We live in urban Victoria. Our phone line went down on October 17 and was repaired on November 16. I was waiting for calls to get work. On my weekly phonecalls to Telus to see if they were getting closer to fixing the line, my favorite thing was how they want you to have a phone so they can call you if they can fix it earlier. If I had a phone, I wouldn't need to have it fixed would I? I have the same reasons for staying with Telus, I guess the workers who are left are getting a better wage than Sprint? We now have shaw internet too. Thanks for the article

Kudos for publishing the kind of story that the dailies are shying away from. Must be the advertising dollars! I've just had a ridiculously hard time with Telus and I am a city dweller! An offer to write about it was rejected so I am so glad to see it here. Thanks Tyee.

One of the real service complaints I have about Telus is that their calling card numbers are completely useless in Ontario and Eastern Canada. When I complained, they said that they were having a dispute with Bell Canada. Does anyone know any more about this? Can these two huge corportaion not figure out a simple contract? This fall, when I went out East, I just took my cell phone (are we all being forced to own one of these things? Is this the real point? Oh dear, too conspiracy theory I guess.)

I thought your article was witty but I have to admitt that as I read it something annoyed me a little- that is the belief that the telephone company is responsible for making phone service available every day to whoever wants it whereever they want a phone to ring. Is this a fact? I find this attitude prevalent in Canada, be it for phone lines, water or electricity. We expect it all to work all the time, and that 'someone' is responsible if it isn't. There are millions of people living with no phones, or shared phones, or just occassional phones. Maybe we should stop fussing so much when things don't work perfectly? Maybe spend more time being thankful you and your family have an island retreat- somewhere to go to escape the ringing?

I recently gave up on Telus entirely. Because I live in the Lower Mainland, I am able to choose another service provider and I exercised to it's fullest potential. Rather than pay Telus over $120/month in land line and mobile phone charges, I combined the two and went with CityFido for $50/month. I now have a cell phone that uses my former landline phone number, I'm still listed in the white pages, and my long distance rates are good too. Now, Fido's customer service isn't all that great either...but it is no where near as bad as the hassles I had with Telus and the price is great. I actually don't mind paying more for higher quality but considering the quality of service Telus has to offer right now, they should be paying their customers just for putting up with them!

