Canadian company fires employees for faking attendance; Workers caught in 'swipe and go' scandal

Canadian corporate giant BCE, which owns Bell, has fired a number of workers for violating policies around workplace attendance or working from home, but CBC News has learned the company is facing allegations the terminations were unjustified and used to avoid paying severance.

In an email to employees obtained by CBC News, Bell’s chief human resources officer Nikki Moffat said terminated employees were "misrepresenting their presence in the workplace", — though now-fired workers have been disputing that claim on social media and in conversations with CBC News.

In addition to accusations those fired were deceptive about when they were in the workplace, Bell claims some terminated workers were caught "swiping in and leaving shortly after," according to Moffat's email.

Not so, say workers contacted by CBC News, as well as Jean-Alexandre De Bousquet, a lawyer representing at least 30 terminated Bell workers.

"I would say most of those people have never worked in the office, not even before the pandemic," said De Bousquet. The Mississauga-based employment lawyer said he has been contacted by more than 30 fired Bell employees and believes there could be "hundreds."

A Bell representative told CBC News the company disagrees with the claim hundreds have been terminated, saying that number is inaccurate. Bell would not provide specific details on how many people have been terminated or confirm any names of those affected, but the company said only a "small number" of employees were fired.

Bell said it’s been policy for corporate office employees to be in the office at least two days a week since 2022 and three days since 2023. But De Bousquet and his clients dispute that.

"We’re talking about people who have been hired 12 years ago and never stepped foot in the office … they never agreed to this," said De Bousquet. "It was a unilateral change by Bell."

Multiple Bell employees contacted CBC News to advise that not only were they never required to work in the office under strict policies before, but their immediate managers had explicitly approved the very working arrangements they were terminated for.

"They were getting different and contradictory messages. … Their managers would say, 'well, no, as long as you come in and swipe your fob, you don't have to stay the whole day,'" said De Bousquet, who is in the process of filing multiple claims in court for employees in Ontario and Quebec.

De Bousquet says many of his clients were not given warnings or suspensions before they were fired.

He and several of the terminated workers have said it is their opinion that Bell fired them for economic reasons, and the company is claiming misconduct to avoid paying severance.

"This is … a big money-saving move for Bell to fire all those people for cause and pay them nothing," De Bousquet said. Usually, employees would be entitled to severance pay, which De Bousquet says would have amounted to a substantial sum if the employees had been laid off instead.

Bell disagrees, writing in a statement that employees were fired for "clear violations" of the company's code of conduct.

"In each case, there was a thorough investigation and individuals were presented with clear evidence of their misconduct," Bell spokesperson Luc Levasseur said in an emailed statement.

Levasseur said managers that condoned the swipe-and-go activity were also investigated and fired.

While the company denies economic motivation for these terminations, they come months after Bell Canada cut 650 management jobs and 40 news division jobs in late 2025, with the company saying then that it hoped to reduce debt and drive growth. 

Recent numbers have been mixed for Bell, as the company announced early Thursday that profits have recently dropped at parent company BCE. While operating revenue went up by four per cent in the first three months of this year, those results were driven in part by growing revenue from the company's AI services while more traditional services, such as phone and TV, saw some declines.

In addition, Bell’s move to strictly enforce attendance policies at work comes as white collar workers across the country have started returning to the office post-pandemic.

Ontario public servants went back to the office four days a week last fall and five days a week as of January, while Alberta's public service went back to office full time in February.

Employees at some of Canada's major banks also trekked back to the office four days a week starting last September. Meanwhile, federal public service executives returned to the office full time earlier this week, and all other federal public service employees will join them in office four days a week as of July.

Just cause is a high bar: lawyer

Toronto employment lawyer Sundeep Gokhale, who usually represents management, says disputes over work-from-home policies have been popping up in boardrooms across the country.

"It's an incredibly sensitive and high volume topic," Gokhale said.

Employers have the right to dictate where employees work from in most cases, according to Gokhale — unless it was explicitly written in an employee's contract that they can work from home or accommodations apply.

When it comes to firing employees, Gokhale says employees usually need to be warned and disciplined about their behaviour and given a chance to improve before they're let go. And firing employees for just cause — where termination is immediate and they don't get severance — is a high bar to meet.

"Courts have coined … just cause as the capital punishment of employment law," Gokhale said. 

Theft, fraud or falsifying records are some of the serious offences that courts have deemed to meet the bar, according to Gokhale. 

He says this situation with Bell will come down to the evidence in each individual employee's case.