The IT Nerd

Bell really does a lot of things that make them look really bad in the public eye. For example they have a tendency to fire people out of the blue which seems inconsistent with their Bell Let’s Talk mental health campaign. Today’s latest example of this is this Toronto Star story where it is claimed that Bell fired 400 people via a virtual meeting:

The union representing employees of Bell claimed the telecommunications giant laid off hundreds of its members Wednesday via virtual group meetings, a move which it described as “beyond shameful.”

In a press release, Unifor said more than 400 workers were informed Wednesday that they were being declared “surplus” by the company. Its members were informed of their termination via a 10-minute virtual meeting, the union claimed, adding that a manager read the layoff notice, “without allowing members or the union the opportunity to unmute to ask questions.”

“Our members, who have devoted years of service to this telecoms and media giant, are being repaid with pink slips,” said Daniel Cloutier, Unifor’s Quebec director, in a statement. “If that’s not beyond shameful, I don’t know what is.”

Bell did not immediately respond to the Star’s request for comment, including questions about whether this termination process is standard practice for the organization. 

Let’s talk Bell.

You couldn’t find a better way of letting go of people that is way more humane than this? You keep going to this well as this isn’t the first time that you’ve done something like this and I bet you’re surprised that every time that you do this there’s epic blowback. Maybe it just highlights the fact that you don’t see your employees as people with families. But instead you see them as just numbers on a spreadsheet. Maybe I’m being harsh. But when you terminate people in this manner, you’re just asking to get criticized because you’re doing it wrong.

UPDATE: Bell sent me a statement that I will reprint below in full:

Bell announced a restructuring on February 8 at all levels of the company, and since that time, Bell has been working with Unifor and other unions on the impacts to our unionized workforce. Bell has been very transparent with Unifor leadership about the process in which these discussions would take place, having started discussions over five weeks ago, and has met all of our obligations under the respective collective bargaining agreements.

As planned with Unifor, on March 20, Bell initiated calls with groups of our unionized team members to give notice of upcoming actions taking place, which include both a voluntary separation program and surplus reductions. Employees who were informed that they were being let go additionally had individual meetings with an HR representative to discuss their individual packages and to ask questions. They also have the option to invite a union representative to the meeting. Bell is offering departing surplus employees fair and competitive severance packages, including providing non-working notice and salary continuance as negotiated with the union. Most of the employees are remote workers as enshrined in their collective bargaining agreement, and therefore all of these discussions are being handled remotely so that they are not called into an office.

This entry was posted on March 21, 2024 at 9:17 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Bell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.