Report released on privatization of Manitoba Telecom Services

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2023 (843 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The timing of the release of a report 26 years after the privatization of MTS commissioned by one of its unions that’s lost hundreds of members over those years likely could not have come at a better time.

Although the local unions do not yet know how they will be impacted, last week Bell announced it would be cutting its workforce nationally by 1,300. The local unions believe there’s bound to be some pain.

But regardless of the head count affected in Manitoba, the latest cuts dovetail into the narrative of the report, “For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Privatization of Manitoba Telecom Services and its Impacts.”

Written by longtime Winnipeg labour writer Doug Smith, published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and commissioned by TEAM (formerly the Telecommunications Employees Association of Manitoba), the 52-page history of the provincial telco came to the conclusion that many associated with its unionized workforce would have told you.

“Today, MTS can hardly be said to exist anymore other than as a daub of jam on the lips of Bell Canada, the corporate giant which consumed MTS in 2017. Where, in 1996, it employed 4,000 unionized workers, it now employs closer to 1,500. Someday corporate Bell will lick those lips and MTS will simply disappear,” Smith writes in the report.

Smith points out that Manitoba Telecom Services was formed by the Manitoba Conservative government of the day, in 1906, by acquiring Bell’s Manitoba network because the company at the time was not investing enough to expand the residential and rural network.

In 1997, when it was privatized, and then in 2017 when it was sold to Bell, those same kind of promises about service delivery were made.

Regardless of the amount Bell has invested in the province — it has invested more than the $1 billion it promised in its first five years — the representations Manitoba’s Conservative government made in 1997 and the ones Bell made in 2017 to maintain a Manitoba preference in its workforce and decision-making powers have been overtaken, Bell would say, by market forces.

Smith reports that one year after the public offering of shares — that Manitobans had preferential access to — 1,350 people had been laid off and rates had risen by 37 per cent.

“Economically Manitoba has been a loser. Technological change has led to some job losses and other jobs have been shipped outside the province to non-unionized workers, or even out of the country to Philippines and India,” Smith said at an event to launch the report.

He details the migration away from Manitoba-based service providers such as insurance, pension services and legal services to Bell’s preferred suppliers mostly in Central Canada.

“Furthermore, Manitoba no longer exercises any democratic control over MTS,” Smith said.

Erin Spencer, the executive director of TEAM, spoke about how her members are shut out of even applying for positions elsewhere for Bell that can be done remotely. She believes it’s because of an anti-union bias, she said.

Staff in other provinces who work in IT, network engineering, sales, marketing, business administration and finance for Bell and other telcos are not unionized.

Spencer’s membership ranks have been cut by about 40 per cent since 2016, from 930 to about 565 today.

“Jobs have been cut and work has been centralized in eastern and western Canadian locations,” she said. “When Bell bought MTS it was said Winnipeg would be its western headquarters. Bell said it bought MTS to grow it, not shrink it. But all we have seen here is cut after cut. Manitobans deserve better.”

Smith points out that MTS went to war with its workers almost right away by raiding its pension funds in a move that resulted in the workers winning a Supreme Court ruling 17 years later.

“Privatization initiated a period of continuous layoffs and conflicts with MTS’s unionized workforce. In 1999, the company locked out the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 435 and the Communications, Energy and Paperwork’s Local,” the report states.

“At the time of privatization, the Conservative government made many measures intended to ensure that MTS remained Manitoban. However, within two years, MTS began what would be a 20-year journey toward becoming a subsidiary of Canada’s largest telecommunications company. In 2017, Bell Canada took over MTS.”

From its point of view, Bell officials still point to the fact that Winnipeg is the company’s western headquarters — although few seem to be able to detail exactly what that means — and that it has made significant capital investments in the province.

In response to the publication of the CCPA report, a Bell MTS official noted the investment and technological enhancements made to the Manitoba network.

“In addition to our own team members (approximately 2,000), we work with a wide range of local suppliers in providing our customers with our telecommunications services, who likewise bring jobs to communities across Manitoba. We are always hiring and training new techs; last year we doubled the number of line technicians in Winnipeg. Additionally, nearly 98 per cent of union departures in Manitoba have been voluntary,” the official said.

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca