Unions representing Telus workers said the company offered buyouts to roughly 700 employees across Canada.
Per The Globe and Mail, the buyouts impact roughly 100 SQET-CUPE 5044 employees in Quebec, 90 members of SAMT-CUPE 5144 representing Telus management staff and roughly 510 members of Syndicat des Métallos, the Quebec branch of the United Steelworkers Union.
Telus said it made technology investments that enhanced the reliability and efficiency of its infrastructure and is offering voluntary packages to support the transformation in a statement. It also noted that the buyout packages exceed the requirements of the Canada Labour Code.
However, SQET-CUPE 5044 president Luc Pouliot told The Globe that Telus informed employees that the buyout offers were because of a reduction in workload. Pouliot said that the company moved many of its customer service jobs based in Quebec to countries like Morocco and Romania.
This isn’t the first time Telus has offered buyouts.
In 2023, the company tried to shed several hundred jobs through buyouts offered to 2,000 employees. At the time, Telus said the buyouts were because of investments it made in customer service technology and self-serve options for customers. A month later, the company doubled the number of employees it offered buyouts to.
Last year, Telus also had a scuffle with a union after it shuttered an office in Barrie, Ontario and told employees to relocate to Montreal or get laid off with a compensation package. The union won an injunction against Telus’ return-to-office mandate in August 2024.
Telus’s last annual report said the company had 106,400 active employees at the end of 2023.