Charles, judging by your article, I gather you are an extension of the TWU's communications department. How utterly ridiculous... you've bought their self-serving, archaic rhetoric hook line and sinker. I have no attachment to telus one way or another... all I know is that it seems like a pretty good company, one that this archaic union is bent on destroying. Read this for a more rationale perspective... though you may not be interested in one. Wireless world threatens TWU: The union is demanding a strike vote before workers see the latest offer The Vancouver Sun Tue 27 Jan 2004 Page: F5 Section: Business BC Byline: Hugh Finnamore Source: Special to the Sun Intransigent smokestack-era unions are facing extinction in a wireless world. Nowhere is that more evident than in the labour battle being waged by the Telecommunications Workers Union against Telus Communications Inc. Unable to force Telus to hand over its non-union Ontario and Quebec employees and foist a "copper-cable" contract on a wireless enterprise, the union seems poised to open its toolbox and pull out its well-worn hammer. The union has failed to significantly damage Telus by agitating shareholders to dump visionary management and to persuade customers to jump to the competition. The TWU has spent a fortune on a transparent and cheesy TV ad campaign, which could kill business and cost jobs. Now the union is demanding that its members vote for strike action even before they have seen the latest contract offer. Sadly, once the members allow the hammer out of the box, they effectively lose a future say in how it's used. Once the strike vote is in the bag, the union calls the shots. This grief goes back to when BC Telecom Inc. and Telus Corporation in Alberta merged in 1998. As a result of this merger, the TWU became the bargaining agent for the merged company's single bargaining unit in B.C. and Alberta -- its first significant foray outside its home turf. Then in 2000, the new Telus acquired Clearnet and its non-union Ontario and Quebec employees. The Canada Labour Relations Board ruled that the TWU had national bargaining rights for most of Telus' employees. The stickler is that the non-union employees wanted nothing to do with the union more known for its wildcat strikes than its understanding of the wireless wave. The TWU, still reeling from the effects of deregulation and full-blown competition, was blown from a small-time B.C. outfit into the role of a national union in a wireless age -- a role it seems ill-equipped to handle. The union is viewed by wireless workers as little more than a Jurassic in "Java Land," and they know better than anyone else that Big Tooth is no match for Bluetooth. Several years ago, Alvin Toffler wrote The Third Wave, the second volume in his trilogy on world change. Toffler says the first wave was the agricultural revolution, the second was the industrial revolution, also known as the smokestack era, and the third is the digital communication revolution. We are well into the third wave and companies like Telus are forced to surf the crest of that wave. Their very survival demands it, and so does the employment of the thousands of people who depend on it. To survive in the digital era, industry leaders like Telus need to respond to change with unprecedented speed and agility. To allow the organizational equivalent of a 747 to perform fighter-jet manoeuvres demands more than simple tinkering. It requires deftly and humanely trimming operations and merging four Alberta and B.C. collective agreements into one, which will serve everyone's best interest. In the past couple of years, Telus' major competitors, nationally and globally, have brutally slashed their workforce by simply sending out termination notices. In bucking that trend, Telus offered monetary incentives in the form of generous early retirement and departure programs. The notion of change involving workforce adjustment predictably enraged TWU officials. That's because smokestack unions view job loss as an end rather than a beginning. Whatever wiped out the large dinosaurs allowed the development of a plethora of new life forms -- human beings being one of them. Unable to grasp these digital realities, the TWU seems hell-bent on maintaining the status quo, dragging reluctant non-union workers into its ranks and forcing its 1950s-style, made-in-B.C. collective agreement on Telus across Canada. Strangely, the telecommunications industry is no stranger to change. Almon B. Strowger invented automatic switching, which eventually cost thousands of telephone switchboard operators their jobs. However, had it not been invented, considering today's speech and data traffic, to keep up, nearly every person in Canada would have to be employed as a switchboard operator. To the switchboard operators, Strowger, no doubt, was a cruel-hearted menace. To humanity as a whole, he's a hero who laid some of the groundwork for our prosperity and perhaps the very existence of unions like the TWU. Still, the TWU seems paralyzed by fear of change and the phenomenal speed of innovation, which has caused a growing skill gap between telecommunications industry technocrats and those with the traditional skills like wiring, jointing and cabling. It seems unable to cope in a deregulated, global, market-driven industry rife with union-free players who can provide telecommunications-based services without owning infrastructure and switching equipment. In fact, regulators have forced those who built infrastructure, like Telus, to share it with the non-union competition. The fact that changes in telecommunications have created more jobs than our parents could have ever imagined seems lost on the union. However, what they fear most is that digital innovation will continue to create jobs, but not necessarily union ones. That's evidence by the fact that people have more opportunity than ever to join unions, but they are rejecting them as never before. To extract themselves from the slide toward extinction and to regain relevance, unions like the TWU will have to re-evaluate the long-term needs of those who work in a digital and wireless world and then work toward fulfilling those needs. Who knows, that might even entail facilitating change at the places their members work. Hugh Finnamore, a former union official, is a senior consultant at Vancouver-based Workplace Strategies Inc.

