Bell slashes nearly 700 jobs in latest round of layoffs

Bell Canada says it’s cutting approximately 690 employees, mostly managers, to help reduce debt and drive growth. The cuts follow thousands of company layoffs last year.

This time Bell says it’s axing about 650 non-unionized management positions across the country, representing less than two per cent of its workforce.

Canada’s largest communications company said it’s also cutting approximately 40 jobs at Bell Media, its media and entertainment subsidiary.

“We made the difficult but necessary decision” to cut manager jobs to advance the company’s three-year strategic plan to deliver “sustainable growth,” Bell told CBC News in an email.

It did not provide further explanation for the Bell Media job cuts, but said that it thanks the laid off employees “for their dedication and contributions.”

Earlier this year, Bell offered severance packages to 1,200 unionized employees, attributing the move to “unprecedented challenges” in the telecommunications industry.

Canada’s telecom industry has seen a slowdown in growth over the last year, and major players like BCE and Rogers have shed some of their assets in an effort to reduce costs.

Bell sold its 37.5 per cent ownership stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment (MLSE) to Rogers for $4.7 billion last September. It announced a few months later that it would buy U.S. telecom company Ziply for $5 billion.

The company has cut thousands of jobs in the last year and a half. That includes 1,300 cuts in June 2023, and, in February 2024, Bell announced that it laid off 4,800 employees and would shutter several dozen radio stations, plus further layoffs aimed at technical staff in June the same year.