All employees of PUC Services Inc., including board members, volunteers and subcontractors, have until New Years Eve to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
In the last directive needed to cover all employee groups, the board overseeing the utility's water division cited the recent rise in Algoma COVID-19 cases and growing concerns about the new Omicron variant of concern.
"The Public Utilities Commission shall require all employees, board members, volunteers, students, contractors, or sub-contractors of the Public Utilities Commission when working at any of the company’s worksites, facilities or interacting in person with the company’s customers, to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by December 31, 2021," said a resolution passed by company directors on Wednesday night.
“We’re north of 97 per cent within our staff group," said Rob Brewer, president and chief executive officer of PUC Services Inc.
"We hope by the end of the month to have that close to 100," Brewer said, describing PUC's vaccination rate as "a really fantastic accomplishment when you think about the national average... how much higher we are."
Employees received advance notice of the pending vaccination policy, Jairus Patterson, PUC communications coordinator, told SooToday.
"The Public Utilities Commission contracts for the services of workers to provide the essential services of water treatment and distribution to communities in the district of Algoma," stated the resolution passed this week.
"The contracted services are transitory, require workers to regularly move between job sites, and require workers to carry out the contracted services alongside other subcontractors and members of the public, including by attending the homes of customers."
"Due to the nature of the contracted services, social distancing is not always possible while carrying out the contracted services," the resolution said.
Until this month, PUC had been talking about bringing employees back to its 500 Second Line E. headquarters early in the New Year.
"At this point, I think this is going to be put on hold," Brewer told the Public Utilities Commission board.
"We've announced that we're reviewing it. Giving what's going on in the community right now, given what's going on provincially, nationally and throughout the world, I think we're going to look at doing what we can to continue to keep our folks safe."
"Our folks have been really successful working from home. They really haven't missed a beat. There's really no urgent need to bring them into a communal office if it isn't going to be as safe as they are currently," Brewer said.
"We are also expecting that over the coming weeks and months, we're going to have an increasing number of staff that have impacts from COVID: related to things like school classes being sent home of school closures, isolation requirements. Things are starting to change fairly rapidly right now."
"We're sensitive to the fact that we're going to have some staff that have some hardships at home. We'll work with them to try and accommodate that as best we can," Brewer said.