The TTC is considering bringing retirees back to help fill any labor shortages as the October 30 deadline for employees to disclose their vaccination status approaches.
Ontario employers are having trouble staffing as vaccine mandates take effect. The province’s health sector is also bracing for an even worse staff shortage, as the deadline for long-term care employees to get vaccinated approaches next month.
“We are looking at and planning a number of options to ensure that we can continue to provide service beyond October 30,” TTC spokesman Stuart Green said of the rapidly approaching transit service vaccination deadline.
While retiring retired workers is a contingency the TTC is exploring, its hope is that it won’t be necessary, Green said. “But we have to plan just in case.”
The withdrawal would be voluntary, he added.
No decision has yet been made regarding what will happen to those who do not disclose their status by the October 30 deadline, he said.
Earlier this month, the TTC told transit union leaders that it was preparing for a labor shortage. The date on which bus, streetcar and subway operators could sign up for this month’s shifts was also pushed back to November, according to a letter sent to the leaders of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 and seen by the Star.
In September, Local 113, the transit agency’s largest union representing nearly 12,000 employees, initially ordered its members not to share their vaccination status with management.
They quickly backtracked their fight against the mandate after an urgent application was filed with the Ontario Labor Relations Board, where the TTC claimed the union violated labor laws.
Although the TTC deadline is now around the corner, this is not the first time it has taken hold of workers.
Initially, TTC staff were asked to disclose their vaccine status before September 20, but the date was later extended by 10 days. By the end of September, just over 60 percent of employees had provided their status.
This low response rate pushed the deadline back to October 6.
Like TTC, Metrolinx, Ontario’s largest transportation investment that also operates GO Transit, UP Express and PRESTO, has a vaccine mandate in effect. Employees at the agency, which has about 4,600 Metrolinx employees, including bus drivers and station and office staff, will need to disclose their vaccination status by November 1, according to Anne Marie Aikins, head of relations. with the agency’s media.
More than 90 percent of employees have already signed a certificate declaring their status, he said. Of these staff, between three and four percent said they were not vaccinated.
Metrolinx’s mandate also includes workers the agency hires with, such as train crews working for Alstom, a manufacturing operations company.
“Part of our strategy is to work with Alstom to develop a strategy that addresses any potential staff shortages,” Aikins said.
He said Metrolinx will do its best to calculate the staff shortage should it arise in November, but it is too early to tell as of Monday.
Unlike the TTC, Metrolinx has already decided that employees who remain unvaccinated after the deadline will receive unpaid leave, Aikins added.
Jasmine Graham, a spokeswoman for the city of Hamilton, also noted how their mandate differs from Toronto’s as they will allow transit employees to disclose their vaccine status or get tested.
As of Monday, 83 percent of TTC employees have shared their status and just over 90 percent of them are fully vaccinated and the rest have only one vaccine, Green told the Star.
Reference-www.thestar.com