After Postmedia and Quebecor, it’s Global News’ turn to announce new layoffs in its newsrooms. These layoffs “erode democracy in Canada,” denounced Thursday the Unifor union, which represents 800 members at this media giant.
The layoffs by Corus Entertainment, owner of Global News, mainly affect digital (online) journalists and journalists who make video for the web, the union Unifor said in a press release.
This union represents more than 10,000 media workers across Canada, including 800 at Corus Entertainment.
The sports department team at Global News in Edmonton, Alberta – the city’s only sports channel – has also been decimated, the union says.
Long streak
These layoffs are news in a long series in recent years at this media giant, which has twenty newsrooms in seven Canadian provinces – including one in Montreal.
In July 2020, Global News announced that it had to eliminate part of its workforce due to a major restructuring. Losses of revenue and the COVID-19 pandemic explained this need, said Corus senior vice president of broadcast networks, Troy Reeb, at the time.
Almost two years earlier, in 2018, nearly 80 jobs had been cut across the country.
“It is becoming incredibly difficult for workers in this media to face these restructurings and layoffs on a regular basis,” Lana Payne, president of Unifor National, said in a statement Thursday. “Journalists are the backbone of our democracy. We need to save local news and invest in newsrooms – not eliminate them. »
In Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, journalist Teresa Wright announced on Twitter that she was among those fired by Global News on Thursday.
“It’s a bad day for reporters and for democracy when journalists lose their jobs,” she tweeted.
This veteran reporter was assigned to national health coverage. Previously, she worked in parliament in Ottawa for The Canadian Press, and for a decade for the newspaper The Guardianin Prince Edward Island, according to his biography still available on the Global News website.