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BL Premium reports that organised business is to go to court to seek legal certainty on companies’ right to require their staff to be vaccinated against Covid-19, as part of an effort to speed up SA’s vaccine rollout and ensure workplace safety.
The move by Business Unity SA (Busa), which plans to apply to the high court for a declaratory order on workplace vaccine mandates, comes as a growing number of companies look to implement such policies. It comes, too, in a context in which demand for jabs has declined to a level where SA is now unlikely to achieve its target of vaccinating 70% of adults by December and is at risk of not reaching even 50% by year end. Employers are permitted to make Covid-19 vaccinations compulsory for their employees in terms of occupational health and safety regulations that were issued by the Department of Employment & Labour in June. The regulations allow employers to go this route for operational reasons — with the proviso that if employees refuse for good reason to be vaccinated, the employer must try to place them where they cannot endanger others before it moves to retrenching them — as it is entitled to do if all else fails. But with some trade unionists and student groups protesting that it would be unconstitutional to compel people to get jabbed, Busa wants a declarator from the courts that would provide certainty and give employers confidence “that they are on the right side of the law”. Busa CEO Cas Coovadia indicated: “We are saying: let’s get absolute legal certainty that will give employers a tool if they want to go that route legally and they can then have the usual discussions with labour in implementing it.” One labour lawyer commented: “Employers are faced with competing claims. The vaccinated are refusing to work with the unvaccinated because of the health risk (a legally justifiable course of action) and the unvaccinated are threatening to take them to court for a violation of constitutional rights.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Hilary Joffe at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page