Former Rogers workers offer inside look at call centres amid layoffs

Recently, around 1,000 Canadians were laid off from Foundever, and they all shared one thing in common: they all used to work on Foundever’s Rogers contract. This happened this summer, but looking back over the last year, it seems like the company is greatly reducing its Canadian-based support staff.

Rogers told MobileSyrup that it’s “made changes to our vendor mix“ but has not taken ownership of the layoffs. Nor has the company opted to comment specifically on the growing signs that it’s moving away from human-based support workers. The current Foundever layoffs include tech support, customer care, team managers, and all call centre positions. 

“As customers increasingly use digital tools and self-services, we’ve made some changes to our vendor mix. Similar to other providers, we continue to serve our customers across the country using our internal team and third-party partners. The majority of agents are based in Canada and there is no impact to our internal customer service team,” Rogers said in an email to MobileSyrup. In a follow-up statement, the carrier said, “the majority of [its] agents are based in Canada.”

Foundever told MobileSyrup that it didn’t lay off 1,000 people, but did not share how many people lost their jobs. The company told the Globe and Mail that the change with Rogers affected a small percentage of its Canadian workforce, but it also wouldn’t confirm the total number of layoffs to the Globe. We will update this story if the company confirms an exact number with us.

A person with knowledge of Rogers’ call centres who spoke to MobileSyrup on the condition of anonymity said that the layoffs would impact around 900 call centre employees, but they suspect more are spread across other call centres. Combining that with roughly 400 online chat agents and other call centre workers who were laid off in February and thousands before that, it seems like the company is shifting its customer support strategy.

Former employees suspect shift to AI

In social media posts and testimonies shared with MobileSyrup, many former employees suspected Rogers of moving towards an AI help system. They think this because the company recently forced them to use AI tools to track their calls, and Rogers’ flanker brand Fido now uses an AI chatbot and a virtual assistant to help field calls.

MobileSyrup spoke with another person with knowledge of Rogers’ customer support operations, who said the company shut down all levels of customer support for Chatr, another of the company’s sub-brands. They believed the same happened to Fido, and said Rogers internally discussed plans over a year ago to shut down two chat and call centres. They claim the company encourages in-store agents to “flip” Fido customers to Chatr, and Chatr customers to Rogers. As they described it, Rogers is making customer service worse in order to push customers up the revenue chain.

When we asked Rogers if it planned to move customer support to a more AI-centric platform, the telecom told us that it is not moving away from human-led support, but never outright denied an increase in AI use. While there is no telling how this will go, we often see reports from Fido users that getting support help can now sometimes be a multi-day process since they need to go through the AI chatbot’s hurdles and then schedule a callback with a real human. Rogers isn’t the only one leaning this way in Canada either. Telus launched an AI-powered support chatbot last year, and its flanker brand Koodo has long pushed customers to speak to a bot first and schedule support call-backs.

However, shifting to AI-first customer support solutions negatively impacted customers. A recent example of this happened when Rogers began shutting down service for customers still using 3G. It directed those customers to contact it to restore service. Fido subscribers were stuck fighting with the AI chatbot, which wasn’t able to help, and many reported extremely long wait times to speak with someone who could help them restore service.

Call centres had poor working conditions

What’s more disheartening is the stories we’re hearing from recently laid-off Foundever employees about how terrible the call centre working conditions were. MobileSyrup viewed social media posts and spoke with former employees about some of the issues they faced. Some shared how they were only given 10 seconds between calls, with some workers even being policed for being away from their desks for longer than a few minutes.

Others shared stories about how they were punished for helping customers get a good deal or a plan that fits their lifestyle, instead of upselling them on various other Rogers plans or credit cards. One worker said they were told to upsell data to seniors who obviously had no use for it. Employees describe it as dirty work that affects their mental health. One worker told us that if they had a rough week, they were routinely pulled into a meeting room to have their job threatened. Another was told they were “damaging the company” when they didn’t try to upsell customers who were trying to cancel their services.

Throughout all of this, it’s worth remembering that when Rogers bought Shaw, it was mandated to create 3,000 jobs in Western Canada as a condition of the merger. While it’s unclear how many jobs have been made, looking at our reporting and the telecom’s own annual reports, things seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Rogers claims that it has created 1,800 jobs in Western Canada, but a Globe and Mail report suggests that number has been offset by employees leaving the company. 

The call centre layoffs in 2025 likely don’t count towards this number since they were with a company contracted to work for Rogers. However, it appears that anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 Canadian jobs have disappeared due to strategic shifts at the telecom. While Rogers might not have been their official employer, it was the reason those people had jobs.

While there is no 2025 report yet since we’re only halfway through the year, the telecom did report a workforce shrinkage of 2,000 people between 2023 and 2024.

These mass layoffs are also happening at other carriers. Bell dropped many of its Bell Media staff last year and announced that it was cutting 4,800 jobs in 2024. Telus dropped 3,300 positions in 2024 and offered 700 more workers voluntary payouts in early 2025.