The following letter was delivered by courrier to Gazette employees today. For the Guild’s responses to some of these issues, see our FAQ.

Dear fellow Gazette employee,

As you know, a very difficult decision was made this year: to transfer our reader service activities to Canwest’s Reach Canada call centre in Winnipeg. This decision was not taken lightly, given that it means the lay-off of 35 of our fellow employees, most of whom are members of the Reader Sales and Service bargaining unit.

While I normally would not comment on bargaining during the process, I am very concerned that all of us are getting into a situation that no one wants.

There are two key business measures of the performance of any newspaper - advertising linage and circulation volumes. Our advertising linage has declined every year for the last 5 years and is down a total of 17%. Circulation has also declined every year and is down 9% on home delivery and 40% on single-copy sales.

Employees in the affected departments know these facts of life as well as I do. There is no reason to think that we will be able to reverse these trends during the life of the agreements that are soon to be negotiated. Times are changing and so is the economic and competitive reality The Gazette is facing.

We must concentrate on our core newsroom and advertising activities if we are to remain in business. The services offered by Reach Canada allow those of us in Montreal to focus our efforts on content, sales and marketing.

Last week, we made a Final Proposal to renew the collective agreement for the RSS bargaining unit, for the benefit of the employees who will be laid-off as well as the 22 members who will remain on our payroll in Montreal. This offer includes substantial improvements over the severance provisions of the collective agreement for those who will be leaving. It is the most generous offer The Gazette can possibly make and, without doubt, the best offer RSS members will see.

We sincerely hope that it gets ratified. However, it may not, and that would leave the parties the far less desirable option of a strike or lock-out.

If a lock-out or strike of the RSS unit were to occur, it would be your right to cross the picket line, since your units would not be on strike or locked out. It would equally be your individual contractual right to refuse, as a matter of conscience,to cross a legal picket line of any union engaged in a legal strike or lock-out with The Gazette. However, neither the editorial nor the advertising units have a legal right to strike at this time.

Anyone who decides not to report to work should clearly understand a few things: you may not be permitted to resume work until a strike or lock-out is over; a strike or lock-out could be very long (since work would have moved to Reach Canada); and the Company would have the right to replace all employees on a “sympathy” strike with other workers while they remain off the job.

I can only repeat: the decision has been made and the Reader Service phone room is moving to Winnipeg. Our preference has been to negotiate a fair financial deal for those losing employment; we do not want a war.

As mentioned above, times are changing and The Gazette and the Guild wil be approaching the bargaining tables with important Editorial and Advertising issues. But those issues will all be subject to discussion and compromise and should be solved on the basis of common sense. In my opinion, none of the issues involving Editorial or Advertising justifies strike action and the Company has no intention of locking you out.

Important decisions will have to be made soon by all parties involved in the present round of negotiations. It is my fervent hope that we can make the decisions that are in the best interests of all parties, both in the near and long terms.

Very sincerely,

Alan Allnutt

Publisher

Some notes about this letter:

• Though Mr. Allnutt talks about declining advertising revenue, he neglects to talk about the financial situation of the paper as a whole. According to Canwest’s financial figures (which don’t break numbers down by individual newspaper), the publishing division is not only profitable, but that profit is growing.
• One of the main reasons cited by readers in their decision to unsubscribe from The Gazette is the declining quality that has resulted from continued cuts to staff in editorial and service departments. Moving customer service to a cheap-labour call centre that couldn’t care less about readers is only going to make the situation worse.
• The Gazette has not offered buyouts to RSS staff. The severance offer that the employer has proposed ties the Guild’s hands unnecessarily.
• The Guild believes that customer service is, in fact, a “core activity” that workers in Montreal should be focusing on.