THE NON-PAYMENT of the CyBC’s staff wages on time was still the main news story on the state corporation’s current affairs shows yesterday. It is quite remarkable how a decision taken by the legislature last Thursday – not to approve the budget of the CyBC – could still be hogging the corporation’s radio, television and web headlines four days later. Nothing new has happened since apart from the fact that staff unions had decided to stage two, 10-minute work stoppages every day in protest against the decision.
On Friday afternoon, the current affairs show had the CyBC general manager as its main guest and he declared that a ‘crime has been perpetrated’ against the workers. On Saturday morning all members of the board appeared on a radio show to respond to criticism that the corporation was a government propaganda organ, saying they would ignore calls by opposition parties for their resignation. Yesterday afternoon, actors who play in CyBC soaps were guests on the current affairs show to express their outrage at not having been paid.
Was this story so important that it justified all this coverage? Some 400 workers were subjected to a small inconvenience – they would receive their pay-checques with a delay of a week, perhaps two weeks – and this was turned into the biggest story of week, because it affected those who decide the news agenda. It was another illustration of the selfishness of public sector employees, who made all this fuss despite knowing they would get their March pay-checques, in a week or two, and would be certain to carry on getting it for many years to come.
Such is the selfishness, they did not think about the thousands of private sector workers, for whom receiving their pay-cheques two, three or four weeks late has become part of their working life, not to mention the uncertainty surrounding jobs. But these workers do not have a TV station to air their grievances, like the CyBC’s well-looked after employees have been doing for four days now, presenting a minor issue as a big injustice – a crime according to the general – against them.
It is no longer an issue of whether the deputies were wrong to delay the approval of the CyBC budget, but of who owns the corporation? CyBC staff have been behaving as if they are the owners, using the corporation to campaign for their personal interests, to win public sympathy and exert pressure on deputies. On what grounds have they turned the state broadcaster, which costs the taxpayer €40 million a year into a mouthpiece for 400 employees? We thought that the purpose of public broadcasting was to educate and inform people, in an objective and reliable way, about what is happening in the country and the rest of the world. We were wrong.
