Bell Canada offering severance packages to 1,200 unionized employees

Bell Canada is offering severance packages to 1,200 unionized employees, attributing the move to "unprecedented challenges" in the telecom industry, a spokesperson confirmed to CBC News on Tuesday.

The company is introducing what the spokesperson called an "enhanced voluntary separation program" for eligible employees, which it says will give them the option to retire or find work elsewhere. Bell Media is not included in the voluntary buyout program.

The spokesperson added that the company is changing, and that several organizational changes — including moving customers to newer fibre networks — have led to reduced workloads "requiring fewer positions."

'A damaging stunt,' says union president

The union that represents Bell employees condemned the buyout program in a statement on Monday.

"Workforce reduction plans are a damaging stunt to temporarily reduce costs, making profits appear higher on the backs of workers. Bell cannot keep cutting jobs every year and expect the ship to turn itself around," said Lana Payne, Unifor's national president.

"Canada is potentially facing a trade war with the U.S., and Bell has chosen to once again leave Canadian workers unemployed in part to satisfy its move into the American market."

LISTEN | How Canada's telecom industry is being reshaped: 

The Sunday Magazine22:22How Canada's telecom industry is being reshaped

The Canadian telecommunications industry is going through some big changes. This past week, Bell's parent company announced it is cutting nine per cent of its workforce and selling off dozens of regional radio stations. Meanwhile, the dramatic battle for control of Canada’s largest wireless carrier, Rogers, has finally settled – but not everyone involved is satisfied. The Globe and Mail telecom reporter and author of Rogers v. Rogers, Alexandra Posadzki, joins Piya Chattopadhyay to outline the family feud that has rocked the Rogers empire for years and paint a broader picture of how cutthroat the telecom industry really is.

Canada's telecom industry has seen a slowdown in growth over the last year, and major players like BCE and Rogers have shed some of their assets in an effort to reduce costs.

Bell sold its 37.5 per cent ownership stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) to Rogers for $4.7 billion last September. It announced a few months later that it would buy U.S. telecom company Ziply for $5 billion.

However, the company has also made multiple rounds of job cuts in the last year and a half, including 1,300 cuts in June 2023, a February 2024 announcement that it laid off 4,800 employees and would shutter several dozen radio stations, plus further layoffs aimed at technical staff in June the same year.