The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC) and the Canadian Media Guild are back at the bargaining table today for preliminary talks.

'Chief negotiators have had some meaningful contact over the last few days and have agreed to return to the table to begin tackling the unresolved issues,' according to the CBC website dedicated to covering the negotiations,

While the two groups have been communicating all along, it's a positive sign they have come back to the table, says Russ Knutson, president of the local branch of the Canadian Media Guild.

'We must have reached a point, because there were some high-level meetings between our senior negotiators (Monday), to try to get things started,' Knutson said Tuesday.

'I think they're trying to come up with a way to get things going without perhaps dealing with some of the big issues ... They're probably going to try to pick away at some of the small ones and get a dialogue going so they can do something productive.'

The official CBC statement says negotiators would meet in small committees initially in an attempt to resolve issues quickly.

Jason MacDonald, the CBC's director of public relations and operations, said Tuesday from Ottawa that coming back to the table is a positive step.

'The fact that we're talking is positive, the fact that we're going to be at the bargaining table is positive,' he said. 'But the bottom line is this we need to get a collective agreement in place, and I think that all parties want the lockout over as soon as possible.'

Even if the sides were able to come to an employment agreement on pending issues such as contract workers, hiring, firing and seniority, Knutson predicts the lockout could go on until the end of September.

It would take that long to have the collective agreement written and approved by the various groups involved, said Knutson, who hosts the local late-afternoon radio program.

Getting back to work was on the minds of everyone on the picket line Tuesday afternoon, for many different reasons.

Among the most pressing is constrained finances brought on by a lockout with no clear end in sight.

Pickets are paid $200 a week for 20 hours of picketing. For many, this is not enough to make ends meet.

Claudiane Samson, the lone video journalist for the French side of CBC television North of 60, is also a single parent who cannot afford to live on lockout pay.

'I have a son and I have to pay daycare,' she said from the picket line. 'And all of those financial concerns, unfortunately, they don't go away. They don't lock themselves up.'

Without supplementing her income, Samson said, she could not have paid the rent. She is now working at her son's child care centre and has taken on a contract for a French-language magazine about children.

In case the lockout drags on into colder weather, Arnold Hedstrom, producer of the local radio morning show, has been hauling wood to avoid buying pricey oil for heat.

'The hardest thing about being locked-out right now is uncertainty about the future,' he said. 'And with each day, you know, you start looking at your bank account, looking at your expenses and wondering when you might have to do something to help pay the bills.

'For everyone, it will be different, but the time is gonna come when you really start to hurt.'

While the financial impact of the lockout varies greatly amongst the employees, it weighs on the minds of most.

Another employee has taken up shifts at the Real Canadian Superstore, according to veteran reporter Vic Istchenko.

There are other issues facing those on the picket lins as well. There is a sense of restlessness among the ranks for some.

Istchenko described his life since the lockout as 'wasted days and wasted nights and bad TV.

'I'm wasting my day, 5,500 other CBC employees are wasting their days too,' he said. '(The hardest part) is going home at the end of the day knowing you did absolutely zero.'

Walking the line is a 'useless exercise in futility,' he says, because managers he's never met in Toronto have all the control.

Nancy Thomson, a longtime CBC reporter and current host of the local lunchtime radio show, is prepared to stay out for as long as it takes. However, she is concerned listeners are not getting the information they need.

'I worry about my listeners because I feel like I'm letting them down,' she said from the shelter of a doorway. 'I want to be bringing them the stories that they want to hear and that matter to them, that reflect their lives.'

Many pickets who walked the windy corner of Third Avenue and Elliott Street yesterday expressed similar concerns. Being journalists is part of their identities, they said.

The lockout means more than not being allowed to work; it also means losing an integral part of who they are, said radio reporter Trisha Estabrooks.

'As a young journalist who has been with the CBC for about four years now, I'm realizing how much a part of my identity this job has been,' she said. 'It's unsettling when you don't have that to go to everyday.'

To burn off some of the out-of-work energy building up inside, some CBC employees have started working on websites, blogs and Podcasts a fairly recent method of audio broadcasting over the Internet.

Two of these include www.cmgyukon.com, a local site and www.cbcunplugged.com, the site for CBC picketers Canada-wide.

News producer James Miller has written a couple of radio comedies for the Podcast. Staying busy is the key to survival, he said.

'Being involved with things like the Podcast, writing for the web page, keeping your mind in a creative place, helps a lot,' he said.

While today's talks are seen by many as a step forward, there are unmistakable signs of tension outside the red CBC building.

A white van with dark tinted windows is parked outside the building for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, according to Knutson.

While the man sitting in the van would not comment, Knutson said the vehicle was sent up from B.C. to monitor the property and possibly videotape any altercations or arguments that may occur.

'They're keeping an eye on the people on the picket line because there were some altercations during the last strikes and lockouts,' he said.

'The last guys had black boots and paramilitary uniforms and the dark glasses.... Day one of a work stoppage, you walk into that, all it's going to do is escalate feelings.'

MacDonald did not know about the specifics of the white van, but said the CBC is securing premises during the lockout.

'In a labour dispute, you ensure that your operations and your premises are secure,' he said. 'Certainly, we've got security that are watching our buildings.'

In Ottawa and Toronto, he said, the doors are guarded by security officers.

'It's more precautionary than anything else,' MacDonald said.

The CBC is 'cautiously optimistic' about the next round of negotiations, MacDonald said.

'There still a lot of work to do, a lot of serious work to do to get through the 40 issues that are still on the table.'

While Thomson is eager to get off the street, she said there are also bigger issues at stake. She worries that as a contract employee, with less job security, those working in news may avoid controversial stories.

'If we don't have the ability to question authority and put hard questions to it, if I'm a contract employee ... am I checking twice before asking those tough questions? Might I think twice about doing stories that are going to be upsetting, that challenge the status quo, that make people uncomfortable?'

CBC pickets visited Yukon MP Larry Bagnell at his office late this morning to present 267 letters from community members to enlist support for getting them back to work.

Bagnell said while he has already spoken to the federal ministers of labour and heritage, the petitions are a more graphic kind of evidence. He will deliver the letters to Liza Frulla, minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women.

Earlier on in the lockout, pickets also asked Bagnell to write a letter to CBC president Robert Rabinovitch. In that letter , he encouraged the two sides to get back into negotiations, and outlined the importance of the public broadcaster in the Yukon.

'I made the point that there are rural areas to the Yukon where the only coverage they have for some critical things; for instance, weather, is through CBC. It's the only access they have.

'I'm hoping they'll get back to the bargaining table and back to work as soon as possible.'

See letter, p. 8.