Hard lessons and hope at Harvard

The six weeks I spent Harvard this winter really opened my eyes. I was there to learn more about unions - history, labour law, and how collective action has advanced human rights - and how to be a better leader.

I certainly learned unions are in trouble. Membership is down and there is less and less public understanding about the good things unions do. In the US, people seem to believe that unions are responsible for the ongoing financial crisis. It's ludicrous and we have to fight that perception. Yes, it's worse in the States, but as we all know, every trend - good and bad - finds its way north. Our own government has frozen public service wages two years running, after all.

The headline is that we have to start fighting back. Here are some of the ideas we discussed at Harvard ... and CMG is in a good position to do make them real:

- work more closely with other unions
- get unorganized workers to join the union ... build our forces
- make sure our country's diversity is reflected in our ranks.

I picked up a library of books at Harvard on the struggles and successes of unions in North America. It'll take me three years to get through them all. I plan to do a review from time to time in this space.

The bottom line is, what kind of world do you want to live in?

New Prez in this space

I thought I should introduce myself ... the new President in this space. My name is Carmel Smyth and I was elected national president of the Canadian Media Guild last December. I was a long-time reporter in various cities across the country and am now a television producer at CBC in Toronto. For the next three years, my day job will be leading the union through these interesting times.

I'm a little late getting started on this blog because I spent the first six weeks of the year at Harvard's trade union program. It was an eye-opener, depressing and inspiring at the same time. More on that in later posts.

I'd love to hear from you ... your thoughts, ideas and questions about this turbulent industry, about how the union is working for you, and any topics you might have. Feel free to leave a comment, anonymous or not.

The Guild election, gender bias and a new generation

I had the tremendous opportunity of attending a conference this year called Stepping Up, Stepping Back about how unions must revitalize themselves and attract young workers – especially women.

The conference report makes no bones about it: unions are at a tipping point and risk losing relevance unless they become more reflective of the demographics of the workers they represent. And if unions don’t make changes, young women activists in particular will give up and invest their energies elsewhere.

The report says union structures are to blame – that they are shutting young women out of leadership. “Union political structures reward incumbents regardless of results,” it says.

One of the report’s recommendations is term limits, which I proposed at the 2010 CMG Convention. The motion was narrowly defeated though more than half the delegates were in favour (it needed 2/3 majority).

With these issues weighing on me, I decided to step down as president of the CMG and prompt a new generation of leaders to come forward.

But I’ve been saddened to learn that even in 2010, this election is turning out to be split down gender lines. And some older, mostly male leaders are actually telling people that some younger women candidates “just aren’t ready”. As far as I can tell, this sweeping statement is never applied to any of the male candidates.

They just aren’t ready? In this race, there are candidates with much more union experience than I could have imagined having when I became president twelve years ago. There are people with track records of actually solving problems, chairing tough committees and doing the really difficult work of unionizing new workplaces by signing workers up one-by-one. One (Carmel Smyth) is even the president of the CMG's biggest single unit (CBC Toronto, with more than 2000 members!!!).

I hope that if you hear that “they just aren’t ready” line – you ask precisely what it means. What has the other candidate done that makes them more “ready”? That’s the only way to get at the roots of this gender-biased slur.

Our skills and experience as media employees don’t necessarily prepare any of us to lead a union. Being ready means being ready to listen, to learn and to lead. You need the instinct to know what members want, the ability to make priorities happen, the smarts take on office and staff management functions, and the will to enlarge the network of people in leadership roles so you can avoid entrenching an insider clique.

This election is about members choosing who is most ready to truly represent them.

A reminder about how dangerous our work can be

Being a news camera operator is one of the most physically demanding, and as we've been sadly reminded today, dangerous jobs in our industry.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for City-tv cameraman Bill Atanasoff who was hit by a car as he was shooting a separate police investigation in Toronto late last night. He had pulled up to the scene where other journalists were newsgathering, crossed the street to start shooting and was hit by the car.

Atanasoff was thrown several metres by the impact, in full view of the other media and police. He is in hospital in critical condition with injuries to his neck, skull and legs.

Police say they don't know if Bill's camera obscured his vision of the street or the oncoming car.

We know camera operators are incredibly vulnerable to injury. They are often looking through eyepieces and rushing to get to a scene at the same time -- meaning their own vision is obstructed and balance jeopardized. We know alot of shooting goes on in busy areas often at night and in bad weather. We know alot of news gathering takes place in unruly crowds and angry confrontations. And we know people are working longer hours, travelling further and doing more.

So let's take a moment to think about what we do, remember to be careful in what is a stressful profession, and talk openly to one another when we think enough is enough.

Cutting his way to being "digital first"

Funny how the media doesn't report on how it's decimating itself.

