HELP WANTED FOR ELECTION
Three local ridings need workers for June 7 vote
With less than three weeks before the June 7 provincial election, officials for Elections Ontario are still looking to fill a significant number of paid positions.
“On election day, we’ll be one of the single largest employer in Ontario,” said Jessica Pellerin, communications officer for Elections Ontario.
“We need 55,000 people to run this election. We’re putting out a general call for help in all ridings across the province.” Among the local ridings, the need is most dire in the riding of Windsor West.
“We need to fill over 200 positions; we’ve only got half the people we need,” said Anisa Bala, a recruitment officer for the riding of Windsor West.
“We have to fill them in the next two weeks, by May 28 at the latest.” Bala said the riding is in need of a polling day supervising deputy and must fill dozens of positions requiring some technology skills, including 44 returning officers, 94 polling day revising deputy returning officers, 61 polling day information assistants, 44 tabulator deputy returning officers and 14 standbys.
Pay ranges from $15.60 per hour to $26 per hour depending on the responsibilities of the job. In Windsor-Tecumseh, there are about 54 people needed while the riding of Essex could use another 60 individuals.
To apply for many of these positions you must be: a Canadian citizen
■ at least 18 years of age
■ preferably an Ontario resident
■ have a vehicle, valid driver’s
■ licence and use of a cellular phone be able to lift 14 kg to 23 kg
■ possess basic computer skills
■ Each position will also require some training ranging from a couple hours for information assistants to a full day for tabulator deputy returning officers. Other than the tabulator deputy returning officers, the job will be limited to training and voting day. You can apply online for a position on the Elections Ontario website at: elections.on.ca/en/aboutus/employment-centre.html. To directly contact local returning offices, visit: elections.on.ca/ en/voting-in-ontario/electoraldistricts.html.
Making the recruiting drive a little tougher this time around is the move to electronic vote tabulation. That has led to the requirement of having basic computer skills for many jobs.
“We’ve lost some of our old guard because of that,” said Bonnie McDermott, recruitment officer in Essex.
“It was a little tough at first, but in the last few days its really picked up. We’re fortunate we have a good pool of people to draw on. “We’re getting recently retired people, who have computer skills, coming forward.” Andrew Koczerzuk, elections clerk in Windsor-Tecumseh, said the riding’s demographics have helped put the riding in a good position for recruitment. “We’ve been blessed,” Koczerzuk said. “We have 54 positions open, but we haven’t completely exhausted our previous employee list. “However, we’re still going to need more people because we haven’t touched trying to fill our standby list yet.” McDermott said having a healthy standby list is a necessity as she anticipates losing some people during training as well as the usual drop-offs on Election Day due to illness or other issues.
“If I hired 700 people, I’d want to have 100 standbys to cover the openings that always occur,” McDermott said.
“We’ll never say we’re done looking for help. I’ll never be completely confident until 9 a.m. on June 7.”