March 19th Covid 19 Update

This has been a very trying week for myself and your executive board, on top of doing everything we can for the members in these days of uncertainty we are also trying to keep a balance and keep our families calm and taken care of as well as yourselves thank you for your patience as we are trying to address everyone’s concerns throughout all this.

We have had further meetings with the employer and came to an understanding of some of the concerns most of you have, they have started roping off the seats near the operator on the Novas and are moving to a back door loading and no fare enforcement as of tomorrow March 20th, it’s unfortunate the employer went out and advertised this so loudly, ideally the message was to be rear door loading and let the operators know to not enforce or collect fares. We are meeting with the employer again tomorrow and we’ll be discussing N95 masks and limiting the amount of passengers on the bus to allow social distancing.

The refusal to work we are still sitting at 2 and the province still hasn’t come in to address the concerns we’re hoping they show up tomorrow.

ACE Association Of Civic Employees had a meeting this morning to discuss what’s taking place in each others work areas, the city manager joined us and we were able to voice our concerns with him, better communication, lack of action, employee safety were just a few of the things brought up.

Last night The ATU International put on a Canada And U.S. Presidents town hall, there was over 350 presidents present including myself, almost every property is in the same position we’re in, reducing service, possible lay-offs, poor communication from management. ATU International is putting together a plan to force employers to take proper action to keep employees safe on the job throughout all this, we should be seeing some of this roll out early next week.

We now have 17 members in isolation 16 due to travel or have been in contact with travellers, 1 showing symptoms and 2 that are getting tested hopefully soon, they’re all doing well and are ok for supplies.

Emergency Signup, I have yet to see the signup but from what Al Holmes posted there will be very little impact to us as members in the way of lay-offs, if there is any potential lay-offs the employer has agreed to move those members into the garage to clean buses before bringing in anyone else, when I have the signup it’ll be posted expect something we are not used to there’ll be rostering and a very large spareboard.

Access is also looking at a reduction in service and a possible new signup when I have more info I’ll let everyone know.

That’s pretty much it for an update just remember stay calm don’t let the crazy stuff in the media get to you, we are a great big family here at ATU 615 we’ve been through some hard times together and we’ll get through this together.

In Solidarity 
Your Executive Board