RadioActive wrote:

According to the Globe & Mail, Big Red wants to be Littler Red, offering buyouts to at least half of its 25,000 employees. 

The report indicates neither on-air talent nor Sportsnet employees are included in the number. Union types are also apparently exempt

"We are taking ⁠steps to adjust our cost structure to reflect ​the business realities of the current environment. As part ​of this, some teams have chosen to offer voluntary departure and retirement programs to give some employees the choice to ​decide whether they'd like to stay with the ​company or begin a new chapter," Rogers spokesperson Zac Carreiro told ‌the ⁠Globe and Mail."

That is a stunning number and there's no word on what might happen if not enough accept the package. 

Rogers Communications offering buyouts to half its workforce, Globe and Mail reports

Voluntary buyouts are quite common, even in prosperous companies that might happen to have too many employees in the wrong places.
It's not known how many employees Rogers is looking to trim, but the math is simple nonetheless. If X is the number of employees they need to trim and Y is the number who accept the voluntary buyout offer and not enough employees accept the package, then it's:
(25,000 - Y) - (25,000 - X) = roughly how many could still get laid off
The pay rates of those who accepted are a variable. And they've already singled out on-air talent, Sportsnet employees at Rogers Sports and Media and union employees as not being eligible for the 25,000.

Last edited by DX (April 27, 2026 3:58 pm)

They're going to need a few billion dollars for that remaining chunk of MLSE.

RadioActive wrote:

It's not quite the same thing as Rogers, but Bell is now involved in a dispuate with some of its workers. The company says it's because they refused an order to return to the office and allege they fraudulently committed acts to cover for not showing up..

But the union maintains that's just a smokescreen to get rid of people. 

"Employment lawyer Jean-Alexandre De Bousquet...described the move as “an economic layoff disguised as a mass firing for cause,” and said he estimates hundreds of employees have been terminated over the last three weeks, largely from technology-related roles that he argues can be done remotely from home."

Bell fires dozens for falsifying workplace attendance following return-to-office mandate

Fascinating little exchange between Jerry Agar and John Moore on CFRB Thursday morning. It appeared at first that Moore was implying a memo came from Bell ordering their media employees not to talk about this story on air. Agar was aghast, saying he was going to do it as a topic on his show. 

Turns out, it was all a misunderstanding. What the company actually told employees (those who are left) was not to falsely tap into their workplaces for themselves or someone else. 

For a second there, I thought we'd found a whole new reason to distrust Bell! As if we needed more...

Over the course of the weekend I received many posts on LinkedIn from former colleagues at Citytv/Rogers announcing their departures as they took the package. A few of them are hoping that they can still work in broadcasting and to them, I wish them luck.

It technically wasn’t a layoff but may as well have been. I think Rogers overextended themselves when they poached HGTV & The Food Network from Corus to add to the Citytv+ package, which allegedly isn’t catching on, thus all the promos. If Rogers only had some broadcast acumen, this type of thing might not be happening, but they seem stuck somewhere between community programming and OMNI and I don’t see that changing. Ted would not be happy!