IQT Solutions Layoffs: Hundreds Lose Jobs Without Notice In Quebec, Ontario

THE CANADIAN PRESS -- MONTREAL - Hundreds of workers for call-centre operator IQT Solutions in Quebec and Ontario were laid off without notice on Friday and told they would not be getting their final paycheques.

Of the workers losing their jobs, 450 were employed in Laval, Que., while 140 worked in Trois-Rivieres, Que., and 600 in Oshawa, Ont.

They were told without warning to gather their personal belongings and leave the premises.

Labour laws generally require employers to give two weeks' notice of a layoff and a minimum of four per cent of salary earned in the last year, generally considered vacation pay.

Reeling laid-off employees described the centre closings as savage.

The Trois-Rivieres centre was setting up a union before the closure.

IQT Solutions provides customer service, sales and technical support services to companies in North America and Europe. It had operated three centres in Canada before Friday.

The U.S. company is headquartered in Nashville, Tenn., where it announced in June it would bring 900 jobs during the next five years.

Comments

[SuperCanuck]

02:11 PM on 07/19/2011

Looks like the Nashville mayor is none too impressed with IQT over this.

They are not going to give them any incentive money and will not be moving there.

[tipou]

12:58 PM on 07/19/2011

i am appalled at some of the comments here.
these people were honestly earning a decent - if small - salary.
who are you people to snub the worker who earn less than you? would you rather pay for more social benefits and have them home doing nothing? you would still whine, wouldnt you?
do you also sneer at the 1/2 dozen cashier girls you meet every day? do you kick the kid putting stuff on the shelves at the grocery store?
do you recognize them no rights at all? no value as human beings?
well... you are no better than those thugs at IQT, and i sincerely wish you will never have to rely on such a job to make ends meet.
pray that you stay on top, walking all over other people. and if you dont stay on top, pray you will meet people who are more charitable than you are.

[wheelzroller]

11:58 AM on 07/17/2011

According to the story Trois Rivieres was setting up a Union. Do you think that perhaps this
initative had anything to do with the Lay Offs' ??? I am just asking a question here !!!

[Kimm2]

10:20 PM on 07/16/2011

These jobs require patience...maybe not a "skill" as some would wish to define it, but a virtue...would you rather be dealing with an automated system "Press 1 for Yes, Press 2 for No...please say the name of trhe department you wish to reach....sorry I did not get your response."---or would you prefer to talk to a person? These people are trying to survive, they have families, they have rent to pay...and in a bleak job market, who is anyone to judge them?

Plus, many people with disabilities depend on call centre jobs...whether they have university degrees or not...there is still so much discrimination in the workplace, and public resources are increasingly limited for people...until more employers honour the duty to accommodate laws in Canada without needing to be taken to task....call centre jobs are unfortunately necessary for a lot of people, whether they have skills to work elsewhere or not.

Please do not make blanket assumptions about peoples' education, and who "deserves" to be poor.

[Steve Karmazenuk]

11:17 PM on 07/16/2011

You need to be a bit of a masochist, honestly. I know very few people who've enjoyed their time in Call Center Hell.

[Kimm2]

12:20 AM on 07/17/2011

Been there, years ago. I hear you...it's also a catch 22 for those who have little choice. People with disabilities are often conditioned to be "happy", or at least patient with any job that religates them to the boiler room, out of sight...and off the public books. Little resources or effort going into training employers about their human rights obligations to accommodate those who have higher skills, but maybe do not fit the corporate mould.

My comment was more directed at those who say they have no sympathy for people in low skilled jobs who should "just get an education"--many have an education already--it's a perspective being overlooked, so I thought I'd point it out.

"Dial faster!"---Ah, the good ol' days. ;)

[Daniel Kilgallon]

08:38 PM on 07/16/2011

I have no sympathy. Go get an education and then a real job.

[muchadoaboutstupid]

11:16 AM on 07/19/2011

I hear stuff like this, and it makes me hope that one day you are in dire enough straights to have to take a job like this, if for no other reason than to give you an appreciation for the people you take for granted. Maybe then you'll realize that the voice on the other end of the line is a person trying to make ends meet, and doing one of the worst jobs possible for it.

People like you disgust me.

[RobotAnna]

02:38 PM on 07/19/2011

You are disgusting person. Go get an education in reality, then join real humanity.

[arkymorgan]

02:23 PM on 07/16/2011

''Any Prof making obscene amounts of money to simply regurgitat­e HARDCORE talking points related to Marx, Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and other fascists, communists and socialists­.''

