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The biggest union in the federal public service wants permission for large numbers of its members to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) says this is the only way to slow the spread of novel coronavirus.

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“Where telework is an option, we feel people should be asked actually to work from home, and not be using public transportation,” said the union’s national president, Chris Aylward.

For now, most public servants are still commuting to their offices. PSAC wants this to change.

Aylward said working from home is important because a large number of the 50,000 PSAC members in the capital region take public transit, and trains and buses force people to ride very close together.

“When you look at China, they only started off with 100 or 150 cases. So did Italy. And then this thing just balloons because people are in constant contact every day,” he said. “That’s the kind of thing we are trying to avoid. They talk about social distancing — well when you get on a bus, you can’t apply social distancing on a bus or the LRT.”