Thanks To You
Local 151 members showed tremendous perseverance, patience, courage, and flexibility in adapting to new work and safety protocols and helped create solutions that allowed work to carry on throughout the pandemic
By Ryan Timmermans, Regional Director
The last year and half has been challenging on every level—personally, professionally, and within our larger society. All of us had to rethink and relearn how to do normal things like getting groceries or going to work.
From socially distanced toolbox meetings in the mid of winter, to taking lunch breaks in vehicles or partitioned lunch trailers, or trying to figure out how to safely do regular jobs that take more than one person, everything was more challenging.
Industry to industry, site to site, what we could do changed regularly. Many members work in essential industries, like healthcare and food retail or construction and maintenance.
As you know, being part of an industry that was deemed essential had two sides. It was good to be able to keep working and earning a paycheque, but it was stressful because everything was changing, no one wanted to get seriously ill or make someone else sick, and all of us tried to balance the responsibilities of work and home life.
Getting notification that you or one of your family members was a close contact was not only straining but had tremendous impact on the ability to do things like go to work. While this reality has not completely disappeared, we can be hopeful that vaccines are working, and that fewer people are getting seriously ill, which means our lives can hopefully get a bit less stressful once again.
As a union we have tried our best to support members through this time. We have continued connecting with people over phone, Facebook, and email, and now once again we are able to visit most sites, which is great! Remote communication has its place, but nothing is better than seeing each other in person. I have a new appreciation for just being able to shake hands and see faces.
As we move forward with optimism and on behalf of CLAC, I would like to thank all Local 151 members for continuing to go to work throughout this incredibly challenging time, for continuing to build and maintain buildings and facilities, energy projects, and infrastructure that each of us in society relies upon daily.
Thanks for your perseverance, patience, courage, and flexibility in adapting to new work and safety protocols, and for helping to create solutions that allowed work to carry on. The work you do each day plays such an essential part in providing services for society.
The pandemic clearly identified how interdependent industries and supply chains are. When one area stops, it has huge implications in so many places that we don’t even anticipate.
Thank you for your work, for employing your skills each day, and for being a member of Local 151. We hope that you and your family have been and remain healthy, and we appreciate being able to serve you.