{"id":73,"date":"2024-03-25T17:15:47","date_gmt":"2024-03-25T21:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/?p=73"},"modified":"2024-03-25T22:14:24","modified_gmt":"2024-03-26T02:14:24","slug":"shame-on-bell-unifor-stages-rally-in-ottawa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/2024\/03\/25\/shame-on-bell-unifor-stages-rally-in-ottawa\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Shame on Bell&#8221;: Unifor stages rally in Ottawa to protest Bell Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>By: Matt Katzman<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This week <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unifor.org\/\">Unifor<\/a>, Canada\u2019s largest private sector union, rallied in Ottawa to protest Bell\u2019s postponement of hearings at the House of Commons in response to the firing of 9% of their workforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 <a href=\"https:\/\/assets.nationbuilder.com\/unifortheunion\/pages\/4377\/attachments\/original\/1710856155\/Bell_media_backgrounder-en-v5.pdf?1710856155\">$3.7 billion <\/a>while CEO compensation had reportedly increased by 40%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"724\" src=\"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2024\/03\/Black-White-Fashion-Boutique-Simple-Open-Closed-Sign-Poster-Landscape-1-1024x724.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-75\" srcset=\"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2024\/03\/Black-White-Fashion-Boutique-Simple-Open-Closed-Sign-Poster-Landscape-1-1024x724.png 1024w, https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2024\/03\/Black-White-Fashion-Boutique-Simple-Open-Closed-Sign-Poster-Landscape-1-300x212.png 300w, https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2024\/03\/Black-White-Fashion-Boutique-Simple-Open-Closed-Sign-Poster-Landscape-1-768x543.png 768w, https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2024\/03\/Black-White-Fashion-Boutique-Simple-Open-Closed-Sign-Poster-Landscape-1-1536x1086.png 1536w, https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2024\/03\/Black-White-Fashion-Boutique-Simple-Open-Closed-Sign-Poster-Landscape-1-2048x1448.png 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-left\">Infographic by: Joshua Joseph <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Ottawa rally is part of their <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shameonbell.ca\/\">\u201cShame on Bell\u201d<\/a> campaign, identifying the wrongfulness of Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE) decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBell is a communications company with no moral fibre. While BCE points fingers at governmental policies, it cannot escape accountability for its actions,\u201d Unifor\u2019s website says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On March 20th, Unifor president Lana Payne addressed the media in a press conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-video\"><video height=\"1920\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1080 \/ 1920;\" width=\"1080\" controls src=\"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/197\/2024\/03\/u-NIFOR-pRESIDENT.mp4\"><\/video><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Unifor president Lana Payne<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThese companies are still making a lot of money\u2026they have a responsibility to deliver high quality news to Canadians,\u201d Payne said. \u201cNot thinking just because every single [project] out there doesn\u2019t&nbsp;make [Bell] a&nbsp;ton&nbsp;to stop&nbsp;doing that. That is not the social contract that they signed up to and we expect more of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Payne expects BCE to \u201cread the room in this country right now\u201d such that Canadians are very unhappy with corporations&#8217; decisions to \u201coptimise shareholder profit without investing in the services that they promised to deliver\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By: Matt Katzman This week Unifor, Canada\u2019s largest private sector union, rallied in Ottawa to protest Bell\u2019s 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":862,"featured_media":74,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[41,45,40,44,43,39,42],"class_list":["post-73","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jobs","tag-bell","tag-canada","tag-layoffs","tag-media","tag-shameonbell","tag-telecommunication","tag-unifor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/862"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":185,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/185"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/project.journalism.torontomu.ca\/jn8201w2024\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}