CITY LAYOFFS
More COVID-19 fallout
The City of Calgary is temporarily letting go of part-time and casual city workers this week as the COVID-19 pandemic decimates city revenue streams.
City manager David Duckworth didn’t give a specific number of people who will lose their jobs Monday because staff are still being notified. But Mayor Naheed Nenshi said “somewhere south” of 10 per cent of the city’s workforce of about 13,000 people are part-time or casual staff.
Not everyone who works parttime hours is being laid off, but most of the temporary reductions come from recreation. City pools, recreation centres and fitness facilities have been closed for more than two weeks, since the city declared a state of local emergency on March 15.
Duckworth said the layoffs are meant to help employees who have lost all their work hours get financial assistance from the provincial and federal governments.
“This is not an action that we wanted to take, but we needed to,” he said. “These are not permanent reductions.”
Earlier Monday, Edmonton announced it would lay off 1,600 recreation staff. Nenshi said Calgary has a similar number of parttime and casual employees, but an official count of the job losses likely won’t be available until Tuesday.
Some people will be getting a payment in lieu of notice, and others will be given more notice if they ’re still on the job. Nenshi said the decisions are being made on a case-by-case basis.
City coffers have also taken a hit as COVID -19 changes virtually every aspect of daily life in Calgary.
Public health officials have been urging people to stay at home as much as possible to keep the novel coronavirus from spreading. As more businesses and public spaces have been ordered to shut their doors and employees from every sector either lost their jobs or started working from home, daily transit trips are significantly down.
In addition to a 60 per cent drop in the number of people riding city buses, ridership on the Ctrain is down an even more staggering 80 per cent, Nenshi said.
That adds up to revenue losses “in the order of $6-$8 million a month,” and it could be more, according to city manager Duckworth.
And that’s just one piece of city business.
“We are attempting to quantify right now what the financial impact to the city is, but it’s big. It’s in the many millions per week now,” Nenshi said.
The city currently has 4,500 staff working from home.