AlbertC
Superstar
Mayor Tory asks employers to keep employees working from home until September at least to ensure ‘slow, steady, safe’ reopening of city; Ontario hits testing target for second straight day
City’s chief medical officer admitted challenges of tracing contacts of COVID-19 cases; Doug Ford considering “regional approach” to reopening economy; Trump said U.S. to pull out of WHO.www.thestar.com
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. The big white collar employers downtown will likely follow this advice, but it in-turn means a lot longer to wait for customers to be back for many retailers, especially those in the PATH, some of whom I suspect were planning on employees returning as soon as July which has been the messaging going out from at least the big financial institutions in the past two weeks. Many of those businesses might call it quits right now because of this announcement. There's generally only about 5 people at the office where I work each day out of about 80 total, though that number has increased recently to around 10 per day when word got out they were paying a daily bonus equivalent to about $9/hour to anyone who has to come in for essential business reasons. The definition of essential has been stretched greatly since then. However my office too had messaged they thought they would at least be allowed to go up to 50% of staff back as of July 1 (or the Monday after that). It will be interesting to see now if they push it off to September 1. This will have major implications for TTC fare collection and service to the core as well.
I work right above St. Patrick station, and my company's HR have been extending WFH policy one month at a time. I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up going all the way to the end of the calendar year. Which is likely what I'll be doing.
Unfortunate times for retailers in the PATH system along with the food courts. Especially for the independent, non-chain business owners who may not survive during these times.
According to this article, the following companies, institutions, and organizations have already agreed to allow majority of their employees to WFH until September:
The Bank of Montreal, Canada Life, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Centennial College, Deloitte Canada, EY Canada, George Brown College, Humber College, KPMG Canada, Manulife, National Bank, OCAD University, PwC Canada, Rogers Communications, Royal Bank of Canada, Ryerson University, Scotiabank, Seneca College, Sun Life Financial, TD Bank, the University of Toronto, Yamana Gold Inc., York University and Zurich Canada.
Toronto exploring if it’s legal to make masks mandatory on TTC, Tory says
Mayor John Tory said the city is exploring whether it would be legal to require people to wear masks while commuting during the pandemic while several major businesses and post-secondary institutions have agreed to allow employees to work from home, where possible, until at least September.
www.thestar.com
. Yes, I realize there is racist violence in this country. However, 7,000 people have died of COVID, and this isn't going to help at all. I'm already hearing John Tory admonishing them after the fact. Come to think of it, he probably won't dare.
