Prospects for freelance journalists like Charmaine are particularly uncertain right now. Confronted with the generalized economic uncertainty of the recovery, they are also faced with growing corporate consolidation within Canadian media – a sector where ownership was already concentrated in the hands of a few big media corps.
Even before the downturn, freelance writers had been experiencing a punishing long-term slide in income. The website of the Canadian Freelance Union – a newly formed local within the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union – presents a sobering overview of the last 30 years. It cites a recent survey that shows the freelancer’s average yearly income in 2006 to be a meagre $24,000 – down from $25,000 in 1979. And that’s not accounting for inflation.
But there’s been encouraging developments in the ongoing copyright battle. With the rise of internet journalism, publishers frequently make sweeping copyright demands on freelancers, demanding rights to reproduce freelancer work “in all media now known or hereafter devisedâ€. Back in 1996 freelance writer Heather Robertson initiated a class action suit, accusing the Thomson Corp of not paying her for work they’d published in electronic data-bases. The case made it to the Supreme Court, and in 2009 CTVglobemedia Inc, Thomson Reuters Canada and the Gale Group together agreed to pay over $11 million to the freelancers in question, and more recently, Canwest Global agreed to pay a further $7.5 million. So thanks to Robertson, freelancers may now get a fairer shake.
With Uncharted waters ahead, the GDP Project waves a fond farewell to Charmaine. We leave her as she valiantly makes her way through a changing media landscape – and wish her well on the next leg of her freelancer’s journey.
When we first encountered Nancy – the featured subject of our photo-essay On the line – she and her fellow workers at the nickel mine in Sudbury had already been on strike for 5 months.
That conflict would last another seven months. It ended on July 8, when 75 percent of strikers voted in favour of accepting the company’s latest offer and returning to work. The conflict will be remembered as one the longest – and most acrimonious –in Canadian labour history.
Back in the winter, Nancy accused her employer – the Brazil-based mining multinational Vale that acquired the mine from Inco in 2006 – of “using the recession as an excuse to demand all these concessions.â€
It was a view shared by many in Sudbury – and one that’s endorsed by Armine Yalnizyan, the senior economist at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “What’s happening in Sudbury, with the Vale Inco strike, is not about the productivity of the workforce – it’s about breaking a culture of expectations,†said Yalnizyan when we spoke to her and her fellow CCPA economists earlier this summer.
Yalnizyan identifies mining as one of four sectors – along with banking, retail, and media & telecommunications – that are leading a process of corporate consolidation that has accelerated during the global downturn and uncertain recovery. “Big players are buying out smaller players, which is leading to a very small number of players, domestically and internationally, calling the shots as to where investment will take place, who will get the jobs, and setting the prices of wages and benefits and pensions.â€
Writing in the Sudbury Star in the days following the settlement, journalist Carol Mulligan quotes unionist Patrick Veinot. “I think people are going to be happy to get back to a structured life with their families, but nobody – nobody – will be satisfied with that contract.â€
Mulligan goes on to point out that the strike has created “a new generation of activists†– one committed to forging a stronger global labour movement. The strike has also renewed calls to change the Investment Canada Act, ensuring that foreign takeovers benefit Canadians, and to bring in laws that prevent the hiring of scab labour.
So are workers disappointed? Maybe. Weary after a year on the picket lines? Sure. But although Sudbury workers may have settled for less than they feel they deserve, there’s a sense that they put up a good fight, and have learned lessons that will serve them well in future battles.
In On the Line, Nancy draws sustenance from Sudbury’s strong tradition of community solidarity. Linda Diebel, whose grandfather worked in Sudbury, celebrates this history in a moving piece written for the Toronto Star.
“Insecurity is the river that runs through it,†said economist Trish Hennessy when we asked her and her colleagues at the Centre for Policy Alternatives to identify some key characteristics of Canada’s economic recovery. They generously made time to talk to us earlier this summer – helping to put our work on the GDP Project into perspective as the year-long initiative entered its final phase.
The insecurity that Trish mentions forms the backdrop of Fields that keep feeding – a recent photo essay on Community Harvest Ontario, a program that aims to keep food banks supplied with produce at a time when they’re being hit by a double whammy – more demand and less supply.
Among the first postings we made to the GDP Project last year was Brian Howell’s series of photo-essays on Mackenzie, a BC logging town that had been walloped by the crisis in the forestry sector. At the time six mills had recently closed within the immediate area, putting 1,500 people out of work. The local unemployment rate was close to 90%, if we’re to believe the local employment centre. Young people were leaving, people were losing homes to foreclosures, and family life was being disrupted.
We’ve been updating our Google Map throughout the last year of production – 127 films and 50 photo essays to date, with one month left. Here’s a quick access to our Google Map.
Vous l’attendiez depuis belle lurette, cette nouvelle page! Eh bien après plusieurs mois à nous concentrer sur le contenu, voici que nous nous sommes fait plaisir et avons introduit la page Essais photos.
Last summer, I wrote this short blog post – $10 life – a highly touching story about a woman called Rose Simpson, downsizing her credit-fuelled suburban life.
Since then, Rose and her partner’s lives have been good. They still work in the video business, only they now do it part-time, and work on projects that interest them the rest of the time. “One, for example, is documenting the creation of a monument to fallen firefighters, which is scheduled for construction in 2012. More than 1,000 firefighters have died in the line of duty, so it’s quite interesting to learn about their stories.” says Rose Simpson of Ottawa.
The $10 Life Blog - Excerpt
Another thing that has changed in Rose’s $10 life, is a blog she started. It’s called (surprise, surprise)… The $10 Life: How I lost everything and found myself. That’s right! And she self-describes it as “a combination of slice of life stories, political commentary & humor.”
Congrats to you Rose and keep up the good writing.
©2009 Le blogue PIB / The GDP blog