“It’s time we tighten the screws” on the “companies who cry out” that it’s not easy to do business and who are cutting jobs in Canada to transfer them abroad. This amounts to “blackmail”, denounces the Unifor union, criticizing the latest waves of layoffs at Bell.
The pan-Canadian union Unifor, which represents 21,000 workers at BCE, Bell and its subsidiaries, demonstrated at noon on Tuesday in Ottawa, and met the press in this context.
Unifor, which is affiliated with the FTQ in Quebec, has already launched a campaign, “Shame on Bell”, to denounce the elimination of 4,800 positions, announced in February, even though Bell is not in financial difficulties. The media giant has also divested itself of regional radio stations, and its decisions also affect news broadcasts.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, themselves denounced Bell’s choices in February.
Indignant, the Quebec director of Unifor, Daniel Cloutier, denounced “the stupid dinner to which Canadians have been invited for a long time”.
Bell’s senior management, he said, has received raises in recent years that go “well beyond the 2 to 3 percent that Bell workers received in the same years as salary increases.”
And Canadian jobs are transferred to Turkey and North Africa, under conditions much lower than those offered in Canada, noted Mr. Cloutier.
He invited governments to “react, ask questions and, by obtaining the answers, adjust all the support, supply, subsidies, credits, etc., that they offer to Bell, according to their ingratitude towards this country.
Unifor’s Quebec director lamented the fact that some media companies are making cutbacks rather than looking for new ways to deliver news or generate more revenue.
“It’s true that we haven’t seen that much innovation. All we have seen for years is companies screaming that the environment and the government are making it difficult for them to do business, while they cut and cut and cut », exclaimed Mr. Cloutier.
“We believe that other job cuts are coming” at BCE, denounced the national president of Unifor, Lana Payne.
She also urges the federal government to intervene, to demand that Bell be held accountable. She estimates the number of jobs affected at Bell and its subsidiaries in eight months at 6,000: technicians, customer service advisors, installers, salespeople and journalists.
Bell’s senior management was scheduled to appear before the House of Commons heritage committee on Tuesday afternoon to answer questions. However, the appearance was postponed.
The Canadian Press asked Bell if she would like to comment on Unifor’s exit; the company had not yet responded at the time of writing.
The Minister of Industry, François-Philippe Champagne, recalled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s harsh tone towards Bell. He said he was “furious” last month over the company’s “rotten” decision to end television newscasts, cut 4,800 jobs and sell regional radio stations.
In the press scrum on Tuesday, Mr. Champagne, however, did not comment on government intervention, arguing instead that measures taken by the Liberals tended to “bring inflation back in the right direction.”
“I could tell you that the measures we have taken in the field of cellular telephony, in internet services, we see the results,” he affirmed, adding that “Statistics Canada indicates that the prices of cellular and of the internet are part of the reasons why we are seeing a drop in inflation.”
“This is good news in itself, it is a good trend, but we obviously have to continue to put pressure,” said Minister Champagne.