National Post newsroom staff file to unionize

TORONTO — Newsroom staff at the National Post have officially filed for union certification after a strong majority of workers signed union cards.

CWA Canada, the country’s only all-media union, filed today with the Ontario Labour Relations Board. Under Ontario law, the board will organize a vote within the next week.

“We’re unionizing because we love this newspaper,” the newsroom union committee said. “We want the Post and its newsroom staff to have long, bright futures.”

CWA Canada President Martin O’Hanlon, a veteran journalist, said the union drive is about protecting quality jobs and journalism – and about fundamental fairness.

He said Postmedia should be investing in the paper and its employees rather than destroying itself by squandering profits and ravaging assets to feed its hedge fund and other lenders.

Most National Post staff have not received a pay raise in a decade and now Postmedia is slashing pensions and benefits while paying millions in executive bonuses and tens of millions to its lenders.

“If this was a matter of helping the company survive, most would be happy to do their part and share the pain, but Postmedia reported a profit in its most recent financial statement,” O’Hanlon said.

“It’s just not fair that employees are forced to give up tens of thousands of dollars in pension benefits and take a big cut in medical benefits so that Postmedia can put the savings to executive bonuses and unsustainable debt payments.”

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CWA Canada is a 6,000-strong democratic union run by, and for, media workers at the CBC, The Canadian Press, Thomson Reuters, VICE Canada, Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, and other newspapers and media companies coast to coast.

For more information, visit our website nationalpostunion.ca or contact:

Katherine Lapointe
Organizer, CWA Canada
(416) 795-8598
klapointe@cwa-scacanada.ca