Global News offers staff buyouts
Global News said it will offer staff buyouts following the announcement that Shaw Communications, its parent company, is laying off 400 employees.
By Tamara Baluja, Associate Editor
Global News said it will offer staff buyouts following the announcement that Shaw Communications, its parent company, is laying off 400 employees.
In a staff memo, Troy Reed, senior vice-president of Global News and station operations, said the restructuring will allow the television network to “adapt to changing patterns for news consumption and bring new skills into our workforce.”
In addition to the buyouts, Global News is consolidating its graphic production for both online and broadcast in its Toronto office. “This new facility will not only have the capacity to produce more graphics than our current production centres allow, but to regularly create new 3-D and virtual storytelling environments with cutting-edge technology,” Reeb said in the memo.
Global also said it will create a more sustainable model for small-market television at Global Lethbridge. Sources at Global News say the newsroom has been gutted, but Reeb and Shaw Media declined an interview request from J-Source. Unifor, which represents Global News employees, was not immediately available for comment.
Reeb said the restructuring will also “result in significant new hiring to support our presentation and frontline newsgathering.”
The Canadian Media Guild, which said six positions in its bargaining unit with Shaw Media have been cut, said it had been given no specific warnings about potential layoffs.
“We are troubled by the layoffs and note that Shaw Communications is a profitable company that increased dividends to shareholders by eight per cent as recently as this January,” the guild said in a statement.
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Tamara Baluja is an award-winning journalist with CBC Vancouver and the 2018 Michener-Deacon fellow for journalism education. She was the associate editor for J-Source from 2013-2014.