As the saying goes, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

And when we say “thee”, we speak of those beleaguered Bell Canada employees who, as of February 1, were suspended from their jobs without pay.

And what egregious sin did these workers commit?

Well, they either told Bell that they won’t be vaccinated for COVID-19 (Feb. 1 was the deadline for compliance), or they simply refused to reveal their vaccination status. And this apparently makes them a bunch of Typhoid Marys, so it is that they’ve effectively been terminated… unless they change their minds and agree to get double (or is it triple?) jabbed.

We recently interviewed a Bell employee on day one of her suspension.

“Anne” (not her real name, as she prefers to remain anonymous) has a story that is equal parts sad and infuriating. Case in point: Anne had been exclusively working from her home office, so the only person she ever came in contact with was her husband. So, where is the logic, where is the science in effectively terminating an employee who poses absolutely no threat to her coworkers or clients?

And how odd that the deadline for Bell employees to get vaccinated came just a week after Bell Canada’s virtue-signalling exercise, Let’s Talk.

Let’s Talk is Bell’s public relations initiative to raise awareness for mental health issues. Yet, isn’t Bell itself causing considerable mental health issues for many of its own employees by giving them an economic death sentence?

Gee, Ma Bell, where did all your compassion go in the space of just one week?

By the way, we reached out to Bell’s media relations department to get the company’s side of the story. Our request for comment went unanswered. Alas, while this telecom endlessly brags about its annual “Let’s Talk” initiative, the company tends to clam up when impolite questions are asked. What a disgrace.