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CBC North back to work on Tuesday

Regular programming back to normal by week’s end

JIM BELL

Inuktitut news and current affairs will return to the eastern Arctic this coming Tuesday, if, as expected, CBC’s unionized workers vote yes this weekend to a new wage-benefit deal.

This agreement, struck early Monday morning, ends an eight-week lockout that CBC executives imposed on its unionized workers in an attempt to gain bargaining concessions from the Canadian Media Guild, which represents about 5,500 CBC workers.

Jason MacDonald, a CBC spokesperson, said that under a return-to-work deal reached this past Tuesday, technical workers will likely go back first to set up equipment and IT systems that have been offline during the lockout.

MacDonald said CBC management is well aware of the lockout’s impact on northern and rural regions of the country, such as Nunavut.

Pat Nagle, the area manager for CBC’s eastern Arctic operations, said CBC radio’s northern service will start returning to their normal duties on Tuesday, when hosts for various daily shows go back to work.

But he said it may take “a couple of days” for full-blown regular programming to resume.

Nagle, who has been keeping a signal on the air with the help of only two other management employees, said he’ll be glad to see the rest of his staff go back to work.

About 35 CBC employees in Nunavut and Nunavik have been out of work since Aug. 15, causing virtually all locally-produced Inuktitut and English broadcasts from CBC outlets in Iqaluit, Kuujjuaq, Rankin Inlet and Cambridge Bay to vanish from the airwaves.

Under their new contract, they’ll get a $1,000 signing bonus and a 12.6 per cent wage increase to be phased in between now and 2009. Although most employees won’t go back to work until Oct. 11, they’ll start receiving regular pay as of Oct. 7 under the terms of their back-to-work agreement.

Northern CBC employees who work in more than one language will get an “interpreter’s premium” worth $800 a year.

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