Both CBC and CTV reported today on how 42 Ottawa Citizen staffers are taking the buyout offered by new Postmedia owner Paul Godfrey last month. The Citizen itself was strangely silent about it. Ever wonder why big general buyouts are the staff-cut method of choice? So there's no noise. No "L" word, as in layoffs. But the positions are still lost; the expertise gone and there's no added value to anyone.

Trouble is, this is only the tip of the iceberg at Postmedia. The numbers of positions being lost across the whole former Southam/Canwest (Montreal Gazette, Regina Leader-Post, Vancouver Sun and Province, Victoria Times Colonist and others) chain are at least triple that number of 42 and there are plans to centralize the business and advertising operations in a single city. If you read one of these papers, your local newspaper will be local in name only. Godfrey talks about being "hyper local" in news content but beware. Unless there's evidence of hiring people to do local news...those are just cute words. The strategy appears to be to cut an already lean newspaper empire to its very core, go public next summer and sell it all for profit.

Forget the demographic deficit. We have an information deficit.

Sign of hope for free TV in small-town Canada

Last Friday, when the CRTC approved the application by cable and satellite giant Shaw Communications to take over Canwest Global, it also took an important step to ensuring Canadians in smaller towns continue to have access to free, over-the-air TV after the switch to digital in 2011.

The CRTC told Shaw that, within the next five years, it must upgrade some 66 transmitters, mostly in the interior of BC, central and northern Ontario and Nova Scotia, serving smaller markets. It includes places like Sudbury ON, Kamloops and Kelowna BC, and Sydney NS that would have otherwise lost free TV signals after the transition. Previous owner Global had planned to shut down some of the existing analog transmitter in each of these 66 locations on August 31, 2011, and keep the others running only as long as they still worked.

The Guild has driven people crazy talking about the potential of free digital TV in smaller markets, using the ability of a single transmitter on a single frequency to send out up to six channels where an analog transmitter can only send out one. It's called digital multiplexing and, perhaps due to sheer repetition, or because the CRTC wants us to go away already, the Commission also said in the Shaw decision that it is "persuaded of the benefits of multiplexing with respect to the promotion of media diversity and access, and its potential to offset some of the negative impact resulting from media consolidation."

What multiplexing means concretely for the Sudburys, Kamloopses, Kelownas and Sydneys of the world is the potential for viewers to get more than just Global for free. Shaw has said it would consider multiplexing, and therefore sharing with other broadcasters, in some of these 66 locations. And perhaps what the CRTC is saying is that it would be good for media diversity if a new local TV service were launched in these places (perhaps a true community station?) that could piggy-back on the Shaw transmitter.

The ironies in this are delicious. First, that it's cable giant Shaw that is the first with a national TV network to commit to over-the-air TV in smaller communities in Canada. Way to go. Second that Shaw might well end up helping independent community TV. This may be a pay of patching things up with supporters of independent community TV after the scrap they had earlier this year over the country's community TV policy and where the $120 million in cable money that's supposed to be devoted to "local expression" is really being spent.

Over to you, mayors of smaller communities. You can bring several channels of free TV to your city. Any takers????

Meanwhile, there's a growing chorus of support for free, over-the-air TV, especially among those in major cities such as Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver and those who live along the US border who are already receiving the new high-quality digital signals for free. You can see the latest love letter to over-the-air TV here and an article about how to get free TV here.

Good news: Sun TV's straight talk takes a turn

Quebecor is retreating on its bid to force all Canadian cable subscribers to pay for its proposed Sun TV News ... aka Hard News, Straight Talk ... aka Fox News North.

This is a victory. The about-face comes after thousands of Canadians voiced their opposition through organizations such as OpenMedia.ca and Avaaz.org to what was perceived as a politically-connected corporation trying to get a special deal via the Conservative government. This appears to be a rare example of the public getting involved and forcing a shift in the broadcaster's plans.

The CRTC has been planning a hearing on the Sun TV News application (we'll soon see if that hearing goes ahead). The Guild made a written submission supporting the existence of the new channel, with conditions, and objecting to the request for the special treatment.

Among the conditions, we proposed that Quebecor commit to a base level of editorial staff for the new channel, based on concerns about Quebecor's recent commitment to news and journalism at its other outlets. The company has cut hundreds of newspaper jobs cut across the country in the last two years and yet says it will rely heavily on these print journalists to feed the all-news TV network. And then there's the way Quebecor values its newspaper operations in Quebec, where a lockout at the Journal de Montreal is now in month 20; a lockout at the Journal de Québec ended in 2008 after a year and a half.

The Guild also proposed that the CRTC hold a hearing on the definition of news programming. While news is clearly dear the CRTC - they set up that local program fund in 2008 to support it, and that's good - no definition of it exists in broadcast policy. That's dangerous when media owners such as Quebecor, with the Sun TV News application, and Corus, with the Local 1 application, cleary want to stretch the boundaries.