Canadian broadcasters wage labor war on the Web

[justinsb]

Locked-out workers for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. are taking their labor battle onto the Web, vowing to produce a rival online news site.

A week after Canada's national broadcaster locked out its union workers, the journalists are laying plans for an independent online news site. The workers hope to have text articles and pictures up by next Monday, with a daily podcast by the following week.

"The goal is to provide taxpaying Canadians with the quality of news and information they expect from CBC journalists...as the lockout drags on," said Mark O'Neill, a CBC radio producer and one of the union members heading up the Web site effort.

The move is a modern update to a long-held tradition of journalists producing a "strike newspaper" in the midst of a labor dispute. The tentative name for the Web site is CBC Unplugged, though the workers have yet to fully launch the site. The workers do have a separate Web site with information about the labor dispute.

Meanwhile, CBC is also using the Web to wage its labor battle. A notice on its site says that "CBC is currently experiencing a labor disruption" and offers links to both the agency's negotiations site and another to its modified program schedule.

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