CUPE has vehemently denounced the tactics TVA have used to reduce the number of employees of TVA Interactif in two videos posted on social media recently.
“Since they’ve been unionized, the Employer has made several organizational changes and restructurings to take work away from the team of TVA Interactif,” stated Denis Bolduc, President of CUPE Quebec.
This strategy by TVA has considerably reduced the workload and the staff needed at TVA Interactif. This group, which was organized in 2012, had a total of 39 employees in January 2013, and their average occupancy rate was 97 per cent. In December 2017, the group has now shrunk to 14 employees and the occupancy rate has declined to 46 per cent. Their duties have been steadily assigned to subcontractors or to another entity within Quebecor where employees are not unionized.
“In spite of all the nice speeches by TVA to the effect that digital media is here to stay, and that TVA must have a greater web presence, there is no getting around the fact that this is being done to the detriment of employees of TVA Interactif,” lamented Marc-André Hamelin, the President of the Syndicat des employé(e)s de TVA in Montreal (CUPE 687).
The union created a website lewebnotretravail.ca where web artisans of TVA Interactif and the President of CUPE have expressed their views on this matter.
The union has already filed grievances on this issue which it describes as dismissals in disguise and antiunion manoeuvrings aimed at eliminating unionized jobs in the digital field. It is planning to go to arbitration to bring back the work, which unionized employees with TVA Interactif are rightly entitled to.