The Toronto Sun announced 16 layoffs and the elimination of 10 vacant positions on Friday, acting on a commitment announced in June to eliminate up to 30 jobs.

An excerpt from the Toronto Star story:

Brad Honywill, president of Local 87M of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada, said the union is grieving a move by the Sun to allegedly move union jobs to new non-union positions.

For instance, several Sun staff members said the paper has recently posted three new national affairs writing jobs, and aims to fill them with employees who are relatively low on the union's seniority list.

A spokeswoman for Sun publisher Kin-Man Lee referred calls to Quebecor spokesman Luc Lavoie.

"The jobs eliminated today are the second phase of what we announced in June, so there's no surprise there," Lavoie said.

Lavoie said Quebecor's hiring of non-union positions was "in full respect of the labour contract." Three new newsroom positions would be for so-called "mobile journalists," who would be creating content for the chain's newspapers, the canoe.ca website and video content for the SunTV channel.

One of the casualties is entertainment writer Bill Brioux. The Star's Antonia Zerbisias speculated that Brioux painted a target on himself by having the integrity to crap on Canoe Live, Sun Media's attempt at interactive television.

Global Ontario has gotten out of its own sports programming. Instead, it will buy a feed from Rogers Sportsnet, says the Star.

Three full-time jobs were eliminated in that move. A number of freelancers were also affected.