EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a new Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
Employees of the province's public broadcaster are poised for a potential strike and the head of their union branch is asking the public for its support.
TVO members of the Canadian Media Guild (CMG) voted 95.8 per cent in favour of a strike, rejecting their employer's latest offer, and the Ministry of Labour has issued a no-board report, putting the union in legal strike position as of Aug. 18.
Meredith Martin, president of the TVO branch of the CMG, said employees haven't had a pay increase to match inflation in over a decade.
"It's almost impossible to work at TVO and pay rent in Toronto and buy groceries and live and have a family," she said.
The workers' last contract, which ended last fall, was subject to the one-per-cent wage cap legislated by the Ford government in 2019.
Their previous contract didn't have a clause in it that allows the union to reopen it, now that that law has been found unconstitutional, as some unions' did, earning them additional compensation when Bill 124, the Protecting a Sustainable Public Sector for Future Generations was struck down by the Superior Court last year, a ruling the government has appealed.
The last offer from TVO and the provincial government was an increase of 2.5 per cent, followed by another 2.5 per cent in the second year and another 1.75 per cent in the third, and would have required the union to waive a previous agreement that sees their education workers be converted to staff once their job has existed for two years.
CMG represents 74 TVO employees, split between programming and content and digital learning, the employer said. The former includes employees of TVOKids and the flagship news show, The Agenda with Steve Paikin, as well as other news products. The latter includes those who deliver online courses through the Independent Learning Centre.
The union is rejecting the waiver for educational workers and is asking for wage increases of 5 per cent, 4.5 per cent, and 4 per cent over the three years, with a $3,500 pensionable catch-up for all the workers affected by Bill 124.
TVO declined to make anyone available for an interview, releasing only a short statement on the no-board report. "TVO believes that the best route forward is to continue negotiations toward a fair agreement. We respect CMG’s right to initiate this process, and it is our hope that discussions will continue."
Martin said her concerns go beyond the current contract negotiation.
"I'm very concerned about the future of the organization, period," she said, adding that workers have been squeezed for decades. The PCs cut TVO's base operating grant five per cent in 2020 and it hasn't risen since, despite inflation.
"You can't keep cutting without basically destroying the organization," she said. "I've seen what's happened, what's happened to Ontario Place and the Science Centre —TVOntario was created by Bill Davis, in 1970 and Bill Davis died last year. It feels to me like they would like us to go away."
"I feel like they're trying to get us to wither on the vine, so that eventually people will be like, 'Oh, they don't do anything anymore.' So if the province can shut TVO, people won't notice or care. That's what I think is going on."
A spokesperson for Education Minister Stephen Lecce, who is responsible for TVO, declined to provide a statement for this article.
Martin, for her part, said she hopes that regular Ontarians let the government know how they feel about the public broadcaster.
"I would really love it if people that the good people of Ontario would speak up about TVOntario if they value it," she said. "If you've ever watched the Agenda with Steve Paikin, and thought that was a really good use of your time, if you would write your MPP and tell them that, I'd appreciate it."
"It won't exist forever if we don't ensure that it does."