The City of Grande Prairie made the difficult decision today to reduce their valued casual and temporary employee workforce by 330.

Many of these employees supported the operations of our recreation and event facilities including Eastlink and Revolution Place which began closures on March 13.  Without a clear timeline for the resumption of operations, they simply have a shortage of work available to satisfy available hours.                                             

“We are extremely proud of all of our employees and did not take the decision to reduce our workforce in response to COVID-19 lightly,’ said City Manager, Horacio Galanti.

“The City of Grande Prairie is facing the same difficult decisions on how to respond to COVID-19 that all other employers are,” said Galanti. “We made the best decision we could after weighing all available options with the information we have available today.”

The decision to provide temporary layoff notices now is an effort, in part, to give employees the option of applying for Provincial and Federal Government assistance programs. 

Eligible temporary employees will receive an extension to their benefit coverage.

The latest City of Grande Prairie updates on their response to COVID-19 can be found at cityofgp.com/covid19.