TransLink – Policy Grievance – Cyberattack and Privacy breach of Personal Data

I hope this message finds you well and that all of you are settling into the New Year and getting ready for the arrival of spring. I want to personally thank each of you for all the hard work and dedication you have shown during the COVID-19 pandemic. You have all played an integral part in keeping the transit system operational during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

Your union has received a lot of feedback from the membership regarding the TransLink cyberattack. We sincerely empathize with our membership and understand the stress and anxiety this situation caused our members during the months of November and December 2020. In particular, we are very concerned to now learn that personal data of employees, spouses and retirees has been comprised. We completely understand that this breach can give rise to identify theft for our members. Your union is taking this matter very seriously and we are holding your employer accountable.

Today, we have filed a policy grievance on this matter, please see attached here. This is a newly emerging section of labour law and we will be meeting with your employer to discuss our grievance and remedy. Please ensure you follow all directives being relayed from your employer to minimize the impact of this attack, (i.e. signing up for credit monitoring, opening up a secondary savings account for pay, notifying all your financial institutions to monitor for fraudulent activity). Your union will provide you with updates regarding this policy grievance as they become available. If you have any questions on this matter please feel free to reach out to your TransLink Executive Councillors or myself.

In Solidarity,

Parm Sandhar, Union Representative
Christy Slusarenko, Vice-President of Combined Units
Safar Alikhani, Executive Board Member
Jennifer Froese, Executive Councillor