“Shame on Bell”: Unifor stages rally in Ottawa to protest Bell Canada

By: Matt Katzman

This week Unifor, Canada’s largest private sector union, rallied in Ottawa to protest Bell’s postponement of hearings at the House of Commons in response to the firing of 9% of their workforce.

The majority of those removed were office and customer service workers, and mostly women. Additionally, Bell shareholders made an all-time high salary this year with $3.7 billion while CEO compensation had reportedly increased by 40%.

Unifor has more than 300,000 members across Canada, many of which are rallying for the fired Bell customers. At Bell, 19,000 telecommunication and 2,100 miscellaneous workers are represented by Unifor. In this round of cuts, Bell terminated 4,800 jobs, including 800 Unifor members.

Infographic by: Joshua Joseph

The Ottawa rally is part of their “Shame on Bell” campaign, identifying the wrongfulness of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) decisions.

“Bell is a communications company with no moral fibre. While BCE points fingers at governmental policies, it cannot escape accountability for its actions,” Unifor’s website says.

They further demand that Bell: stop contracting workers offshore, prioritise hiring Canadian workers, stop cutting newsrooms, continue hiring local journalists and cut down on dividend payouts for shareholders.

On March 20th, Unifor president Lana Payne addressed the media in a press conference.

Unifor president Lana Payne

“These companies are still making a lot of money…they have a responsibility to deliver high quality news to Canadians,” Payne said. “Not thinking just because every single [project] out there doesn’t make [Bell] a ton to stop doing that. That is not the social contract that they signed up to and we expect more of them.”

Payne expects BCE to “read the room in this country right now” such that Canadians are very unhappy with corporations’ decisions to “optimise shareholder profit without investing in the services that they promised to deliver”.

Unifor and its members will continue to call out corporations as they continue to slash jobs around the country, hoping to hold them accountable for their unfavourable decisions.