While the City of Orillia and the City of Barrie have had to lay off staff recently in the wake of COVID-19, the County of Simcoe has taken a different tack to try to fill in service gaps.
“You’re probably going to start seeing a lot of municipalities laying off people, particularly at the local level,” County of Simcoe chief administrative officer (CAO) Mark Aitken said Tuesday in an interview with Village Media.
The county employs around 1,850 full- and part-time staff. Approximately 1,200 employees work directly in long-term care and paramedic services.
As of this week, the Simcoe County Museum, the Simcoe County Archives and the county library co-operative are all closed, as well as Tourism Simcoe.
“What we’ve done is, we’ve gone to a voluntary redeployment program first,” said Aitken.
Through the program, staff that had previously worked in any of the shuttered departments have been given the option of being re-trained to help out with some of the essential services.
“County staff are really tremendous and look at the whole county as a team, so the vast majority did volunteer to assist in long-term care, customer service, Service Simcoe and with internal communications,” he said.
Aitken says that currently about 25 staffers have volunteered to be redeployed to long-term care, about 350 to 400 employees are working from home, and between five and 10 have taken an unpaid leave option that would see them able to maintain some of their benefits.
“You can’t force people to go into an environment where they feel they might be at some risk, so there are some who have chosen to take an unpaid leave of absence,” he said.
The redeployed workers are performing tasks such as assisting with administration and performing new screening and cleaning protocols.
“The problem we’re going to have as the pandemic surges is a lack of staff, particularly in positions that require certain designations or level of skill such as nurses or personal support workers (PSWs),” said Aitken.
To read our story about the changes to long-term care at County of Simcoe-owned homes, click here.
County council is planning to have its first meeting since declaring a state of emergency on April 14. It will be conducted through the video conferencing application Zoom. It will also be the first time in county council’s history they will conduct a meeting online.
“It will be very different. You’ll probably be watching the council chambers with myself, the warden and the clerks in it only, and everyone else will be virtually there through the Zoom technology,” said Aitken.
The agenda will include a number of reports on the county's COVID-19 response, he added.
Layoffs and ramping up more redeployment in the coming weeks is possible, according to the CAO.
“It’s a distinct possibility,” said Aitken. “Our concern is loss of resources. There may be some people we may have to consider laying off at some point.”
Overall, Aitken says he’s proud of the way his staff have worked to be ahead of the curve on pandemic planning.
“They’ve proven to be at least two weeks ahead of a lot of the provincial directives regarding the safety of our residents and staff,” he said. “It’s going to be a tough ride. I really feel for the front-line workers. They’re getting anxious because they’re starting to see what’s happening in long-term care homes now with about 50 long-term care homes with positive COVID-19 tests (province-wide). They really do care for the people they look after, and these are tough prospects ahead.
“I’m very humbled and impressed to work with them all,” he added.
