Today's Labour News

BL Premium reports that unvaccinated South Africans could face restrictions on being able to access public services and places of employment as soon as the beginning of 2022.

Talks between the government, business and labour on the introduction of a form of a Covid-19 vaccine passport system are at an advanced stage. A passport system would restrict access to certain events and would not involve people being forced to take jabs against their will. While the word "mandate" implies compulsion, in the SA context it is roughly equivalent to a passport system. Apparently, negotiations have been happening at the National Economic Development & Labour Council (Nedlac) for months. The parties expect to agree on a proposal that could be released within weeks for public comment. According to insiders involved in the talks at Nedlac, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s statement on Sunday, in which he announced that a task team had been set up to look into the introduction of vaccine mandates for specific activities and locations, was a result of the Nedlac process. Business and labour sources also said that legal opinion had been sought in anticipation of a possible constitutional challenge to vaccine mandates.   Companies such as Discovery have pressed on with mandates for their employees, having sought legal advice that left them confident they would successfully repel challenges. The new sense of urgency comes as SA’s vaccination programme falters, with just 35% of the population inoculated. Business for SA’s Martin Kingston said on Tuesday that the organisation was encouraged by the formation of a task team to "work through the finer details" of vaccine mandates.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Hajra Omarjee at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

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