Bell Employees Sue Over Mass Terminations For Faking Attendance

A group of former Bell employees has taken the company to court, and the case centres on a fight over what counted as acceptable office attendance.

The Toronto Star reports that nearly 50 former employees are suing parent company BCE, alleging they were wrongfully terminated as part of a broader round of cost cuts. Bell has said the firings came down to employees misrepresenting their attendance, but the lawsuit tells a different story, arguing the company is going after conduct it tolerated for a long time before suddenly treating it as a fireable offence.

At the centre of the case is Toronto employment lawyer Jean-Alexandre De Bousquet, who’s representing the former staff. He told the Star the scale and pattern of the firings don’t look like isolated discipline cases.

“What we are seeing here are massive rounds of economically motivated terminations,” De Bousquet said. “It’s like Bell can’t fire people fast enough.”

Bell rejects that characterization and says the terminations were strictly about code of conduct breaches. But the statement of claim alleges something more coordinated was going on behind the scenes. A whistleblower inside the company reportedly gave De Bousquet documentation pointing to an internal plan that called for cutting roughly 30 employees per office, with instructions to target at least one person per team to make an example of them.

None of this has been proven in court, and Bell told the Star it can’t speak to specifics until it’s formally served with the claim, though it plans to fight the case once that happens.

The lawsuit also points to timing as evidence. These firings were happening at the same time Bell had a hiring freeze in place and was making other cuts elsewhere, including last week’s announcement of nearly 700 job losses tied to its three-year growth plan.

As for what actually got people fired, the Star’s reporting describes employees using workarounds like badging in just before midnight and again a few minutes later to register attendance across two separate days, or “coffee badging,” stopping by briefly for a coffee before working the rest of the day from home.

According to De Bousquet, none of this happened in secret. He says employees were never disciplined or warned in advance, and many had tacit or outright approval for these arrangements before Bell reclassified them as serious misconduct. Bell counters that its internal investigations were rigorous and that any manager found enabling these workarounds was let go as well.

There’s also a process complaint baked into the lawsuit. Many of the termination letters were reportedly close to identical in wording, and some allegedly had factual errors or referenced different employees entirely, details the claim says undercut Bell’s argument that each case was reviewed individually.

Most of the 46 plaintiffs are based in the Greater Toronto Area with damages sought ranging from roughly $18,000 to $350,000 depending on salary and years of service. Bell now has 20 days to file a formal response.