"The union is demanding a strike vote before workers see the latest offer..." Geez John, I wonder who bought what "hook line and sinker"? What you (as well as union bashing hired gun Hugh Finnamore) fail to mention is the union started the strike vote BEFORE TELUS came out with this so called "final offer"! Seems to be by doing so they are trying to undermine the collective bargaining process don't you? After 3 years all the union has heard from TELUS is a list of concessions, the main is the ability to contract out work currently done by TWU members. As well they want to cut back our time off, force us to work up to 48 hours per week and reduce benefits. Yup, TELUS IS A GREAT COMPANY TO WORK FOR ALRIGHT!! This column by Hugh Fennimore is a TELUS set-up, pure and simple: 1) Note the description of Darren Entwistle and his team as "visionary management". 2) How many people in the field of labour relations who have not been active in telecommunications have ever heard of Almon Strowger and his automatic switch? (Finnamore came from the United Food and Commercial Workers.) 3) On what basis would he make the statement that TWU "has spent a fortune" on its ads? How would he have any idea of how much TWU spent? 4) What kind of former union official would be making the company argument that members should see the company's final offer before taking part in the strike vote (implying that Telus has the right to bargain directly with members, which contravenes the Canada Labour Code)? 5) He refers to the TWU as a "union more known for its wildcat strikes than its understanding of the wireless wave." This is pure Telus ropaganda. When was the last time there was a wildcat strike by TWU members? 6) Finnamore says that Telus's major competitors "have brutally slashed their workforce by simply sending out termination notices" but that Telus bucked that trend. None of Telus's competitors in Canada simply sent out termination notices when they downsized. All have paid significant amounts in severance. 7) He refers to Telus's "early retirement and departure programs" as "generous". How would someone outside the company have any idea whether or not the terms of these programs are generous? 8) He slags the TWU, comparing it to dinosaurs. (As opposed to Telus's "visionary" management.) Clever. 9) TWU is "hell-bent on maintaining the status quo." If by that he means that it's unwilling to give up some of the vital protections that TWU members paid for with their sweat and toil and months on the picket line, he's absolutely right. Why should they, in light of how companies are utilizing new technologies and restructuring their operations to get work away from their unionized employees? 10) Finnamore argues that "changes in telecommunications have created more jobs than our parents could have ever imagined." This is a widely-believed line that is spread by management types, but it is simply not true. The Canadian telecom sector has suffered massive job loss as the result of the introduction of competition and deregulation. Furthermore, the jobs that have been created have involved precarious employment under poor conditions for abysmal rates of pay. 11) Referring to TWU, he says that "what they fear most is that digital innovation will continue to create jobs, but not necessarily union ones." Not necessarily jobs that pay decent wages, either, and not necessarily jobs in Alberta, BC or even Canada. Oh, and just yestersay it was ruled by the CLRB that TELUS has violated the Canada Labour Code by communicating directly with union members this month, while bargaining was still ongoing. The board said Telus went "beyond a statement of its position" and undermined "the union's position vis-a-vis its members." Also, since we're apparently allowed to copy entire aricles to our comments on this website, I think the following is a more realistic view of things with the "new marketplace TELUS" (GAG) Telus not off the hook say employees Telus says its customer service disaster is over and fixed. Employees tell a different story, as they ready for a strike vote Thursday. Daniel Gawthrop While it urges disgruntled customers to let it off the hook, Telus finds its feel-good signal jammed by the union representing most of its 11,000 employees. With a strike vote looming, the Telecommunications Workers Union has countered Telus's expensive public relations campaign with a satiric ad blitz of its own. And the union continues to accuse Canada's second largest telephone company of fudging its customer satisfaction figures. Whose numbers to believe? Following one of the worst consumer backlashes in BC history—a public relations disaster that saw more than 4,000 customer complaints to the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission—Telus' latest round of TV ads featured a procession of cuddly quadripeds pushing the company's service. Last month, in a letter to Telus customers, Telus president and CEO Darren Entwistle cited the company slogan ("The future is friendly") while claiming "extremely positive trends" in quality of customer service indicators since October. Without giving specifics, he said that Telus was "on track to meet and exceed industry standards in all areas in December". But when December results were released on January 15, the numbers weren't as encouraging as Entwistle might have hoped. Telus could only boast of progress in two of the four major problem areas cited by the CRTC. Here's how the company's own stats broke down: • Getting through to the business office (residential and business): the company claimed to have answered 86 per cent of incoming customer calls within 20 seconds, above the CRTC standard of 80 per cent (in September, Telus answered only 60 per cent of calls within 20 seconds); • Getting through to the 611 repair bureau: Telus reported answering 93 per cent of repair calls within 20 seconds, again above the required 80 per cent (after achieving only 68 per cent in September); • Repair appointments met: Telus reported meeting 86 per cent of urban and 77 per cent of rural repair appointments. These results, it conceded, were below the standard of 90 per cent "due to efforts to retire orders backlogged through the autumn owing to the high repair volumes driven in part by climatic events in B.C" (meaning summer forest fires and autumn floods throughout the province, a severe cable cut in Vancouver, computer virus attacks, power outages and "problems with the introduction of a new trouble management system"); • Out of service troubles cleared within 24 hours: Telus said the results were "predictably" below the standard of 80 per cent as the company "retired the backlog of trouble reports accumulated through the fall. December results were 76 per cent for urban areas and 69 per cent for rural areas." Much of this is smoke and mirrors according to the TWU. Last week, the union launched a series of television spots lampooning the Telus animal ads. In one, a lone pig takes a microphone and—like an Orwellian protagonist from Animal Farm—begins warning customers not to believe everything the company tells them. Then a Telus executive