City of Calgary temporarily laying off 1,200 employees

Mar 31 2020, 5:43 pm

Even the City of Calgary isn’t safe from COVID-19-caused layoffs.

The city announced in a release on Tuesday that it would be laying off 1,200 employees as a result of program and service suspensions in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The release states that mandatory physical distancing and self-isolation measures caused many on-call, part-time, and temporary employees to be left without work at their closed facilities and suspended programs.

The city made the decision on Monday to layoff 1,200 employees from the Recreation and Calgary Neighbourhoods business units.

“Taking these steps allows impacted employees to apply for supports made available by the Government of Alberta and Government of Canada during this difficult time,” said City Manager David Duckworth in the release.

“This is not an action we wanted to take but one we needed to, as the effects of COVID-19 continue to have significant impacts on citizens, City services, and our employees.”

Duckworth also noted that these employees would get their positions back once facilities and services had been restored following the pandemic.

“I’d like to personally thank these employees for their dedicated service to Calgarians,”he said.

“I look forward to the time when we are able to reopen our facilities and restore impacted services, so we can bring our valued employees back to work.”

Chandler WalterChandler Walter

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