Two of Canada's most prominent lefties have offerings on rabble.ca.

Here's Rebick:

I suspect that CBC management thought that the Guild, never a very militant union with a 53 year history without a strike, would cave at the first pressure. All workers at the CBC recently merged their unions into the Guild. Instead, what often happens when management treats workers unfairly is happening at the CBC: the employees are starting to identify as workers and radicalize.

Union solidarity has also been strong. Amber said the Guild has received pledges of $40,000 from the Steelworkers and $25,000 from the Canadian Auto Workers. Picket line solidarity has also been outstanding.

This is no ordinary labour dispute. The future of public broadcasting is at stake. But the issues are similar to issues in other work places. Replacing good full-time stable jobs with contract work is a central feature of neo-liberal work place restructuring everywhere.

One difference is, we don't often have high profile voices like Peter Mansbridge, Shelagh Rogers and Andy Barrie speaking out against it.

And here's Salutin:

It's touching, during the current strike, to see CBC management hold the fort for the antiquated economic gospel of the 1980s and '90s, when even its original boosters are fleeing the ship.

Listen to the clichés in their “open letter to Canadians,” paid for by us: “the need for change in today's fast-evolving . . . meeting the significant challenges . . . using public funds responsibly . . . become a much more flexible, agile, nimble operation . . .” I like the last the best. It always means: Kick around employees as if they're spare parts, not human beings with families and responsibilities, while hectoring them to accept the inevitability of change, i.e., total lack of control over their fates.

It sounds as if CBC bosses have been to the Niagara Institute courses on management, which, in fact, they have, again on our dime. There they learn to produce little skits and cheers, anything to make the work force feel better rather than do something to concretely improve their lot. A CBC journalist says: We used to expose those places; now we pay to get in.