Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

NNSL (Mar 19/99) - CBC faces a showdown at high noon today, and the outcome is anybody's guess.

Twelve o'clock Friday Toronto time is the strike deadline set by the Canadian Media Guild -- the union representing the English-language CBC's 3,500 production workers.

"They may be walking off the job at 10 o'clock Yellowknife time," said striking technician Anne Lynagh, "It could look like kids getting out of school for the summer."

But as of Thursday, a second strike was not yet inevitable, as management and the Guild remained in talks.

"We're very hopeful a deal is going to be reached before the deadline," Ruth-Ellen Soles, a management representative in Toronto, said Thursday.

"But if this doesn't happen, there are contingency plans in place -- I don't want to discuss that except to say that we'll be on the air.

"There are two hockey games scheduled for Saturday night, but right now we're not looking beyond Friday."

Local Guild president Paul Andrew, representing Yellowknife's 35 production workers, said Thursday members are happy talks are continuing.

"There's always hope and I thinking that's what people are hanging onto right now," he said, "though they're still willing to go out on strike."

Andrew has credited the recent strong strike vote with forcing management to return to the bargaining table and sit down with representatives of the Guild's production workers and of the Communication, Energy and Paperworkers union's administrative staffers and striking technicians.

Andrew said a decision will come today.

"There's going to be a phone call just before 10 a.m. our time, and the presidents of all the locals will be in a conference call," he said.

"At 10 they will say one way or the other, and we'll proceed from there."

CEP Local 85 president Lynagh, representing 16 striking technicians in Yellowknife, said while the labour dispute has brought the two unions closer, there is concern that they may yet go their separate ways.

"Of course we're worried that management will settle with the CMG and not with us," she said.

But if the production workers join their technician colleagues on picket lines across the country, local president Andrew doesn't see much of a programming future for the CBC.

"I've heard people refer to the Crippled Broadcasting Corporation," he said, "and I think that would be a fair assessment."