TORONTO: The City of Toronto continues to hire for aquatics positions, including certified lifeguards and swim instructors, and is encouraging interested applicants to take aquatic leadership courses to become certified.
Despite North America-wide lifeguard shortages, the City has worked throughout the year to ensure staffing is in place for indoor and outdoor pools, and all lifeguard-supervised beaches.
Earlier this year, the City received a request from CUPE Local 79 to review aquatics position wages. In accordance with the collective agreement, this review, undertaken by a joint committee comprised of City and union representatives, is now complete. The review – which examined overall job requirements, including skills and other attributes – has resulted in an increase in wages for lifeguards by an average of 17 per cent. Overall, 10 aquatics positions were reviewed (this number includes four new aquatics job classifications that were created by the City). The collective agreement sets out classifications, wage grades and salaries of recreation staff, and provides the joint job evaluation program for establishing new jobs and the job maintenance request process for reviewing existing jobs at the City.
Approximately 2,000 existing staff will receive wage increases and new hires will begin at the updated wage grade as well. Affected positions include lifeguards, swim instructors, wading pool attendants, aquatic coordinators, pool in-charge, and aquatic program assistants. Staff currently employed in these roles are being notified directly. For example, waterfront lifeguards and swim instructors saw an increase of 19 per cent with a new wage of $21.19, up from $17.80.
The City offers weekend and week-long crash courses with additional courses offered for the remainder of the year. These year-round leadership development programs are important opportunities to gain the required knowledge, skills and certification required for these aquatics positions. The City has also hosted a number of information sessions to support fall recruitment.
The City’s aquatics staff perform important work every day, teaching Torontonians to swim and keeping swimmers safe at City wading pools, beaches and pools.