tries to grab the mike. Timed for a strike vote The union's counter-attack advertising runs as its members ready themselves for announcement of a strike vote on Thursday. Telus workers have been without a contract since late 2000, shortly after the company was formed in a merger of Alberta's Telus and BC Tel. The company wants a contract similar to the pre-merger labor agreements covering the Alberta workers, who were then not part of TWU. The union wants the pact to be based on the contracts it negotiated with BC Tel. As for wages, the TWU wants retroactive increases of 3 per cent for 2001 and 2002 and 5 per cent for 2003, plus a 5-per-cent hike for 2004 and 6 per cent for 2005. Telus says its wage package proposal will compensate for missed salary increases, and increase base wages in future years. In the battle for public opinion, union leaders are eager to draw a connection between the customer complaints disaster and staffing cutbacks at Telus. After the merger last year, Telus eliminated 6,500 jobs and reduced the number of call centres from 66 in 19 communities to 20 in five communities and combined eight different trouble-ticket systems into one new system. The horror stories from last fall have become legend, including the ultimate public relations blunder, just before Christmas—the charity that ran out of gifts for disadvantaged children because Telus phone glitches hurt its annual donor drive. Problems led to incidents of anti-Telus rage (repair technicians confronted in their vehicles, Telus phone booths vandalized in sleepy Victoria) and consumer protests including a "Telus Sucks" website. Union: How company distorts stats The company hired 500 fresh bodies a few months ago to plug some of the holes. But a veteran Telus technician who spoke with The Tyee, preferring not to be named, says the new hirings didn't begin to stop the bleeding in most service areas. For example, the cable records department used to employ 120 people for all of BC; now it employs 12. "Our members have taken breaks for stress leave that have lasted months," said the technician who has decades experience in customer service, construction and cable records systems. Lately, customer complaints have faded from the headlines. After 2,000 logged for October alone, Telus logged only 200 this month up to January 20. The TWU questions the accuracy of those figures. The union's November 24 submission to the CRTC, claims certain practices in the company's reporting and recording of information connected with quality of service indicators have allowed Telus to claim a better quality of service performance than it has, in fact, achieved. Here's the union's take on three of the four key problem areas Telus says it addressed: • Getting through to the business office (residential and business): "Telus does not begin to measure the customer's waiting time from the time the customer's call arrives at a Telus office. Rather, Telus begins to measure the customer's waiting time only after (i) the customer has made their final choice from an elaborate IVR menu, (ii) the customer has listened to the final service-related announcement, and (iii) after the customer's call has finally been placed in a holding queue, waiting to be picked up by a service representative…Telus has directed service representatives to clear a backlog by answering calls as quickly as possible, simply noting down the customers' names and telephone numbers, and calling those customers back only as and when time permitted…"; • Repair appointments met: "If Telus does not have the necessary cable or facilities in place at the time that a subscriber requests service, the subscriber's request may not be entered into the company's system on the date that the request is made. Instead, the creation of the record of the request may be delayed until the necessary cable or facilities have been put in place; in such instances, the request for service is recorded as having been made on that later date"; • Out of service troubles cleared within 24 hours: "Telus repair workers have been instructed to record an out-of-service problem as cleared within the prescribed 24-hour period, even if the repair work has not actually been completed within that period, by filing a 'Work In Progress' order with the Telus dispatch centre. When such an order is filed, the problem is recorded as cleared. When Telus repair workers realize that they cannot keep a repair appointment that has been booked, they are to refer the problem back to the dispatch centre. In such instances, it is Telus' practice to have its dispatch centre contact the subscriber to book another appointment. If the subscriber agrees to a new appointment time, this is recorded as a 'customer-requested' change rather than a missed appointment." Trend toward automation, deregulation The TWU's version of events reflects similar goings on elsewhere in North America's telecommunications industry. Not long ago, an audit of quality standards measurement practices by a New York phone company revealed a pattern of practices similar to those the TWU charge Telus with employing. In a ruling last year, the Public Service Commission ordered the company to pay the Communication Workers of America US$1million to investigate how the company was fudging its figures. The TWU wants the CRTC to hold Telus similarly accountable. "The bone-of-contention with Telus," says the battle-weary technician, "is the same you see with every corporation: do more with less, reduce costs, maximize profits." The real story that needs to be told, he adds—likening the issue to a sort of mad cow disease of telecommunications—is how deregulation in the industry is eroding public structures of accountability that assure citizens of democratic access and control. Instead, customers more and more deal with unresponsive machines, he says. "Computer records and retrieval systems are replacing human memory and thought processes that were key to the success of dial tone delivery to the subscriber," he explains. Meanwhile, new technology and the Internet is allowing the industry to shift away from public oversight. Wireline—the land phone dial tone—was the regulated side of the industry. The growing telecom trend toward voice-over Internet protocol (VOIP) is much harder to regulate than wireline. "VOIP proposes to take the dial tone you currently know and put it on your ADSL type of circuit, so that your phone number will be delivered on your computer's IP system," says the technician. He adds that "The regulated wireline will soon become unregulated VOIP—effectively serving to do through technology what public hearings would make more difficult: the deregulation of telecommunications." By this analysis, a quality of service disaster Telus blamed on forces beyond its control might actually have been an early warning sign of what to expect in the future: an abundance of consumer options and pangs of nostalgia for the days when you could reach an actual human being on the customer service line. If so, the future is already here—and it doesn't look very friendly. Daniel Gawthrop is a Vancouver writer and editor.

