How hard is it to get fired from the CBC?
Bob Keating tried to kill one of his listeners. He agreed that the CBC was justified in firing him.
But he’s not only getting his job back, he’s getting 5 years of back pay, $100,000 of his legal costs, and the pleasure of watching the CBC get publicly flogged by the CMG in the Globe and Mail for “making mistakes.”
Would-be “Toffifee Assassin” gets his job back
Editor, publisher, factual entertainer.
Published March 5, 2008 6:12 am
4 Comments
If their legal obligations require them to protect someone who does something like this, maybe they should examine those obligations.
There is absolutely no way that people knowing you can pull crap like that and stay employed is helpful to the CBC, so if they do care about the organization, they shouldn’t just fall back on a variation of the old “we were just following orders” routine.
That said, I wish they could be on my side the next time I try to poison someone I don’t like.
To be fair, we have no idea on what grounds this was grieved.
Jurisprudence and past practice in labour relations is critical. If CBC management had behaved incorrectly in some way through the process of terminating this individual and the CMG did NOT pursue it, then they lose the ability to contest that conduct in a later grievance. Also, unions are obliged to represent all employees to the best of their abilities. They do not have the option to not push forward with a grievance because the grievor is distasteful. Given that the CMG took this all the way and won, the case must have substance and they would have been derelict in their obligations under the law if they did not pursue it.
An arbitrator would have looked at labour law and multiple prior cases to decide this issue. The Supreme Court obviously found no fault with that decision. There is obviously something here to justify this decision that we are unaware of and it’s disingenuous to argue that the Guild pursues these battles out of some sort of insanity.
I’d like to see what APS would do in a similar situation, or, you know, any situation.
It is moments like this when I’m actually embarrassed to be a CMG member. The guy tried to kill someone. Who cares that he had second thoughts. Fighting something like this is what gives the union movement a bad name. The Guild only damages their credibility when they fight stuff like this. It makes management look sane in comparison.