Here's proof that those brutal CHUM/City lay-offs earlier this month had nothing to do with the Bell Globemedia takeover. The pertinent graphs are way down in a Globe and Mail Report on Business story today that dealt mostly with the financials of the deal.
The documents also describe how CHUM executives knew little of the negotiations. BGM chief executive officer Ivan Fecan informed CHUM CEO Jay Switzer of the deal to buy the company on June 30.
It was at that point, the documents say, that Mr. Switzer informed Mr. Fecan that CHUM had spent the past nine months reviewing its TV operations and had decided on a "significant restructuring." The move, which included cutting 281 jobs, was to be announced in the next two weeks. The layoffs were revealed the same day the deal was announced.
Which is just what Jay Switzer told me the day after the deal and lay-offs were announced.
You see, that's the problem with thinking of the world in terms of cause and effects. Was the take-over the cause of the layoffs? Apparently not, because the layoffs were planned in advance of, and independent of, CHUM management's knowledge of the deal.
HOWEVER (that's a big however), the juxtaposition means that the two events are inextricably linked in EFFECT, and it is effects and interactions of such events that drive the complex network of society. In other words, it's quite irrelevant that the takeover is not the efficient cause of the layoffs; the takeover remains the formal cause of the layoffs.
Posted by: Mark Federman | July 28, 2006 at 09:52 AM