I didn't think Locksley would have a rebuttle to the TWU's reply.

Call someone else for repairs if your not happy!! http://www.contact-directconnect.com

Charles...very eloquant article. An informative read. Proud TWU Member...WOW. Change does not mean you are not valuable. Based on your comment, I am assuming you are a Telus employee. Telus was ranked 7th in North America, less then 1 month ago, for on-line learning and development opportunities. Grow with your company; don't let your company out grow you. If you understood where technology is going you would clearly understand the opportunities ahead for everyone, especially the consumer. Your knowledge is valuable, and I can guarantee it would be valuable in other areas beyond your current position. If you are unsatisfied with your job, you need to fix the problem and make a decision as to whether you are on the train, on the tracks, or on the wrong train. Change is a good thing, it is just scary to leave our comfort zone. It doesn’t mean you are standing out on a limb, more like walking the yellow line in a parking lot. Nella Black…How true. I love to go skiing, sit on the side of the mountain in a forested area, and just listen, to nothing. Just be at peace. The future of any organization is not based on the performance of one individual. Collectively, employees need to ensure their company does not become 'over-weight' as they will need to ‘diet’ if they do. Employees of any organization need to place their personal pride aside and ensure the decisions they make are what is right for the business. In doing so the business will always prosper. By chance this may also eliminate their position, however with technology there will always be new positions available and many opportunities for each employee to learn and grow collectively. According to literature 10 years ago, the computer should have wiped out our workforce...How wrong we were. People do not wake up and want to do a bad job. Or so I am hoping :) Does the ball get dropped, yes, let’s see how quickly they can all band together and pick it up again before we pose judgment. I believe they have a strong group of dedicated employees working diligently to improve their company. They are not looking to go out of business, but to find ways, altering 100 years of telephony history, to improve service and grow with the economy. This is smething I can assume is far from being easy, but I truly admire the ambition and wish the best for the organization, it's employees, and the consumer.

I was offered a job today as a technician with Telus. While doing online research, I stumbled across your article and am left feeling considerably less excited about this prospective job. But I will say that in Alberta, Telus has been reasonably quick to resolve issues and I have no real complaints as a consumer. But judging by the comments I have read here, I question if I want to be working for this company. As a communications technician, I am aware of a couple of facts. One, some issues are not as simple as twisting a pair of wires back together and then going for a beer. Meshing old and new technology is sometimes complicated and very frustrating. A bad connection can bring down a sector in no time flat! Two, we are all so used to picking up a phone and hearing dial tone, that we forget the work that goes into getting that dial tone to us. When we don't hear that tone it can be annoying at times...but be patient!! As the first face a subscriber sees, we get the flak and none of the glory. Swearing at us and complaining makes our job harder to do. In the end, I have read many complaints, but nothing lauditory. Sort of reminds me of teenagers complaining about their parents....they can do nothing right...while the teenagers wear designer clothes and eat every night. that's my rant.

Hey, how come The Tyee Online Newspaper doesn't have a section to discuss "Paranormal Phenonomena". If you guys are so open-minded about news and against Big Media, then I think you should you guys should write about the paranormal, and have updated news about what's currently going on and have been going on in the world of the supernatural. I think your Editor should start a new subject heading section for the paranormal in your online newspaper. I'd be glad to participate and contribute reports and evidence and findings on the paranormal to the Tyee. Hire me. I know I can contribute to your digital newspaper, and help generate even more interest and readership in your online news. It would be just like "Art Bell's Coast To Coast AM", except be online. I can provide input and feedback on issues such as nanotechnology (how it can and is changing human life), genetic engineering, ghosts, Artificial intelligence, vampires, Area 51, the military-industrial complex, drugs and food additives put in foods to control people, HAARP, bigfoot, cryptozoology, Native Indians folklore, etc. There's a whole new treasure chest of topics to discuss and write about for your online newspaper. just a whole range of subject topics ready and waiting to be read by your readers. Contact me at:

to let me know what you folks think.