National newspaper turns collective agreement on its head

Globe and Mail editor John Stackhouse wrote to employees in May 2010 to announce the newspaper’s plans to contract out copyediting work — but the union treated that announcement as a typo.

The Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild (SONG) argued the Globe and Mail’s actions were a violation of a letter of understanding (LOU) contained in the collective agreement.

The union negotiated the LOU in 2002 following the online "convergence" of the Globe and Mail, CTV and Bell into a new corporate entity, which was designed to merge content into a new online platform called Bell Globemedia Interactive (BGM).

The LOU served the interest of both parties by protecting the editorial work of SONG members within BGM and by ensuring the Globe and Mail retained editorial control over the hard news and opinion content located in the so-called "chewy centre" of the ".com" or electronic edition of the newspaper.

Additional content for features and for the lifestyle and travel sections — as well as regular, non-editorial content such as the daily crosswords and horoscopes — was produced offsite by non-union employees of the Globe and Mail. This material, along with the work of non-union CTV staffers, was presented in pillars on either side of the "chewy centre."

The LOU stated that: "The parties agree that effective the date of signing of this Memorandum of Agreement, the current practice of assigning editorial employees to prepare, produce and edit editorial material associated with Globe and Mail branded sites to Bell Globemedia or its successors will continue."

However, in 2003 BGM was dissolved and the constituent parts of the enterprise returned to a pre-"convergence" state.

The LOU was renewed, though not discussed, in bargaining for the 2005 and 2009 contracts negotiated by the parties.

In May 2010, SONG was notified the employer intended to contract out some of its copyediting work to Pagemasters, a company wholly owned by the Canadian Press. The union filed a grievance.

The employer said the LOU no longer applied. The agreement was negotiated to protect the work of SONG members in the event BGM was sold. But BGM was not technically sold. The entity was dissolved with no successor. The letter was redundant, the employer said.

However, the Globe and Mail was indeed a successor to BGM, the union argued. As long as the LOU was in effect and as long as the website existed, the contributions of SONG members to that chewy centre would be protected.

It was clear Pagemasters was performing protected work and the employer’s efforts to disguise that fact had turned the guarantee in the LOU on its head.

That’s because, previously, the protected editorial work produced onsite by SONG members was posted to the website by non-union Globe and Mail employees working off-site. Now the employer was pretending it was meeting its obligation to protect SONG work by having SONG members merely complete the routine task of posting to the website the editorial work that was now being produced by Pagemasters.

The fact that a SONG member was assigned to the incidental task of posting material to the website was insufficient to demonstrate compliance with the LOU, according to the union. The evidence was clear that once a story had been copyedited by Pagemasters, it was not going to be re-edited by a SONG member, the union argued.

And the arbitrator agreed it was evident Pagemasters was indeed performing the work the LOU was intended to protect, and that if the LOU remained in effect, the employer would be in breach of the collective agreement.

"The fact that a bargaining unit employee is involved in the posting online of a Pagemasters-edited story is legally and factually immaterial…The evidence is conclusive that while a bargaining unit employee may have something to do with material before it is posted online, in the case of material directed to Pagemasters, virtually all of the editorial work has already been performed. Had I found that the LOU remained in effect, in light of this evidence, I would have concluded that the employer was in breach."

But the LOU was no longer in effect because the Globe and Mail was not exactly a successor of itself, the ruling said.

"A successor, as is commonly understood and well accepted in the labour relations jurisprudence, is some new entity that steps into the shoes of its predecessor assuming both its rights and obligations." That was not the case here, as both the Globe and Mail and the union went back to being governed by the terms of their collective agreement. At that point, the LOU no longer applied, the arbitrator ruled.

The grievance was dismissed.

Reference: The Globe & Mail and CEP Local 87-M (Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild). William Kaplan — Sole Arbitrator. Tim Gleason for the Union. Stephen Shamie for the Employer. January 31, 2013. 15pp.