City staff, school workers reinventing themselves to stave off layoffs due to COVID-19

While government and school workers are losing their jobs nationwide, many of their peers in Manitoba are bucking the trendat least, for now.

In Winnipeg, city employees areturning the phrase "other duties as assigned" into amantra.

Library and recreation centre employees, whose jobs have become temporarily obsolete in an unexpectedpandemic, are suddenly stocking shelves for Winnipeg Harvest, or filling sandbags to save homes prone to spring flooding.

These workers are telling their union, CUPE Manitoba, what else they'resuited for.

Some employees are proposing new tasks,union presidentGordDelbridge said and CUPE is compiling those ideas and sharing them withofficials.

Maybe the employees could deliver library books to readers cooped up in their homes?Maybe employees could help with child-care?

"We're working together to find ways of making this work." Delbridge said.

"At this point, all the discussions that we're having with the city is that they'rewith us, withkeeping people employed and ensuring that they're working."

Still, the fear of government and school workersis palpable as they watch thousands of people lose their jobs from a contagious virusthat's choking the Canadian economy.

Edmonton and Quebec City areletting goof 2,000 employees apiece. Calgary will cut 1,200 staff, while Windsor is reducing its ranks by500 employees.

Revenues bleeding

Locally, governments are taking a big hit. Provincial revenues will be"way down," Premier Brian Pallister warned last month,while pegging the government's deficit at$5 billion.

The City of Winnipeg could be more than $73 million in the red, a challenging number for a city mandated to balance its budget.

And it doesn't help that municipalities have limited ways to earn income it's essentially property taxes, user fees and transfers from other governments, saidEnidSlack,director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the University of Toronto.

"It's going to be even harder because we're seeing tax revenues potentially falling or at least being deferred," she said.

"Whenyou have to balance that budget, you either have to find another way to raise revenue you have to go to provincial, federal governments for assistance or you have to cut services."

Educatorsare feeling uneasy as well.

It will beleft to school divisions, education minister Kelvin Goertzen said on Tuesday, to decide if any support staff are laid off. The divisions are asked to reassign support staff whenever possible to support at-home learning, but it's up to them if they choose to lay off employees.

"In these times, I think everybody is worried," said Abe Araya, president of CUPE Manitoba andlongtime employee at the Winnipeg School Division.

Work is plentiful: Araya

But he argues there's no shortage of work.

One librarian he knows is busier than ever, supporting teachers and printing papers for students without computeraccess.

Educational assistants are still needed for one-to-one support, he said. Bus drivers could deliver course work.

It's all hands on deck, Araya said.

"Kids are our future and we can't afford for them to fall back on their school work."

Louis Riel School Division superintendentChristian Michaliksaidadministrators aren'tplanning for layoffs.

"That's not the approach we're taking in Manitoba. Our approach is that right nowwe need to talk about how we reassign folks to a new reality."

He saidevery school division is united in devisinga plan to keep everyone employed and help studentslearn the best way they can.

"We don't want to overburden parents with this role."

Staff must meet the needs: province

The Manitoba government wouldn't make any promises when asked about the future for their civil servants.

"Managers are working to ensure staff are able to do their work as safely as possible and the province is constantly reviewing the way its staff meets the needs of Manitobans," the province said in a statement.

"A lot of the services public servants provide are critical to the everyday lives of Manitobans and we are making every effort to ensure that work continues."

That doesn't satisfy the president of the Manitoba Government and General Employees' Union, which represents 12,000 civil servants.

"I'm being asked by different departments within government: Am I going to be needed? Are they going to keep me? Am I going to be laid off?" Michelle Gawronskysaid. "Nobody's telling us anything."

MGEU wants the province to top up the employment insurance earnings of every Manitoban laid off during the pandemic. So far, Gawronskysaidshe hasn't heard back.