Hello, Everybody and I hope everyone is well. The Union office remains open and operational, but as of Monday, April 06 at 7:30 am, it is closed to walk-in traffic. The physical distancing protocol disallows walk-ins and we want to protect the skeleton staff who are on site. I will send a full announcement in the morning.

Not to be repetitive, but I’m thinking it can’t be said enough: Alberta Health Services says

If you have symptoms, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, sore throat or runny nose: go home, call 811 and follow their instructions.

As of this writing, there are no known positive cases of CVD-19 among ATU 569’s membership. There are 15 cases of ATU members testing positive in Canada and numerous in the US. If you know of a member who has tested positive, please, report it to us immediately. We need to know.

Transit Security members are facing a massive work overload and at times are below minimum manpower with currently 26 peace officers away from work due to CVD-19 isolation. We are working to augment the TPO force as soon as possible, but in the meantime, please be patient. These members are working themselves to exhaustion to help the rest of us do our jobs safely.

This is all at the same time as other peace officer groups within the City are permitted to work a 4 on 4 off schedule followed by another 4 days off with pay on an on-call basis. When operators on buses and LRT are facing dire circumstances, why are other Peace Officers not redeployed to help the situation? Tomorrow morning, if there hasn’t been any relief, we’ll ramp up the rhetoric.

In Red Deer, Bob Relkov and his team have the situation well in hand. The Management team is very responsive to the Union’s concerns and acts quickly to correct problems. An effort is underway in Red Deer to negotiate a Letter of Understanding around how layoffs might occur. We will participate actively in this negotiation.

In Edmonton Operations, a number of changes have been introduced to reduce the lawlessness on board our system:

• active collaboration with other community partners, giving vulnerable populations who are using transit more information about available social supports;
• service improvements to the EXPO Centre and Kinsmen shuttles;
• added security controls on transit vehicles;
• more frequent cleaning of trains, and
• adding extra service to address remaining overcrowding issues, where possible.

Efforts are ongoing to continue to identify and adapt to shifting and emerging concerns affecting transit, the EXPO Centre and Kinsmen Sports Centre.

In Edmonton Maintenance efforts to eliminate the use of contract workers cleaning buses have been successful. At this point, there should be no Bee Clean workers in our divisions cleaning buses. The Bee Clean LRT “sweep-through” teams will have been displaced by City workers by early in the week.

In an environment where the cleaning and disinfection of buses and LRVs is paramount, the use of outside workers has been essential to the protection of our members’ health. The spirit of collaboration we have experienced from the City to move City workers into these positions as soon as possible has been at least exemplary. As I view the problems other locals have with their employers, I am grateful to have a positive working relationship here in Edmonton.

That said, there is much more to do. DATS Operators have exposure issues exponentially greater than those of the rest of us. TSOs are working too hard to simply bump the vulnerable crowd onto the next train. There have to be better solutions. Layoff and recall processes need to be negotiated and more information disseminated.

Above all, I want to thank all of you who read this and those to whom you share these ideas. You are doing an amazing job to help keep our society intact. You ARE essential to this process and you ARE contributing to the effort in every action you take. You are heroes.

Steve Bradshaw
President \ Business Agent