
Then on Wednesday, they were protesting outside the home of Quebecor CEO Pierre-Karl Péladeau, planting crosses to represent the careers of people PKP wants to fire. Once again, Rue Frontenac was there.
And at don’t-forget-the-Saguenay, Quebecor says that coverage of the lockout at Le Réveil is biased against the company, with articles about the union encouraging boycotts of the paper. The company is even threatening to pull investments from the region if it feels it’s unwelcome.
NDP leader Jack Layton roared into town on Wednesday and stole the show for this week. In a meeting with locked-out Journal de Montréal workers, he lent his support, denounced the use of scabs and said he’s written to the prime minister asking that federal advertising be pulled from the paper until its union conflict is resolved.
Seeing an opportunity to get his name in the media again, Denis Coderre also wanted to make sure we know that the Liberals support the workers.
In the wouldn’t-have-been-printed-in-the-Journal category:
The STIJM makes a case for the support of freelance journalists with the Association des journalistes indépendants du Québec. Though it admits that fighting for freelancers isn’t its primary mission, it says it tried to get some union protection for freelancers at the Journal and has opposed onerous contracts that demand excessive rights waivers.
Youssef Shoufan, the guy behind this video about Journal de Montréal workers, has suggested through his blog and a Facebook group that Montrealers boycott Quebecor’s 24 Heures free newspaper in protest of its alleged bias in favour of Quebecor companies like TVA and Videotron.
It’s very unlikely such a move is going to make any difference, for the simple reason that people who care about the state of the news industry don’t read the free papers, and the vast majority who don’t care about media convergence won’t give this a second thought and will go on reading the newspapers boycott or no. You can’t threaten to cancel your subscription to 24 Heures.
Meanwhile, at the Journal, there’s little going on. Le Devoir had a piece from Paul Cauchon on Monday summarizing the stalemate, and focusing on all the anti-Quebecor articles that have appeared on RueFrontenac.com now that journalists have the freedom to say what they really think about their corporate overlords.
And at the little brother Le Réveil, which was also locked out by Quebecor, advertisers are pulling out of the publication in solidarity with workers (so says the no-agenda-here RueFrontenac). Saguenay’s mayor is under pressure to pull the city’s $130,000 worth of advertising from the free paper.
I’m starting to like this overly-enunciative fellow. (The original, for those missing context)
Two days after its union unanimously rejected a contract offer that would have meant massive layoffs and outsourcing of layout and administrative jobs to Montreal, Quebecor locked out employees of Jonquière weekly Le Réveil this morning, putting them in the same boat as their colleagues at the Journal de Montréal (though with considerably less news coverage). Counting employees of the paper’s printing plant who were laid off when the plant was closed recently, the union says Quebecor wants to reduce the number of unionized employees from 80 to only five.
The union, naturally, is outraged and sees this as part of a trend of lockouts and union-busting that also involved the Journal de Québec and Journal de Montréal.
I haven’t seen anything from Quebecor yet explaining their reasons (though they’ll probably sound familiar). The latest issue of the paper is from Sunday, and contains plenty of ads for Quebecor, including one with its financial statements:
Notice something missing?
Funny enough, that ad lists Quebecor Media’s assets, including four Montreal-based newspapers, but neglects to mention Le Réveil, the very paper this ad appears in.