The City of New Westminster has informed hundreds of municipal employees their services aren’t required at this time because of the COVID-19 crisis.
On April 2, the City of Vancouver announced it had issued temporary layoff notices to 1,500 city workers, many of whom work in theatres, recreation and community centres and libraries. Other cities, including Burnaby, are temporarily laying off employees.
“The city has 601 auxiliary employees that have received notice that they are no longer going to be scheduled for paid work after April 17,” Mayor Jonathan Cote told the Record April 14. “This has come in response to the significant decline in revenues the city is receiving and that many of our regular programs that we do offer are just not functioning at this time.”
According to Cote, the City of New Westminster estimates it is losing more than $1 million in revenue a month.
“These auxiliaries are from most departments across the city, but the vast majority are from parks and rec,” Cote said. “We have seen our recreation facilities close, our libraries close. The Anvil Centre is not operating the way it normally does. All of the programs that are generally operated out of those facilities are no longer able to operate. That is where the vast majority of these employees are coming from.”
In addition, city hall is now open by appointment only for essential services.
Cote said council struggled with the staffing decision because it sees municipal staff as a family who is dedicated to serving the community.
“We have let these employees know that, once things start to get back to normal and the city is financially able to, we do want to welcome these employees back and get our programs back,” Cote said. “But we are still in the health crisis right now, and we are still starting to better understand the financial impacts to the city.”
CUPE Local 387 represents about 750 employees of the City of New Westminster, including those at civic facilities, the public library and civilian workers at the New Westminster Police Department.
George Habib, business agent for Local 387, said there has been an “incredible” amount of consultation between the city and the union.
“We are just trying to work at it together and try to provide essential services, try to minimize disruption as much as we can,” he said. “A lot of consultation is going into this, and we hope it’s not going to last for a very long time.”
According to Habib, the union represents about 350 full-time employees, including some who are working in temporary positions lasting for a couple of years. He said the city also employs about 450 to 600-plus auxiliary staff.
“In spring and summer those numbers reach the 600-plus,” he said. “Other times of the year they can go down as low as 425, or somewhere around there.”
With facilities like swimming pools and community centres closed, Habib said there’s no need for the city to schedule auxiliary staff. At this point in the COVID-19 crisis, he said the best outcome is to keep as many full-time staff as possible working.
“It’s very small and very subtle, and a lot of people are going to miss it, but we did not issue layoff notices to those auxiliary people. We simply told them we were not going to call them,” he told the Record. “The CAO of the organization sent an email or a letter out saying, ‘You are our colleagues, we can’t wait for you to come back and we will welcome you back when things improve – we don’t know when.’”
Richard Fong, the city’s director of human resources, said the city andCUPE Local 387 have agreed to a temporary letter of understanding, which provides the city with maximum operational flexibility to deliver core functions while also minimizing overall staffing impacts.
“The city is not referring to these staffing adjustments as layoffs. These auxiliary employees remain active City of New Westminster staff members, and we intend to start scheduling them back for shifts as soon as we are able to start re-opening city facilities,” he said in an email to the Record. “They will not have to go through any hiring process to be scheduled for shifts again.”
When auxiliary employees are scheduled for future shifts, Fong said their current terms of employment will continue.
“Auxiliary city staff are not eligible for extended health benefits – they receive an additional percentage of their hourly rate in lieu of benefits,” he said. “However, as active employees these staff members continue to have access to our employee and family assistance program, which provides confidential counselling services at no cost.”
Habib said the city has done an admirable job in communicating with its employees during the COVID-19 crisis.
“This is something unprecedented,” he said of COVID-19. “People are glued to the TV. They are seeing what is happening, and it is not just in New West, Vancouver, the Lower Mainland, but all of Canada, indeed all of the world. The gravity is there. People understand that nothing right now is done in any other way than to mitigate the problem that we are having. Nobody is playing games here.”
