about the cbc branch

The vast majority of what you see, hear and read on CBC radio, TV and the Internet, in French and English, has been made by Guild members. We are on-air, production, technical and administrative employees at CBC/Radio-Canada outside Quebec and Moncton. We are strongly committed to quality Canadian broadcasting and have been leading supporters of the campaigns to save the CBC and public broadcasting during the crises of the recent past.

A Brief History of the Guild at the CBC:

The Guild got its first contract at the CBC in 1953 after it signed up a handful of radio news reporters and editors. At the time, it was called the Canadian Wire Service Guild and there was a greater symmetry between wire service work and broadcasting because radio news and the fledgling field of television news were very dependent on the wire services for information. It was common for announcers to simply read Canadian Press copy over the air. So even as the CBC arm of the union grew, the old Canadian Wire Service Guild name stuck until 1993. That’s when a vote among unionized employees was held at the CBC, designed to decrease the number of unions from 13 to 3. A majority of employees responsible for producing programming chose the Guild and the union’s membership zoomed from 700 to 3,300. And because the nature of the new membership was so varied, a name change was finally in order: the Canadian Media Guild was officially born.

In 1998, the 700 members of the Canadian Broadcast Employees Union, a division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, merged with CMG. And in late 2003, approximately 1,500 employees formerly represented by the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers union came to the CMG after another representation vote. All non-managerial CBC employees outside of Moncton, NB and the province of Quebec are now represented by the Canadian Media Guild. The unified bargaining unit ratified its first collective agreement in October 2005 after an eight-week lockout.

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