The Bell news layoffs come at a time when Bell is on a sound financial footing. BCE laying off 4,800 people (9% of its workforce) is a *choice* for them. A thread:

Bell is firing workers, destroying local news, and cutting national news at a time when they are actually *increasing* dividend payouts to shareholders. They are using the crisis in media as a smokescreen- Bell is not in financial crisis at all.

Bell has always been the benefit of national subsidies and monopolies as Canada's main telecom carrier historically, and has generally benefited from CRTC regulations. Its not unreasonable to expect them to act in the public interest as a result..

Despite what Bell would like you to think, this isn't about Bill C-11 (updates to the broadcast act) or the Online news act (Bill C-18). While it is true that the rollout of relief funds has been slow, the company reported a 2.3 BILLION profit.

And executives are lining their own profits at the expense of workers. Mirko Bibic, the president and CEO of Bell Canada received $13.59 *million* in 2022. (a 20% raise from 2021). That's a 2.5 million dollar raise, must be nice.

Many of losses these are good union jobs. Unifor aloe has 26K members in telecommunications, with 19K members employed by BCE. Over 2100 members are employed by Bell media specifically. These are the kind of media jobs you can actually live on.

Unifor This is the largest mass layoff by BCE in 30 years. And there is literally no financial reason to do so. They just don't want to operate news anymore and provide these essential services to communities, even if the company is making massive profits.

Unifor Bell claims to care about mental health, but what about the mental health of its own employees (many who found out about their layoffs from the news) #BellLetsTalk