I think I hear the voice of someone who didn't get accepted into college.

[TomasJefferson]

09:25 AM on 07/17/2011

"I think I hear the voice of someone who didn't get accepted into college. "

Everybody gets excepted into University in Canada. Everybody.

I graduated from a Community College with a 3.9 GPA, thank you.

Are you a communist?

[boneyize]

01:39 AM on 07/19/2011

you so smart!

here's a cookie!

[tipou]

12:46 PM on 07/19/2011

well, you may call others communists, but you are admitting you profited from a system you consider "communist"... were you too inadequate for something you would consider "a real college"? maybe you should not throw stones at people. but i understand how you feel you have to bow before big corporations. you are the perfect minion.

[Tanrioldu]

01:06 PM on 07/16/2011

Laying off employees is their right as an employer, as much of a douchy thing to do as it is.. but not giving notice nor wanting to pay their last paycheck? That's a lawsuit...

[Cameron Hodge]

11:55 AM on 07/16/2011

Who needs minimum wage workers when you can be subsidized by the Harper Government to sell these jobs to developing countries for a fraction of that?

Welcome to the Conservative Party's new GOP style Canada..

[Douglas Belanger]

11:57 AM on 07/16/2011

Really? Youre gonna blame the doings of a private american company on Harper?

[Cameron Hodge]

04:59 PM on 07/16/2011

If they haven't received what amounts to a tax handout from Harper, Ill retract my comment.

[moby49]

11:54 AM on 07/16/2011

This is happening everywhere that the government allows it to happen. It wont stop until every source of cheap labor is exhausted globally or the government steps in. These corporations are just like pimps, they lure their employees in with promises and then abuse them until they can't make them enough money. Then they throw them out like trash.

[Steve Karmazenuk]

10:41 AM on 07/16/2011

Call centers are generally among the worst jobs you can get in an office setting.

Why? Mainly because your employer looks at you both as an expense, and as a completely expendable component; there's always another ass to fill the seat.

Non-stop calls, generally from frustrated, angry customers (Does anyone call a call center when they DON'T have a problem?), ridiculous quotas and pressures from so-called "team leaders", plus all the usual benefits of office politics.

The trend to slash through call centers is nothing new...Bell's been doing it since 2004. Outsourcing jobs to India, where it costs them less to find people happy to put up with a little abuse in exchange for the better quality of life they can enjoy for much less money (and much less quality of life if that's the only household income) than their counterparts in Canada.

Having worked in call centers for Bell, HSBC, Computershare and a couple of others, I can honestly say that the layoffs are the usual final insult to people who exhaust themselves, burn themselves out for the sake of their uncaring managers.

Bittersweet for the call center employees: I suggest you take the time to change skill-sets and find less demeaning work. Take advantage of the layoffs to take back your life.

[marbou]

02:26 AM on 07/17/2011

Having done the work for a year, I can say that these companies are real corporate parasites who move from city to city, and country to country collecting government handouts. I was connected to the people who were in on all arrangements with the said company. The government was paying 60% of employee salaries for the first year and 100% of the salaries of physically handicapped employees. After one year, the company laid off the employees and shut down shortly after when it couldn't attract anymore suckers.

[MJinCanada]

08:00 PM on 07/17/2011

That's pretty horrible.

[SuperCanuck]

08:16 AM on 07/16/2011

I hope the Tennessee employees are taking note....This is how they treat people.

and if they sell any services in Canada its time to boycott them.

They might go back to the the US but they wont stay in the US once they find a cheaper offshore alternative.

[TomasJefferson]

08:49 AM on 07/16/2011

"I hope the Tennessee employees are taking note....Th­is is how they treat people."

People in Tennessee don't need any Canadians help that's for sure.

The high Canadian dollar coupled with a Union, means BYE BYE.

Low skilled workers deserve nothing more than minimum wage. That way they have to better themselves to get a better job.

[SuperCanuck]

09:25 AM on 07/16/2011

Trust me you need all the friends you can get because once the word gets out there wont any business in Canada and since you only can compete in the US someone will get laid off down there instead.

and there are no better jobs down there anyway so its your problem now. Good luck you will need it

[Alberto66]

11:27 AM on 07/16/2011

Gee and here I thought the economy was in the dumper in Tennessee. Who knew!

