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OTTAWA. Bell Canada’s latest round of job cuts is driven by a greedy corporate strategy to boost shareholder profits by outsourcing good-paying Canadian jobs to low-wage countries, says Canada’s largest telecommunications union.



The company’s goal is to decrease the number of unionized employees and drive up profits for shareholders, many of whom are on Bell’s own upper management team,” says Barb Dolan, Ontario Administrative Vice-President for the Communications, Energy and Paper workers Union of Canada.



Bell has recently announced that 100 clerical employees in Ottawa many with more than 30 years of service, and only months away from retirement will be thrown out of work. Sixty-six employees at the Ottawa Quality. Assurance Team will be declared surplus and Bell is planning to replace these unionized jobs with managers, says Dolan. CEP Local 6004, which represents 800 clerical Bell employees in Ottawa and has seen Bell repeatedly cut unionized staff over the last three years, reducing the original number of members from 1,400 to almost half after this last round of cuts.



Telecommunications workers who have been totally hammered by outsourcing of jobs, often to low-wage countries,” adds Dolan. Thousands of positions have been lost at Bell Canada due to outsourcing Canadian telecommunication jobs to other countries where labour is cheaper.



We are making an all-out effort to make the sell off of Canadian jobs in the name of ‘globalization’ an election issue, says CEP President Dave Coles. To that end, the union is sending questionnaires to all political parties this week requesting their position on this and other issues of concern to its members.



Outsourcing is an issue that has affected our members in telecommunications and if left unchecked, it has the potential to affect workers in practically every industry in Canada, he says.



Canadians deserve a clear statement that the government supports keeping well-paid, unionized, Canadian jobs in Canada. Among other things, the federal government must improve the labour code to protect unionized jobs from outsourcing.



CEP represents 120,000 Canadian workers in several key parts of the economy, including forestry, energy, telecommunications, media and construction, among others.





MORE INFORMATION: Duncan Brown: dbrown@cep.ca