In 2018, Five Times as Many Shaw Employees Accepted Buyouts as the Company Expected ⇥ theglobeandmail.com

Christine Dobby, writing for the Globe and Mail in 2018:

Less than three weeks ago, Shaw gave 6,500 non-unionized employees the option to take voluntary severance packages, but said it expected just 10 per cent, or 650 people, to accept the buyouts; on Thursday, it said 3,300 employees had taken the offer – one-quarter of the company’s workforce.

I think about this story more often than you might imagine. For one, it demonstrates the effectiveness of unionization. For another, it also indicates a high level of staff dissatisfaction of management. At the time, annual layoffs were routine at Shaw, but these buyouts were offered to more employees than usual — nearly half the company’s staff at the time. Over half of offered staff accepted the buyouts. That was a lot of people who chose to walk away from an assumed stable job and income, and did not reflect well on Shaw.