TVO Strike Highlights the Scourge of Contract Work in Public Service Journalism
Workers at TVO are on strike for the first time in the public broadcaster’s 53-year history. Amid the din of traffic outside TVO’s offices in Toronto, unionized journalists, producers, and education workers hold picket signs declaring: “Fund TVO Like it Matters.” TVO’s contract with the union, a branch of the Canadian Media Guild, expired in October. After months of negotiations, workers are striking to improve wages and to address precarious employment.
The union says that workers have received below-inflation wage increases since 2012, including zero increases between 2012-2014. I spoke to a producer who has worked at TVO’s flagship current affairs show, The Agenda, for 22 years and earns $74,000. In a video posted to social media, digital journalist Daniel Kitts, who has worked at TVO for 25 years, says: “For the past 10 years we have tried to… support this organization by seeing our wages shrink basically every year thanks to inflation. And after 10 years, we just can’t do it again.”
Another crucial issue in the dispute is temporary and precarious employment, when workers are kept on perpetual contracts with no hope of their position becoming permanent. TVO workers say these contracts prevent them from doing the kind of rigorous, civic journalism and current affairs programming that serves communities in Ontario. In a news ecosystem where traditional advertising revenue is down, outlets chase clicks at the whims of platforms like Meta and X and disinformation circulates widely, the need for quality, fact-based public affairs programming is particularly urgent.
