Take a contract out on them

Tough -- but true -- talk (pdf) in the latest newsletter from the Canadian Media Guild, the union which represents the 5,500 lock-out CBC workers.

(CBC president) Robert Rabinovitch went public and wrote about the lockout of 5,500 CMG members at the CBC in an op-ed piece in The Globe and Mail on Tuesday. Among other things, he referred to what he called the `common vision’ of employees and managers, saying most of today’s CBC managers came up through the ranks, many as journalists and broadcasters.

That is misleading. It is certainly not true of the three most important people running the CBC lockout: Rabinovitch himself, executive vice-president Richard Stursberg and human resources vice-president George Smith. None of these men has ever reported a story, directed a drama or repaired a transmitter.

Take Smith, for example. He is a human resources specialist by training and experience. He has a Masters of Industrial Relations degree from the University of Toronto. Among other things he was once senior director of employee relations at Air Canada, a company with one of the worst labour relations records in Canada.

Rabinovitch and Stursberg were cultural bureaucrats during the tail end of the Trudeau era in Ottawa. For many years they seemed virtually joined at the hip at the Department of Communications. When Rabinovitch was Deputy Minister in the early 1980s under cabinet minister Francis Fox, Stursberg was Assistant Deputy Minister.

Both men were working in the communications field in Ottawa when key decisions were made on satellite broadcasting and the granting of the first licences for wireless telephone networks.

Both men went on to enjoy successful careers in the private sector, some of them with the same types of businesses.

While both men prospered, both still nurtured ambitions linked to their early careers. Rabinovitch became president of the CBC in 1999. His main achievement, to which he makes reference in his Globe article, was the re-juggling of the CBC’s real estate assets and making money from this non-broadcasting area. People close to Rabinovitch say he bristles if he hears of complaints about smaller offices and cubicles for CBC staff.

I have either been with CBC, or covering it, for 30 years now. Never in that time can I recall when both the sitting president and the head of CBC-TV had no broadcasting experience.

Stursberg's background as a cable lobbyist doesn't count, sorry.

By the way, as I reported for the Star at the time, when Rabinovitch appointed Stursberg as VP last fall, many people in Ottawa were very unhappy. Well-placed Parliament Hill sources have told me that it's why Rabinovitch's term was not renewed for the full five years.

That said, this contentious issue of contract workers predates Stursberg. It started under former CBC-TV veep Harold Redekopp.

There's enough blame to go around here for plenty of people.