About 40 of the 70 staff at the TTC’s Queensway garage have been told to go home and self-isolate for 14 days after six of their co-workers have tested positive for COVID-19.

None of the employees are in hospital, but more are pursuing tests, said Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 president Carlos Santos.

“We were asking for the garage to be shut down on Saturday. They’re a few days late, but at least everyone has gone home and I’m recommending they all go get tested,” Santos said.

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On Saturday, more than a dozen mechanics at the site staged a work stoppage, refusing to go out on their evening shift after a contract cleaner who worked there tested positive for the coronavirus.

The site was cleaned and work resumed until Toronto Public Health recommended that all individuals who worked a shift at the garage between April 12 to 22, or spent four hours or more there, stay home in self-isolation until the end of the month.

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“They’ll be staying home until the end of April, monitoring for symptoms,” Green said. “That’s just under an abundance of caution.”

The return-to-work date is May 1, but the union is angry it took so long to take action.

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“On Saturday, if they were to do this, we wouldn’t have had this problem. We would have had a deep clean. We would have had members tested (sooner). We may have additional cases now,” Santos said.

The Queensway Garage is the smallest of seven bus maintenance facilities operated by the TTC. The 125,000-square-foot facility has one wash rack, one diesel fuelling station and 14 large hoists to maintain about 170 buses that need regular oil changes, body work and tire rotations.

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“We didn’t close the garage,” said Green. “We’re doing another deep clean. We did one about a week ago. We’ve got some managerial staff that can go in and do maintenance work in the interim. But the next few days we’re looking to re-assign maintenance work to our other garages.”

The workers sent home will be paid in full, said Green.