[tipou]

12:49 PM on 07/19/2011

apparently, tennessee was about to sign a subvention to iqt to move workers there. they still have not signed. i suppose they are now wondering if those people are the corporate citizens they wish to welcome.

[Punky Bold]

08:13 AM on 07/16/2011

Talk about deja vu! I worked for an American company that set up three call centres in Quebec in the early 2000s. The company received millions in loans from the provincial government as part of a job creation agreement. One year after I started working there, employees showed up for the day shift to find the doors locked. It was later discovered that all paperwork had been removed from the offices and the centres shut down permanently. It was a huge shock to the hundreds of employees who depended on these jobs just to get by. It was a huge hit to the local economy. The company never paid back its debt to the province despite legal efforts to do so. The company never even hit its hiring obligations as per the agreement. i quit the company after one year because I could no longer stomach its unethical practices (too many to mention). When I warned people that one day, they would show up to work and find they were out of a job, they laughed at me. 'They can't do that, just walk away,' colleagues would tell me. But they can. And they do. And these US companies who take advantage of cheap educated labour across the border know it and take advantage of it. It is part of their business plans.

[TomasJefferson]

09:16 AM on 07/16/2011

"The company received millions in loans from the provincial government as part of a job creation agreement."

That's the problem right there.

Government has no business mingling with the private sector.

[TomasJefferson]

06:34 AM on 07/16/2011

Thank God that a company is bringing BACK jobs to the USA.

Americans have lost over 40 percent of its manufacturing base in the last 15 years.

It's time for patriotic Americans to worry about their own first, then worry about the rest of the world after.

[Thodster]

08:24 AM on 07/16/2011

McJobs you mean. Which is what tele-marketing is. And McJobs are all you have left down there.

[TomasJefferson]

08:51 AM on 07/16/2011

The USA economy is still the most powerful in the world.

My friends who work are doing fabulous.

The low skilled and those who signed mortgages when they shouldn't have are in trouble.

I laugh when Canadians think Canada's economy is better than the States.

Liberal states are bringing the country to its knees.

Look at the unemployment rate of North Dakota.

[nomac]

09:27 AM on 07/16/2011

there's a reason why these customer service jobs came to canada, were nice, well mannered, and well educated, and can put up with ignorant and abusive customers (which in most cases are americans).

Having worked for at&t wireless and rogers wireless, i can tell you first hand that a mad canadian customer is way easier to deal with then a mad american, they also tend to understand that yelling and swearing at the person on the other end is not very productive.

You be hard pressed to find a single (inbound at least) call center here where the staff wasn't made up of at least 40%-50% university or collage grads, or people working towards the degree.

[SuperCanuck]

09:38 AM on 07/16/2011

and multi-lingual. How much french is in Tennessee? Good-bye Canadian and European business. I predict this company will be broke in 2 years. I've seen it before.

[TomasJefferson]

09:53 AM on 07/16/2011

"there's a reason why these customer service jobs came to canada, were nice, well mannered, and well educated, and can put up with ignorant and abusive customers (which in most cases are americans)­. "

The Huffpo admins get to see how ignorant and intolerant Canadians really are.

Re-read the above and that's he average mentality of the average Canadian.

[Douglas Belanger]

10:46 PM on 07/15/2011

InB4 People blame this on Harper even though it was a privately owned American company.

[TomasJefferson]

06:36 AM on 07/16/2011

These people want the government to own everything and distribute it evenly to everyone.

Of course the University Prof's and the hardcore in the government will make 7 times more than the average piece of cattle.

The left in Canada, especially those in the media, academia, and government really beleive they OWN the country and that they know what's BEST for everyone.

And that's the truth.

[Thodster]

08:25 AM on 07/16/2011

Well I'll gie those ivory tower academics one thing: they can spell b-e-l-i-e-v-e.

[Thodster]

08:26 AM on 07/16/2011

(give) - THAT was a typo!

[Jumpin Joe So Fat]

08:53 PM on 07/15/2011

I wonder if the workers have any rights under NAFTA to raise a class action suit against the Nashville parent company. I know that corporations have that right under NAFTA, but I'm not sure about [former] employees. Hope they get what is due to them .

[marbou]

10:44 PM on 07/15/2011

NAFTA does not provide for worker's rights, they only provide for corporate rights. The individual province's labour laws will have to apply in Ontario and Quebec. IQT was a service provider for Bell Canada. I don't see any problem for the workers to get paid. I'm sure Bell hasn't paid IQT's final installment. All the workers have to do is move fast.