A Bell store in downtown Montreal. A group of employees recently fired by the telecom are claiming wrongful dismissal and seeking damages.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
Dozens of former BCE Inc. BCE-T employees who were fired by the company in recent months have filed documents in court claiming more than $6-million in damages, alleging wrongful dismissal by the telecom company.
In legal documents filed last week in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, 46 former Bell employees said they were among “other employees across Canada” fired under the guise of “cause,” when “in reality, the terminations were purely driven by economic considerations and formed part of a coordinated mass layoff.”
None of the allegations have been tested in court.
According to the documents filed by Jean-Alexandre De Bousquet and Mengdan Li, lawyers for the plaintiffs from Toronto law firm De Bousquet PC, these employees were terminated for allegedly violating Bell’s return-to-office policy.
Last month, Bell said it had terminated a “small number” of employees who had engaged in what the company called “swipe and go” behaviour.
The practice involves employees using their badges to tap into the building to meet in-office requirements, then immediately leaving. Bell’s return-to-office policy required most employees to work on site at least three days per week.
Bell said at the time that since these employees had violated the company’s code of conduct by intentionally and repeatedly falsifying workplace attendance, they were terminated “for cause.” In the Canadian employment law context, this carries serious consequences for employees, including the loss of severance entitlements.
In the legal documents, however, the employees pleaded that their termination should be considered “without cause,” and claimed compensation that they said should have been paid to them during “reasonable notice periods of termination.”
The employees alleged that prior to the termination, Bell had for months or years “condoned” the behaviour that the company later characterized as severe misconduct. The plaintiffs said that the employees had received “express or implied consent” regarding their work arrangements, including remote work practices.
They also alleged they did not receive any warnings before being terminated, and that investigations of their conduct were “procedurally unfair.”
“This was followed by an improper attempt to arbitrarily and retroactively impose disproportionate disciplinary measures,” the lawyers for the plaintiffs said in the documents filed to court.
Moreover, the employees alleged that the firings were part of a wider work-force reduction strategy where Bell’s upper management had set a target to dismiss approximately 30 employees per work site, “with at least one employee per team being selected in order to set examples for the rest.”
Bell said it has not yet been served with the documents, and therefore cannot comment on its specific points.
“If in the event that we are served with a statement of claim, we will vigorously defend any allegations in court and exercise available legal remedies with respect to any frivolous claims,” said Bell spokesperson Ellen Murphy in an e-mail.
After an internal review, she said, “Bell terminated employment in a small number of individual cases for clear violations of our code of conduct.”
“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,” Ms. Murphy said.
Mr. De Bousquet said in an e-mail that the firm plans to serve Bell with the documents on Monday.
The former Bell employees are claiming compensation ranging from $17,000 to $350,000, with their tenure ranging from two to 32 years. They worked a variety of roles including sales, software engineering, project management and human resources.