Bell Canada’s parent company BCE has cut nearly 700 jobs across multiple business units in recent weeks after separately firing a “small number” of employees accused of falsifying office attendance records, the telecommunications giant says.
The layoffs rank among Bell’s largest workforce reductions in recent years. Combined with dozens attendance-related dismissals, the dual workforce shake up has fuelled allegations from former employees and their lawyers that Bell selectively enforced return-to-office policies and is using misconduct investigations to reduce headcount — claims the company strongly rejects.
Bell said 690 workers — roughly one per cent of BCE’s workforce — were dismissed as part of restructuring efforts and would not comment on how many employees were terminated for attendance-related misconduct.
“Organizational changes began late last year to better align the team structure with our strategy, and the current workforce reductions continue that work,” said Bell spokesperson Luc Levasseur.
“These changes are part of our ongoing business operations and reflect several initiatives, including the migration of customers to a more resilient, easier-to-maintain fibre network and ongoing operating efficiencies.”
Levasseur added that approximately 230 unionized roles were affected and in most cases, eligible unionized employees are being offered voluntary separation packages.
The Star spoke to several current and former employees who were granted anonymity because they feared for their jobs or future employment opportunities.
One employee who used to work on a Bell IT team said they were laid off in early June as part of what their director called “company-wide reorganization.”
The worker said they had spent the past three years working on an outdated telephone platform that Bell continued to use because it performed an essential function.
“The team dynamics were incredibly frustrating; my manager constantly reminded me that I wasn’t officially funded to work on these legacy platforms, yet at the same time, insisted that I had to keep supporting them,” the former employee told the Star. “On top of that contradiction, I was consistently given new deliverables for other ongoing projects, while also being instructed to train offshore resources from India on those very same legacy systems.”
The worker added that the team was “completely drowning in work” so when they were laid off, they felt “blindsided.”
“I did not expect it, considering the amount of work we all had to do, and the mostly shorthanded team I was part of,” they explained.
Earlier this year, Bell cracked down on employees who were accused of “falsifying workplace attendance,” firing dozens of workers for cause after internal investigations concluded they had deliberately manipulated attendance records, often to meet the common requirement of three days in office.
“These cases involved deliberate and repeated falsification of workplace attendance, including entering the workplace to record attendance and then leaving the premises,” BCE spokesperson Luc Levasseur said in May.
“In each case, there was a thorough investigation and individuals were presented with clear evidence of their misconduct. The majority of individuals admitted to deliberate and repeated falsification of workplace attendance.”
According to a Bell employee with knowledge of the terminations, the investigations found workers were using different strategies to clock in, including swiping access cards just before midnight and then again a few minutes later to record attendance on two consecutive days. Others would go to the office to grab a cup of coffee — a practice called “coffee badging” — or to use gym facilities and then work from home for the rest of the day.
Though Bell has maintained that the investigations were thorough and that employees were presented with clear evidence of misconduct before being terminated, lawyers representing former employees argue the company selectively enforced attendance rules that had long been tolerated by management.
Employment lawyer Jean-Alexandre De Bousquet, who represents approximately 30 former Bell employees, previously described the attendance dismissals as “an economic layoff disguised as a mass firing for cause.”
“For most of them, their bosses knew what was going on,” said De Bousquet. “It was condoned by Bell, who was actively looking the other way, until it was no longer convenient for them.”
In an internal email sent in May and obtained by the Star, Bell’s chief human resources officer said the company terminated “a very small portion” of workers after investigations found they had “deliberately and repeatedly” misused card-access systems to falsely register office attendance.
One now-terminated employee said she interpreted the memo as a “deterrence email” and a sign the return-to-office policy was being closely monitored, so she changed her behaviour to adhere to the mandate more closely. Then, at the end of May, she was called into a meeting with human resources and an investigator.
“They had a bunch of questions, and I mentioned ‘you cannot be talking about my current behavior, because I know it is correct,’ so they said, ‘no, we’re talking about past behavior,” the worker recounted.
“That was something that I corrected by myself already, without anybody having to come to me, so why am I being questioned about it now?”
Before the email was sent, the employee said her manager never enforced the return-to-work policy and never provided any clear or formal guidelines.
“My manager’s response was also very casually saying: ‘I’m not into micromanaging. I don’t care what time you come or what time you’re leaving, as long as the work is getting done.’”
Several former employees have alleged they received little warning before being investigated and dismissed, while others say managers explicitly approved flexible attendance arrangements that later became the subject of misconduct allegations.
Bell has rejected those claims, saying managers who condoned attendance falsification were themselves investigated and terminated.
The latest round of departures is not the first time the telecommunications giant has faced scrutiny over widespread firings. In early 2024, more than 400 unionized workers were declared “surplus” by Bell and informed of their termination in a 10-minute group virtual meeting, according to a representative of Unifor.
Unifor called the move “beyond shameful” and added that a manager read the layoff notice, “without allowing members or the union the opportunity to unmute to ask questions.”
