Gazette labour dispute affects us all

The contract dispute at The Gazette pitting editorial and reader sales and service employees against the paper’s management affects us all. Our community depends on our only English daily for news and commentary on the issues that affect us. Contract talks, however, have reached a stalemate. The main obstacle is the outsourcing of work that local employees have always performed. Canwest Global Inc., the newspaper’s owners, faced with the need to pay the interest on their $3.6 billion debt, want to maintain revenue, and they see centralization as a possible answer.

Last spring, The Gazette transferred much of its reader sales work to a Canwest call centre in Winnipeg. According to customers who have used its services, it is a work in progress.

The paper, without consulting its union, has started the same process in its editorial department by outsourcing over 100 pages a week for pagination, as well as such editorial work as headline writing and picture processing, to a Canwest-owned non-union shop in Hamilton, Ont.

Union fears that the paper will outsource more editing – and even reporting – were exacerbated by a January interview with Bernard Asselin, vice-president marketing and reader sales, by CBC Daybreak’s Mike Finnerty. Asked which jobs Canwest wants to ship outside Quebec, Asselin first said: “It’s not someone from outside the province going to city hall to cover Mayor Tremblay’s press conference.”

Finnerty: That’s not going to happen?

Asselin: Well, not at this point.

Finnerty: Not at this point, or not ever?

Asselin: Not at this point. But you know what? The business model is broken right now in the newspaper industry. We need to look at all the options and be flexible.

The fear is that decisions on the content of our local newspaper will be determined by people who do not reflect our unique anglo-Quebec culture.

We urge readers to express their views to Gazette management.