Telecommunications giant Telus Corp. is looking to cut hundreds of jobs in Canada by offering buyouts to about 700 of its employees, according to unions representing those workers.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) said in a news release on Jan. 30 that the Vancouver-based telco has rolled out voluntary departure packages to employees to trim its workforce.
The offer will affect 100 members of the union representing Telus employees in Quebec, SQET-CUPE 5044, the release said, along with 90 members of the union representing Telus supervisory personnel, SAMT-CUPE 5144, and about 510 members of Le Syndicat des Métallos, the Quebec branch of the United Steelworkers union.
“This initiative, which is reportedly attributable to a decreased workload, raises serious questions about the future of quality jobs in Quebec and in the rest of Canada,” said Luc Pouliot, president of SQET-CUPE 5044.
The union added that this “new wave” of buyout packages “sacrifice its [Telus’s] employees’ expertise, thereby weakening the local telecommunications industry.”
“Each buy out package represents a loss of invaluable know-how, which jeopardizes the company’s ability to offer good reliable service to its customers,” Pouliot said.
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The Epoch Times reached out to Telus for comments but did not hear back by publication time.
‘Evolving Regulatory’ Environment
Reports of Telus shrinking its workforce have attracted attention in recent times. In May 2023, the company said it would offer buyouts to a large group of employees and expected several hundred workers to take them. The telco noted that the buyouts resulted from significant investments it had made in customer service technology and self-serve options for customers.
Three months later, the company announced plans to cut 6,000 jobs: 4,000 at its main Telus business and another 2,000 at Telus International, attributing the move to the “evolving regulatory, competitive, and macroeconomic environment.”
According to its 2023 annual report, Telus had 106,400 active employees at the end of that year, compared to 108,500 in the previous year. Meanwhile, net income fell 50 percent, from $1,718 million in 2022 to $867 million in 2023, the report said.
To mitigate risks, Telus told shareholders in the annual report that it would reduce capital and operational expenditures and introduce “new efficiency initiatives, which could include reducing the size of our workforce.”
‘Undermine Investment’
Some of Telus’s competitors have also announced job cuts in their media divisions of late.
In late November last year, Rogers’ sports and media division said it had cut a “few dozen” jobs in its audio business amid an unpredictable advertising market that led to declining revenue.
In February 2024, BCE Inc. announced it was cutting 9 percent of its workforce, totalling 4,800 jobs “at all levels of the company.” It subsequently said in an April 2024 notice that less than 10 percent , or 440, of the total job cuts were at its Bell Media subsidiary.
Mirko Bibic, BCE’s president, said in a Feb. 8, 2024, open letter that the cuts were due to decisions by Ottawa and Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), that “undermine investment in our networks,” among other reasons.
“Of particular concern is a recent decision by the CRTC forcing Bell to provide third party resellers access to our high-speed fibre network before we have even had an opportunity to recoup our multi-billion dollar investment,” he said in the open letter, referring to a CRTC decision in November 2023.
The CRTC said its decision was to promote competition in the retail internet service market to “foster greater affordability, increased choice, and differentiated service offerings for Canadians.” In August 2024, the regulator ruled that Canada’s largest telephone companies—Bell Canada, Saskatchewan Telecommunications, and Telus—must provide their competitors with workable wholesale access to their fibre networks no later than Feb. 13, 2025.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
