Bell Media has cut an additional 43 technician jobs as part of the restructuring it announced in February, the company confirmed to CBC News on Thursday.
The announcement comes after the company said it would move its local broadcaster CP24 from its Queen Street headquarters to its Scarborough, Ont., campus this fall, with business news organization BNN Bloomberg to follow in 2025.
“No departures will occur until the period between August 30 and September 27. We will be providing training, offering voluntary severance packages and eliminating vacant positions wherever possible to mitigate the impact on our team members,” a spokesperson for Bell Media told CBC News.
“Bell has and will continue to comply with all of its obligations under the respective collective agreements, and to comply with all applicable federal laws.”
In a statement released Thursday, Unifor said it was “concerned and outraged” that Bell Media was making another restructuring announcement that could impact 49 “unionized positions” after a round of layoffs earlier this year that saw Bell’s parent company, BCE, cut 4,800 jobs and sell off 45 of its 103 regional radio stations.
“This is a corporation that has made billions of profits at the end of last year, and they continue to carry on with their profit-over-people principle,” Unifor national president Lana Payne said in the statement.
“This is yet another blow to journalism and democracy and a step towards bigger swaths of news deserts across Canada.”
Unifor said the cuts affect several areas of production, including electronic news gathering (ENG) editors and supervisors, media service co-ordinators, media service technicians, graphics artists, post-sound and audio-visual technicians and engineering technicians.