Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s workers return to broadcast center after eight-week lockout

With a swirl of bagpipe music, hundreds of happy-looking CBC workers returned to the network's broadcast center Tuesday morning, hugging one another and claiming victory in the eight-week lockout dispute.

But there were also warnings that it may take a while for it to be business as usual with management at the national news and documentary channel. The main 24-hour news channel, for example, was still rerunning documentaries on Tuesday, the AP reports.

The employees, including such news personalities as Brian Stewart and Joe Schlesinger, conducted a slow march around the building - led by bagpipe, banjo, oboe and trombone - before heading through doors held open by applauding fellow union members.

Terry Walker, Toronto location unit president for the Canadian Media Guild, said they got "a terrific deal" at the bargaining table last week by getting management to backtrack on its key demand for the right to hire more part-time and causal employees. Some 88 percent of the 5,500 unionized members voted to ratify the tentative agreement in balloting announced Sunday. A.M.